Ash Wednesday: the beginning of Lent The imposition of ashes reminds us that our life on earth is fleeting and short life is in Heaven. Lent begins with Ash Wednesday and is a time of prayer, penance and fasting. Forty days the Church marked for conversion of heart. The words used for the imposition of ashes, are: # "Grant, Lord, forgiveness and let us pass from sin to grace and from death to life" # "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return " # " Repent and believe in the Gospel. " Origin of custom Formerly covered with ash Jews used when they made some sacrifices and Nineveh also used the ashes as a sign their desire to convert their bad life to a life with God. In the early centuries of the Church, people who wanted to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation on Holy Thursday, they put ashes on their heads and presented to the community dressed in a "penitential habit. This represented his desire to become.
In 384 AD, Lent took on a meaning penance for all Christians and from the eleventh century, the Church of Rome usually put the ashes to begin 40 days of penance and conversion. used ashes obtained by burning the palms used on Palm Sunday last year. This reminds us that this was a sign of glory will soon be reduced to nothing. also was used the period of Lent to prepare those who were to receive baptism on Easter night, in imitation of Christ with his 40 days of fasting. The imposition of ashes is a tradition that reminds us that one day we will die and our bodies will become dust.
teaches us all the material we have here is over. Instead, all the good that we have in our souls we will carry us into eternity.
the end of our life, we just take what we have done for God and our fellow men.
When the priest gives us the ashes, we have an attitude of wanting to improve, wanting to be friends with God. The ashes are imposed on children and adults. Meaning
carnival at the beginning of Lent The word carnival means goodbye to meat and its origin dates back to ancient times where, for lack of proper cooling methods, the Christians had need to end, before the start of Lent, with all products that could not be consumed during this period (not only meat but also milk, eggs, etc.).
With this pretext, in many locations, organizing the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday called carnival festivities in which they consumed all the products that could spoil during Lent.
soon began to degrade the meaning of carnival, becoming a pretext to organize large feasts and makes those acts which "repent" during Lent, framed by a series of festivals and parades in which they extol the pleasures of the flesh in an exaggerated way, as is happening today in the carnival of some cities, like Rio de Janeiro or New Orleans.
fasting and abstinence Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of fasting and abstinence. Requires abstinence from 14 years and the fast of 18 to 59 years. Fasting is to make a single meal per day and abstinence is not eating meat. This is a way to apologize for having offended God and say we want to please him change his life forever. Prayer Prayer at this time is important because it helps us to be closer to God to change what we need to change from within. We need to become, abandoning the sin that separates us from God. Changing our way of life to make God the center of our lives.
Only in prayer will find God's love and the sweet and loving requirement will.
our prayers bear fruit, we must avoid the following:
Hypocrisy: Jesus does not want to pray for others to see us drawing attention to our outward attitude. What matters is our inner attitude.
dissipation: This means that we must avoid distractions as possible. Preparing our prayers, time and place at which to carry out so that we put in God's presence. The multitude of words: This means that it is not talking much or repeating prayers by heart but listen to God.
Prayer is satisfied with Him, our desires, our intentions and our needs. So no need to tell many things. The sincerity that we use must come from the depths of our heart because God will not be duped.
Al sacrifice sacrifice (which means "to sacred things"), we do them with joy, because God is love.
If we do so, cause us to pity and compassion and we will lose the reward of eternal happiness. It is God who sees our sacrifice from heaven and is going to reward us. "When you fast aparezcáis not sad, such as hypocrites who disfigure their faces to men they are fasting, verily, I say, have received their reward.
you when you fast, úngete head and wash your face from seeing the men to fast, but thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee. "(Mt 6.6)" Conclusion As seen, the ash is not a magical rite, does not take away our sins, so we have the Sacramento Reconciliation. It is a sign of repentance, penance, but especially for conversion. It is the beginning of the Lenten journey, to follow Jesus from the wilderness until the day of his triumph is Easter Sunday.
time should be a reflection of our life, to understand where we're going to analyze how is our behavior with our family and in general with all those around us. Currently to reflect on our lives, we must now convert into a following of Jesus, deepening its message of love and this Lent approaching the Sacrament of Reconciliation (also called Confession) As its name tells us, is reconciled with God and not become reconciled with God and internally, we can not follow properly.
Reconciliation with God is consists of Repentance, Confession of sin, penance and finally the conversion.
Repentance must be sincere, to recognize that we have made mistakes (as we say in the self sinner in thought, word and deed), we should not do and have the determination not to repeat. confession of our sins .- repentance of our sins, by itself does not delete, but we need to do the grace of God which comes to us by the absolution of our sins expressed by the priest in confession.
Penance begins we meet course for us by the priest in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but we must continue with the prayer, which is communication with God, with fasting, that in addition to instructing the Church on certain days, is the waiver of various satisfactions with the intention of pleasing God and the love of neighbor.
And finally the conversion as we have said is to go forward, is to follow Jesus. is a time to apologize to God and our neighbor, but is also a time to forgive all those who have offended us in some way or we have done some damage. But we must forgive before and no need for anyone to ask us for forgiveness, remember as we say in the Our Father, often repeating without meditating on their meaning, we must ask forgiveness from our Father, but first we must have sincerely forgiven others.
walking backwards and finish our opening sentence, saying that we hear and read the Gospel, meditate and believe in him and thus convert our lives, following the words of the Gospel and evangelizing, that is transmitted their message through our actions and our words.
suffering in Purgatory. 3. For the soul that has to be longer in purgatory. Reza
now some of the sentences that follow: 
Oh God, who sent us to honor our father and mother, be gracious and merciful with their souls, forgive him his sins and grant that one day I can see the joy of eternal light. Amen. 
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