ASH WEDNESDAY -- February 18, 2026

LUSAKA - On Ash Wednesday, as ashes mark our foreheads and we hear the call to repent and believe in the Gospel, we enter the desert with Christ. Lent unites fasting, prayer, and almsgiving into one journey of conversion. Fasting loosens our grip on comfort and consumption; prayer turns our hearts back to God; almsgiving opens our hands to others.

As Pope Leo XIV reminds us in his Lenten message, this season is a pilgrimage of hope, one that reshapes not only our personal habits but our way of seeing the world, especially those who are poor, oppressed, and forgotten.

The prophet Isaiah (58:6-7) makes clear that true fasting is inseparable from justice: it is loosening the bonds of injustice, letting the oppressed go free, sharing our bread with the hungry and sheltering the homeless and the afflicted. Our prayer this lent should help us hear the cry of the poor and of the earth; When we pray, God softens our indifference. When we truly fast, we recognize how our excess may be linked to another’s deprivation.

When we give alms, we are called not only to generosity but to solidarity, working towards restoring dignity and challenging the structures that wound the vulnerable and weakest among us.

Lent, then, is about hope made visible. In drawing near to God, we are sent to draw near to those on the margins. The ashes remind us that we are dust, equal in our need for mercy; the Gospel reminds us that mercy must become justice and love in action. This is the fast God chooses: lives turned outward in compassion, bread shared freely, chains of injustice broken.

In such prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, the poor encounter hope and we encounter Christ.

Have a grace-filled Lenten season.

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