Cardinal Jose F. Advincula, Archbishop of Manila has served as head of the Archdiocese of Manila since 2021. – Photo from manilacathedral.com
On Ash Wednesday, the Manila archbishop urges Catholics to confront life’s fragility and loosen their grip on attachments that distract from faith and renewal.
MANILA — On a day when Catholics line up to receive a small cross of ash on their foreheads, Manila’s archbishop urged the faithful to read the gesture not as ritual alone but as reckoning.
In his Ash Wednesday homily on Feb. 18, 2026, at the Arzobispado de Manila (the Archdiocese of Manila), Jose F. Cardinal Advincula said the ashes “tell the truth about us,” confronting believers with the reality that life is fragile and finite. The sign, he said, should awaken an awareness of how precious life is and how easily it can be squandered on what he described as “useless attachments.”
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent in the Roman Catholic calendar, a 40-day period of prayer, fasting and repentance leading to Holy Week. During the liturgy, clergy impose ashes traditionally made from burned palm branches from the previous year’s Palm Sunday while reciting words that recall human mortality.
Advincula framed the ashes as a stripping away of illusion. What people cling to – power, comfort, status, resentment – can disappear overnight, he said, a truth Filipinos understand in a country frequently visited by natural disasters and social upheavals. The point of Lent, he added, is not self-denial for its own sake but detachment that leads to greater freedom.
The cardinal cautioned against reducing religious observance to outward display. Echoing the day’s scriptural readings, he urged believers to seek interior conversion rather than public performance to “rend your hearts,” not merely adopt external signs of piety. The ash cross, he suggested, is not meant to advertise virtue but to acknowledge brokenness.
He also invited reflection beyond the personal sphere, calling on Catholics to recognize sin not only in individual failings but in collective habits and social realities. Repentance, he said, requires honesty about complicity “by action, silence or indifference,” and a willingness to return to what truly endures.
For the predominantly Catholic Philippines, where Ash Wednesday draws millions to churches nationwide, the message underscored a familiar but searching refrain: life is brief, attachments are fleeting, and the season of Lent offers an opportunity to reorder priorities before time runs out.
