This year, the Lord grants us, once again, a propitious time to prepare ourselves to celebrate with a renewed heart the great mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the cornerstone of our personal and communal Christian life. We must continually return to this mystery in mind and heart, for it will continue to grow within us to the extent that we open ourselves to its spiritual power and respond with freedom and generosity.
Christian joy springs from hearing and accepting the Good News of Jesus’ death and resurrection. This kerygma encapsulates the mystery of a love “so real, so true, so concrete, that it invites us to a relationship of openness and fruitful dialogue” ( Christus Vivit, 117).
Those who believe in this message reject the lie that our life is ours to do with as we please. Rather, life is born from the love of God the Father, from his desire to give us life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10). If, on the other hand, we listen to the tempting voice of the “father of lies” (Jn 8:44), we run the risk of sinking into the abyss of absurdity and experiencing hell here on earth, as too many tragic events in personal and collective human experience sadly attest
In this Lent of 2020, I would like to share with every Christian what I wrote to young people in the Apostolic Exhortation Christus Vivit: “Keep your gaze fixed on the outstretched 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 your guilt. Contemplate his blood poured out with such love and let yourself be purified by it. Thus you will be able to be reborn forever” (no. 123). The Passion of Jesus is not a past event; rather, by the power of the Holy Spirit, it is always present, allowing us to see and touch with faith the flesh of Christ in those who suffer.
It is good to contemplate more deeply the Paschal Mystery through which God’s mercy has been granted to us. Indeed, the experience of mercy is only possible in a face-to-face relationship with the crucified and risen Lord, “who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20), in a sincere dialogue among friends. This is why prayer is so important during Lent. More than a duty, prayer is an expression of our need to respond to the love of God that always precedes and sustains us. Christians pray knowing that, although unworthy, we are still loved. Prayer can take various forms, but what truly matters in God’s eyes is that it penetrates deep within us and weakens our hardness of heart, so that we may convert ever more fully to God and his will.
In this propitious time, let us allow ourselves to be led like Israel into the desert (cf. Hos 2:14), so that we may finally hear the voice of our Spouse and let it resonate ever more deeply within us. The more we commit ourselves to his word, the more we will experience the mercy he freely grants us. Let us not let this time of grace pass in vain, in the absurd illusion that we can control the timing and means of our conversion to him.
3. God’s passionate desire to dialogue with his children
We must never take for granted that the Lord is once again offering us a propitious time for our conversion. This new opportunity should awaken in us a sense of gratitude and shake us out of our laziness. Despite the sometimes tragic presence of evil in our lives, in the life of the Church, and in the world, this opportunity to change course expresses God’s unwavering will not to interrupt his saving dialogue with us. In Jesus crucified, who knew no sin but for our sake became sin (cf. 2 Cor 5:21), this salvific will led the Father to burden his Son with the weight of our sins, thus turning, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “God against himself” (Deus Caritas Est, 12). For God also loves his enemies (cf. Mt 5:43-48).
The dialogue that God desires to establish with each of us through the paschal mystery of his Son has nothing to do with empty talk, such as that attributed to the ancient inhabitants of Athens, who “dedicated themselves to nothing except to say or hear something new” (Acts 17:21). Such talk, driven by an empty and superficial curiosity, characterizes worldliness in every age; in our day, it can also result from an improper use of the media.
4. A wealth to share, not to keep for oneself.
Placing the Paschal Mystery at the center of our lives means feeling compassion for the wounds of Christ crucified, present in the many innocent victims of wars, in attacks on life—from the unborn to the elderly—and in various forms of violence. They are also present in environmental disasters, the unequal distribution of the earth’s goods, human trafficking in all its forms, and the unbridled pursuit of profit, which is a form of idolatry.
Today too, it is necessary to appeal to men and women of good will to share, through almsgiving, their goods with those most in need, as a means of personally participating in building a better world. Charity makes us more human, while hoarding risks making us less human, prisoners of our own selfishness. We can and must go further and consider the structural aspects of our economic life. For this reason, in the midst of Lent this year, from March 26 to 28, I convened a meeting in Assisi with young economists, entrepreneurs, and change-makers, with the aim of building a more just and inclusive economy. As the Church’s Magisterium has often repeated, political life represents an eminent form of charity (cf. Pius XI, Address to the Italian Federation of Catholic University Students, December 18, 1927). The same applies to economic life, which can be approached with the same evangelical spirit, the spirit of the Beatitudes.
I ask Mary Most Holy to pray that our Lenten celebration may open our hearts to hear God’s call to reconcile with him, to fix our gaze on the Paschal Mystery, and to open ourselves to an open and sincere dialogue with him. In this way, we will become what Christ asks of his disciples: salt of the earth and light of the world
