"Returning to the heart”, "to the essential", "entering into the secret", stripping off "worldly coverings": this is the journey Pope Francis invites us to undertake during the season of Lent, "a journey from the outside to the inside, so that everything we live, even our relationship with God, is not reduced to outward appearances”, but corresponds "to our feeling”. In short, doing like the Poverello of Assisi, "who after having stripped himself bare embraced with his whole self the Father who is in heaven”. The Pope's words echoed yesterday in the Roman basilica of Santa Sabina, during the Mass with the rite of the imposition of ashes that opens the path to Easter and whose liturgical gestures are entrusted to Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, senior penitentiary. Preceding it, on a clear sunny afternoon, was the penitential procession with the invocation of the saints that departed from the church of St. Anselm on the Aventine.
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