We are what we love. “Rend your hearts and not your garments,” says the prophet Joel.

Lent is a matter of the heart! “Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.” This is the church’s Lenten call to repentance, and this is what we are setting out to do in these following 40 days.

First we have to have an authentic understanding of “repentance.”

The Greek word for repentance, “metanoia,” denotes a change of mind, a reorientation, a fundamental transformation of outlook of our vision of the world, and of our own self; and a new way of loving ourselves, loving others, and loving God. In other words: a “change of heart.”

It involves not mere regret of past evil but of our recognition of the distorted vision of our own condition, in which sin, by separating us from God, has reduced us to a divided, autonomous existence, depriving us of both our natural glory and our freedom.

Rather than mere dwelling on human sinfulness, repentance becomes the realization of human insufficiency and limitation.

Repentance then should not be accompanied by a preoccupation with our guilt but by an awareness of our estrangement from God and from each other.

This meaning of repentance replaces its negative connotation with a positive one, focusing on the communion with God that we are aiming for rather than the alienation that we are leaving behind.

Why did Jesus single out prayer, fasting and almsgiving? The Jewish religion in the time of Jesus considered these three practices as the principle works of the religious life. These were seen as the key signs of a pious person, the three great pillars on which a righteous life was based.

But Jesus pointed to the heart of the matter. Why do you pray, fast and give alms? To give glory to God? Or to draw attention to yourself so that others may notice and think highly of you?

Our Lord warns his disciples, and us, of self-seeking glory – the preoccupation with looking good and seeking praise from others.

True piety is something more than feeling good about yourself or looking holy. True piety is loving devotion to God. It is an attitude of awe, reverence, worship and obedience.

So why the ashes? Being strewed with ashes is an ancient sign of humility. It is dust – matter of the earth – which the ancient scriptures, and modern science, tell us we are made of. In other words – dirt!

And humility is definitely a dirty word in our modern culture. The word itself comes from the Latin word for dirt or soil. That’s why we call the soil in our gardens – humus! It’s from the same root word. So humility just means being down to earth, having your feet on the ground. That’s not so bad is it?

It's expressed beautifully in an old Shaker hymn:

'Tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free,
'tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be,
and when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
to bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,
to turn, turn, will be our delight
till by turning, turning we come round right.

That’s the starting point! It is only when we have our feet firmly planted on the ground that we can turn around and rechart our course.

And that’s humility. It is only when we are not so full of ourselves that we can be filled with God.

And that is what Jesus offers us. It is communion with God our loving Father. It is coming home to the loving arms of our Father who awaits us, who longs for us. In God alone we find the fullness of life, happiness and love. God wants to renew us each day and give us new hearts of love and compassion.

Today, we are called to journey with Jesus in a special season of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, as we prepare to celebrate the feast of Easter, our Christian Passover.

We, too, must follow our Lord in the way of the cross in denying ourselves and taking up our own cross in order to share in the victory of Christ's death and resurrection.

The Holy Spirit is ever ready to transform our hearts and to lead us further into God’s life of love and holiness.

Fr. Leo M. Joseph, O.S.F., is parish priest for St. John’s Parish in Lakeport, Calif.