Perhaps the message of Ash Wednesday is that we have each been given a very few short years during which to learn to love selflessly, and that the greatest sadness we will ever know will be at the moment when those years are over and we look back on how many opportunities to love we passed up or betrayed. This sadness is synonymous with what the Church calls purgatory. To look back with no remorse at all would be hell, the self-condemnation of a hardened heart.
Ash Wednesday is a reminder that a little remorse now might make us less likely to miss the opportunities to love that await us in this life.
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