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The days are lengthening, but the earth is still cold. March arrives with sharp winds and bare branches — not quite winter, not yet spring. And yet, if you press your hand into the soil, you can feel it softening. Something is preparing to happen.

Lent begins in just such a season. It starts with honesty — with ash and the ancient words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19). Ash Wednesday does not pretend. It names our fragility, our mortality, the ways we lose our way. And yet the cross traced on our foreheads is not a mark of despair but of belonging. We are dust, yes — but dust held in the mercy of God.

The forty days that follow lead us into the wilderness with Jesus. After his baptism, the Spirit drives him into a stripped-back place — rock, hunger, silence, and the testing of what he truly trusts (Luke 4:1–2). The wilderness is not a punishment; it is a clarifying. It reveals what we cling to and what we can let go.

Lent invites us into that same gentle clearing-out. Not to be gloomy, and certainly not to impress God. But to wake up. To fast — perhaps from one habit that clutters the soul. To pray — not eloquently, but honestly. To give — in a way that stretches us just a little. In a world that fills every silence and promises everything at once, Lent quietly says: slow down. Let some things fall away.

It is rather like pruning. A gardener cuts back not to harm the tree but to help it flourish. The bare branches of late winter look vulnerable, even stark — but the gardener knows that without this work, there will be little fruit. Lent is the Church’s pruning season. Soil being turned. Dark, unglamorous work — but essential.

The prophet Joel’s words, often read at the start of Lent, steady us: “Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” (Joel 2:13). That is the ground beneath everything. Lent is not about earning love; it is about returning to the One who has never stopped loving us.

And the road has a direction. It leads us, step by step, toward Holy Week — toward the cross, and beyond it, to Easter morning. Lent does not ask us to see the whole journey. Only to keep walking.

Perhaps keeping Lent is as simple as this: choose one small thing to release, one faithful practice to take up. Be truthful with God. Trust that what feels like loss may be making space for something truer.

Because beneath the bare branches, something is already stirring.

The wilderness is not empty. Christ is there — and he is leading us toward life