Dear brothers and sisters:
The Lord has once again granted us this year a propitious time to prepare ourselves to celebrate with a renewed heart the great Mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the foundation of our personal and community Christian life. We must continually return to this Mystery, with our minds and hearts. In fact, this Mystery does not cease to grow in us to the extent that we allow ourselves to be involved in its spiritual dynamism and embrace it, responding freely and generously.
1. The Paschal Mystery, the foundation of conversion
The Christian's joy springs from listening to and accepting the Good News of Jesus' death and resurrection: the kerygma. In this is summed up the Mystery of a love «so real, so true, so concrete, that it offers us a relationship filled with sincere and fruitful dialogue» (Apostolic Exhortation, "The Mystery of Love"). Christus vivit, 117). Those who believe in this proclamation reject the lie of thinking that it is we who give origin to our life, while in reality it is born of the love of God the Father, of his will to give life in abundance (cf. Jn 10,10). On the other hand, if we prefer to listen to the persuasive voice of the «father of lies» (cf. Jn 8:45) we run the risk of sinking into the abyss of meaninglessness, experiencing hell already here on earth, as unfortunately witnessed by many dramatic events of personal and collective human experience.
Therefore, in this Lent 2020 I would like to address to each and every Christian what I have already written to young people in the Apostolic Exhortation Christus vivitLook into the open arms of Christ crucified, let yourself be saved again and again. And when you come to confess your sins, believe firmly in his mercy that frees you from guilt. Contemplate his blood so lovingly shed and let yourself be purified by it. Thus you will be reborn, again and again« (n. 123). The Passover of Jesus is not an event of the past: by the power of the Holy Spirit it is always present and allows us to see and touch with faith the flesh of Christ in so many suffering people.
2. Urgency of conversion
It is salutary to contemplate more deeply the Paschal Mystery, through which we have received God's mercy. The experience of mercy, indeed, is possible only in a «face to face» with the crucified and risen Lord «who loved me and gave himself for me» (Ga 2,20). A dialogue from heart to heart, from friend to friend. This is why prayer is so important in the Lenten season. More than a duty, it shows us the need to correspond to the love of God, who always precedes us and sustains us. In fact, the Christian prays with the awareness of being loved without deserving it. Prayer can take on different forms, but what really counts in the eyes of God is that it penetrates within us, to the point of touching the hardness of our heart, so as to convert it more and more to the Lord and to his will.
Therefore, in this favorable time, let us allow ourselves to be led like Israel in the wilderness (cf. Os 2:16), so that we can finally listen to the voice of our Spouse, so that it may resound in us with greater depth and availability. The more we allow ourselves to be fascinated by his Word, the more we will be able to experience his gratuitous mercy towards us. Let us not let this time of grace pass in vain, with the presumptuous illusion that it is we who decide the time and the manner of our conversion to him.
3. God's passionate willingness to dialogue with his children.
The fact that the Lord once again offers us a favorable time for our conversion should never be taken for granted. This new opportunity should awaken in us a sense of recognition and shake us out of our sluggishness. Despite the sometimes dramatic presence of evil in our lives, as in the life of the Church and the world, this space offered to us for a change of course manifests God's tenacious will not to interrupt the dialogue of salvation with us. In Jesus crucified, whom «God made to be sin for us» (2 Co 5:21), this will has gone so far as to make all our sins fall on his Son, to the point of “setting God against God”, as the pope said Benedict XVI (cf. Enc. Deus caritas est, 12). Indeed, God also loves his enemies (cf. Mt 5,43-48).
The dialogue that God wants to establish with every man, through the Paschal Mystery of his Son, is not like the one attributed to the Athenians, who «were occupied with nothing else but to say or to hear the latest news» (Ac 17,21). This type of charlatanism, dictated by an empty and superficial curiosity, characterizes the worldliness of all times, and in our days it can also be insinuated in a deceitful use of the mass media.
4. Wealth to share, not to accumulate only for oneself.
Placing the Paschal Mystery at the center of life means feeling compassion for the wounds of the crucified Christ present in the many innocent victims of wars, of abuses against the life of both the unborn and the elderly, of the many forms of violence, of environmental disasters, of the unjust distribution of the earth's goods, of human trafficking in all its forms and of the unbridled thirst for profit, which is a form of idolatry.
Today it is still important to remind men and women of good will to share their goods with those most in need through almsgiving, as a form of personal participation in the construction of a more just world. Charitable sharing makes man more human, whereas hoarding carries with it the risk that he will become stultified, as he closes himself up in his own selfishness. We can and must go even further, considering the structural dimensions of the economy. For this reason, during Lent 2020, from March 26 to 28, I have called together in Assisi young economists, businessmen and change-makers, with the aim of contributing to the design of an economy that is more just and inclusive than the present one. As the Church's magisterium has often repeated, politics is an eminent form of charity (cf. Pius XI, Speech to FUCI, December 18, 1927). It will also be to deal with the economy in this same evangelical spirit, which is the spirit of the Beatitudes.
I invoke the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary during this coming Lent, so that we may hear the call to allow ourselves to be reconciled with God, fix our heart's gaze on the Paschal Mystery and convert ourselves to an open and sincere dialogue with the Lord. In this way we will be able to be what Christ says of his disciples: salt of the earth and light of the world (cf. Mt 5,13-14).
Rome, at St. John Lateran, October 7, 2019
Memory of Our Lady, the Virgin of the Rosary
Francisco
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To make this Lent an experience of Christ, you might be interested in: A guide for the Encounter with Christ
