ROME – Pope Francis said that “prayer, charity, and fasting,” are “weapons” that can change history and are especially needed today in his prepared remarks for Ash Wednesday.

In a homily read by Cardinal Pietro Parolin during the Vatican’s Ash Wednesday Mass, the pontiff said these virtues need to grow “in secret,” but the effects they have are known since they are not “medicines meant only for ourselves but for everyone: They can change history.”

“They are weapons of the spirit and with them, on this day of prayer and fasting for Ukraine, we implore from God that peace which men and women are incapable of building by themselves,” the pope wrote.

This was the only time Ukraine was mentioned in the homily, despite the fact Francis has dedicated Ash Wednesday as a day of prayer for the country.

Parolin, who serves as the Holy See’s Secretary of State, was celebrating Mass in the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome. Pope Francis was absent because the Vatican said his doctors ordered him to rest due to acute knee pain. 

The pope began his homily by warning, like Jesus did in the Book of Matthew, of “practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” Francis also said that, even though Ash Wednesday is more about “the commitment demanded by the journey of faith,” it is also a day to think about the “reward.”

There are two rewards Jesus speaks of, he said: Those from God and those from others. The first “is eternal, the true and ultimate reward, the purpose of our lives. The second is ephemeral, a spotlight we seek whenever the admiration of others and worldly success become the most important thing for us, our greatest gratification.”

Those who seek worldly rewards never find peace or contribute to peace,” Francis wrote. “So Jesus tells us to ‘beware’. As if to say: ‘You have a chance to enjoy an infinite reward, an incomparable reward. Beware, then, and do not let yourself be dazzled by appearances, pursuing cheap rewards that disappoint as soon as you touch them’.”

The ashes imposed on the foreheads of Catholics during this day’s celebration are meant as a reminder that “worldliness is like the dust that is carried away by a slight gust of wind.”

Lent, Francis said, is a journey of healing, which doesn’t mean a person will change “overnight,” but can attempt to “live each day with a renewed spirit,” adding that prayer, charity, and fasting are aids to this.

Describing the three “weapons,” Francis wrote that prayer is the secret to making “our lives flourish.” During the Lenten season – the 40 days in preparation for Easter – prayer should be done above all looking at “the Crucified Lord.”

If prayer is real, “it necessarily bears fruit in charity,” which “sets us free from the worst form of enslavement, which is slavery to self.” Fasting, the pope said, “is not a diet,” but an effort that “sets us free from the self-centered and obsessive quest of physical fitness, in order to help us to keep in shape not only our bodies but our spirit as well.”

Fasting, Francis said, is not only about offering up food, but it should be about “anything that can create in us any kind of addiction. This is something each of us should reflect on, so as to fast in a way that will have an effect on our actual lives.”

The celebration began with the traditional pilgrimage from the station church of St. Anselm to the station church Santa Sabina, an ancient Rome tradition revived in the early 1960s by St. John XXIII. This tradition was suspended in 2021 due to concerns over COVID-19.

A church was designated as a “station church” because of its prominence in the early Roman church, and popes would gather with the faithful of Rome at a different church each day and then walk together to another church for Mass, making a pilgrimage from one stop or station to another until Easter.