Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart. Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord your God. Ash Wednesday which we are observing today marks the beginning of the period of Lent, a time given us by the Church to actively reflect on our relationship with God and with one another. The goal of this lengthened reflection period (forty days) is the opportunity to repair those relationships that have been broken even as we seek to improve those that are dwindling. We attain this goal when, like the prodigal son (cf. Luke 15:11-31), we come to our senses and seek a return to God and to the people from whom we have estranged ourselves.  
In the First Reading, the Lord God, speaking through the Prophet Joel, calls on the members of the prophet’s community to make a genuine return to the Lord (a whole-hearted return). It is a call that was motivated by the desire of the Lord to once again journey with his people in honor of the covenant which God had made with them. As had become the norm, the people had disregarded their obligation to the covenant and were instead following the desires of their own hearts. And even as time and again God pleaded with them to make amends and come back to the Lord, they only managed a half-hearted return. For while externally the people were observed to be showing remorse for their actions by fasting and mourning, in the depths of their hearts, they remained estranged from God. Their hearts were still full of pride, selfishness, arrogance, disobedience to the law of God, and disregard for the welfare of their fellow men and women. The right repentance that would please the Lord and make their return acceptable is one that focuses on the heart (and as such is genuine): “Rend your hearts instead of your garments,” quips the Lord.
The Lord our God is interested in the “rendering” of the hearts because it is in the depths of our hearts that the Lord speaks with us. Just as it is with our hearts that we listen to the life-giving words of the Lord, it is also in our hearts that we can decide to close our ears to the Lord. When we close the ears of our hearts to the Lord, we disengage ourselves from the life-giving relationship that we have with the Lord. When we decide to close the ears of our hearts to the Lord, we end up losing the friendship that ought to exist between God and his creatures. 
We prove that we have rent our hearts when we distance ourselves from attitudes and behaviors that lead us into sin. We show that our hearts have been rent when we let go of the things that clutter our lives and which make it impossible for us to love our brothers and sisters as we should. It is only when we thus “rend” our hearts that we can hear the Lord calling out to us to come back to him. For the Lord is not happy when we stay estranged from him. We have to come back to the Lord because only then can we realize the fullness of life that is God’s gift to us. 
The three ‘observances/practices’ of Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving that have come to characterize the period of Lent are proposed by the Church to help and guide us as we make this return to the Lord. Prayer is our only means of communication with the Lord. If we have to repair or preserve our relationship with the Lord, communication is of paramount importance. For in prayer not only do we pour out our hearts to the Lord, but we also get a chance to listen to what the Lord has to say. Lenten fasting should be seen as broader than abstinence from food or other forms of activities that excite our senses. Lenten fasting is geared towards having control over the appetites (drives) that, if left unchecked, can lead to us harming others or even ourselves. Lenten fast is thus about putting the desires of the body and mind under control. Almsgiving is one of the ways through which we live our Christian virtue of charity. It is the practical way of heeding the call of the Lord to love our brothers and sisters. The Lenten practice of almsgiving should therefore be undertaken, NOT as a means of doing ‘penance’ but rather as an expression of our Christian identity. Almsgiving and other forms of charity remind us of the web of relationship in which God has inserted us. For we can only take care of our relationship with the Lord when we are aware of who we are and what is expected of us.