“Become and believe in the Gospel.” The second part of this invitation that the celebrant makes to the faithful who come to have ashes imposed on them, on Ash Wednesday, appears, at first glance, to be a solemn truism. It certainly seems so, but perhaps it is not so much so, if we carefully consider how many pastors and faithful have frequently misinterpreted the meaning and significance of that conversion, to which the Church invites so often, especially during the time of Lent.
Therefore, it would not be amiss if we took this time to discover what such a truism: “believe in the Gospel” should consist of.
I have the feeling that many times we have focused, or we have focused, attention, purpose, and effort more on the means than on the end. What I mean by this is that the well-known Lenten practices, such as, among others, sacrifices, penances, fasts, deprivations, etc., were geared towards dominating or controlling, if not suppressing, certain impulses contrary to the morality preached from pulpits and taught by the theology of the moment.
A morality, by the way, very much in line with rather rigid or somewhat skewed interpretations, at best, of the commandments of God’s Law, especially some, and sacraments of the Church, but in little or no harmony with the demands or conduct, to be more precise, that the Gospel recommends and invites to put into practice for anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus.
And it’s not that I want to now contradict the evangelical counsels with some or many precepts of the Church. God forbid! But it is true that, with the best intentions, I will not deny it, ways of acting and behaving have been absolutized that respond more to certain types of morality, the fruit of theologies current at specific moments, than to the very advice that Jesus gave, in his time, to those who demanded to follow him. It must also be said, in this sense, that catechisms have greatly helped the former and very little, or perhaps nothing, the latter. Catechisms that, in turn, have been the only source of formation of the faithful for many centuries.
Thus, if we adhere to the liturgical recommendation “Convert and believe in the Gospel,” Lent should be a suitable time to deepen our knowledge of the Gospel as a preliminary step to subsequently believing in it. A knowledge focused on the will rather than understanding. This latter can be helped us understand the popular adage: “No one loves what they do not know.”
It would be a mistake to approach the Gospel as if it were an immense compendium of truths, rather than an inexhaustible spring of life. And therefore, to think that knowing those truths makes us deserving of goodness and moral rectitude. It is well known that none of that is so. Believing in the Gospel is the reason and foundation of every person who considers themselves Christian. But not believing to know, but to love. Because it is the latter that moves us to act or to refrain from acting, making us people deserving of good or evil, for it is the will, not the understanding, where human morality resides.
So: the Lenten conversion has no other goal than to help the faithful Christian believe in the Gospel as a life project. A conversion, therefore, whose ultimate purpose should be ethics. In any case, once again, asceticism (renunciations, sacrifices, privations) should help this commitment on the part of the believer. Never to a disembodied mysticism of the environment in which said believer lives and of the people around him.
**Juan Zapatero Ballesteros**
English version translated with AI