PASTOR’S MEANDERINGS 24 – 25 FEBRUARY 2018 SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

SUNDAY REFLECTION

In politics it has been said that no one ever made a mark on history by living a life of ease. A similar approach to life lies at the center of Christianity. Jesus Himself said: ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, he must take up his cross day by day and come after me. Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it.’ The sacrament we have just received has its origins not only in the Upper Room but also on the hill of Calvary. We receive the Body and Blood of Christ at Mass because He gave His body and blood on the Cross. Jesus admired sacrificial giving in others, for example, in the poor widow who gave her two small coins to the Temple treasury. He tells us that our lives will be judged on our sacrificial giving: ‘I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink ‘. May Christ’s giving of Himself on Calvary and in every Mass be our nourishment and our inspiration. According to some, the story of sacrifice had a happy ending for Isaac, but not for the ram. ‘Poor animal’, they felt. It was sacrificed but it had done nothing wrong. A wise person replied: This ram had an extraordinary destiny. God created it precisely to take Isaac’s Place, and since creation it spent happy days in Paradise. In its sacrifice, nothing Was lost. Indeed, its ashes were placed in the foundations of the altar of the Temple. From its tendons, David made six chords for his harp. From its skin, Elias made his cloak. As for its two horns, the smallest served to gather

Together the Israelites at Sinai for the celebration of the covenant. As for the Largest, it will resound on the day of the Messiah. Therefore, in this sacrifice, nothing was useless. In our sacrifice, nothing is lost. Everything is transfigured by the love of God who receives us as he received Jesus. The spiritual writer Lucien Deiss, who tells this story, asks: Do you know the meaning of the old French word fiancé? Its root meaning is ‘faith’, and refer s to the person to whom we have given our faith. Like Abraham, we are fiances of God. We have given God our faith. Every time God calls we should answer with Abraham: ‘Here I am’. STEWARDSHIP: Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. St. Paul reminds us that God Himself “did not spare His own Son.” Are my gifts to the Lord – of my resources, of my time, of myself – also sacrificial? William Lyon Phelps “It is the final test of a gentleman – his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.” READINGS FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT 4 MAR ‘18 Ex. 20:1-17: The Ten Commandments form part of God’s Covenant given to Moses for the Jewish people. Its challenge begins with the First Commandment to avoid any false gods in our lives. 1 Cor. 1:22-25: With the death of God’s Son on a cross as a common criminal, God’s foolishness is proved its wiser than human wisdom. Jn. 2:13-25: In cleansing the Temple, Jesus declares that He, through His death and resurrection, is to replace the Temple. St. Justin Martyr “If man does not have the free faculty to shun evil and to choose good, then, whatever his actions may be, he is not responsible for them.” Year A (proclaimed for the First Scrutiny 5:00 p.m. Mass Sat.) Ex. 17:3-7: God tells Moses to bring forth water from the rock. Rom. 5:1-2, 5-8: Christ died for us while we were still sinners. Jn. 4:5-42: Jesus reveals himself to the Samaritan woman at the well. REFLECTIONS ON THE WEEKDAYS READINGS FOR LENT Monday 26 February: Dn. 9:4-10: In the prayer Daniel offers in a time of great trial (the Exile and the oppression by a foreign ruler) the people acknowledge that their situation is the outcome of their disloyalty to God and the obligation of their covenant with God. Lk. 6:36-38: Jesus urges His disciples to be compassionate in their dealings with one another. The standard expected is high. If we are prepared to give and forgive lavishly, there will be great gifts for us. God’s mercy is infinite and unconditional. But isn’t there some kind of condition built

into the phrases of today’s reading? “Judge not and you will not be judged.” “Forgive and you will be forgiven.” “The measure you give is the measure you will get.” Don’t these phrases suggest that if you do judge you will be judged; if you refuse to forgive you will be refused forgiveness; and that God is only as merciful as you are? How are we to understand this?

St. Augustine was a t his best when he was struggling with the most difficult passages. Hear what he has to say about this. “What do you want from the Lord? Mercy. Give it, and it shall be given to you. What do you want from the Lord? Forgiveness. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Then later he added: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given you: These are the two wings of

prayer, on which your spirit soars to God.” Our spirit is meant to soar, not just to be lifted up like a stone. God’s mercy, forgiveness, and generosity are not just exercised on us; they are to exercise in us. By being merciful, forgiving and generous, as best we can, we are receiving God’s gift rather than just being credited with it.

Tuesday 27 February: Is. 1:10, 16-20: The image of washing prompts us to think about our Baptism. Mt. 23:1-12: Disciples of Jesus must set aside any desire for self-promotion and serve their fellow human being quietly and without publicity, imitating Christ our Teacher. In many languages today the word ‘Pharisee’ is synonymous with ‘hypocrite’. This solid reputation is probably due to the later part of this chapter of Matthew’s gospel: the repeated phrase, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” Jesus acknowledged the value of some of what the Pharisees were teaching: “Do whatever they teach you.” What he objected to was the discrepancy between this and their own lives. they had made themselves interpreters of the Law of Moses (“they sit on Moses’ seat”), and were applying it without mercy. This was the reverse of their own stated claim: to be as lenient, or as strict, with others as with themselves. They were imposing the burden of the law on others while they themselves enjoyed precedence and privilege. It is less the sinfulness of sinners than the hypocrisy of the pious that causes people to abandon religion. Atheism is caused mainly by religious hypocrites.

An anonymous fifth-century Christian writer said: “Mistaken laity may be more easily set straight, but clerics, if they are evil, are almost impossible to set straight.” Anyone who presumes to teach is inviting comparison with the historical Pharisees, and is in the direct line of fire. The Pharisees have long disappeared from history, but the Church has us reading about them frequently in the Liturgy. Why? Because we haven’t gone away, you know!

Wednesday 28 February: Jer. 18:18-20: Jeremiah laments the fact that the people plot evil against him while he stands in God’s presence pleading on their behalf – an apt portrait of the future Messiah. Mt. 20:17-28: The disciples have difficulty in understanding that the path to the

kingdom will run through suffering and death, with James and John seeking power and prominence. Mark says that it was the James and John who asked Jesus for important posts in His kingdom (10:37). But Matthew puts the blame on their mother! However, the cover- up is transparent in the text when you check the original Greek. ‘You’ is both singular and plural in English, but Greek makes the difference clear. “Jesus said to the brothers, ‘You (plural) do not know what you (plural) are asking. Can you (plural) drink the cup that I am about to drink?’” He was speaking to them, not to their mother. Furthermore, the others were angry “with the two brothers.” John Chrysostom tried to steer around it by saying: “It seems that both the mother and the two sons of Zebedee together came to Him.” Nice try.

The anger of the others reveals something else. Why were they not just amused, or perhaps embarrassed for them? Their anger reveals that they had a personal stake in the matter. They too saw themselves in the running for the top posts! This is all the more absurd because Jesus had just been speaking about the suffering and humiliation He Himself was about to endure. Today’s reading, then, has the same theme as yesterday’s. The only difference is that yesterday’s was about the Pharisees, but today’s is about the Apostles! If there is an excuse for the two, it is possibly that they were very young and inexperienced, and didn’t have much awareness of what they were saying. John Chrysostom added that they seem not to have grasped the logic of Jesus: that the first would be last. “James and John disgraced themselves by seeking the first place. That puts them among the last.” Through the ages, that logic – much more difficult than Aristotle’s – has been more honored in the breach than in the observance. Its implication have not fully sunk in. There is still a culture of privilege precedence and power in the Church. Has it ever sunk in, in any age? The same ancient writer said, “If James and John were installed at Jesus’ right and left, how could there be any room left for the rest of us?”

Thursday 1 March: Jer. 17:5-10: Here there is an invitation to hope. God who is above and beyond us, is at the same time intimately close and unfailingly constant and faithful – even when those closest to us let us down. Lk. 16:19-31: There are choices to be made every day; we live in the illusion of riches, ignoring our inner poverty and the poverty round about us. We used to call the rich man Dives, but Jesus did not give any name to this character in his story. The poor man does have a personal name, Lazarus. (As it happens, Jesus had a friend called Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary.) St. Augustine wrote: “Jesus kept quiet about the rich man’s name but gave the name of the poor man. The rich man’s name was well known around, but God kept quiet about it. The other’s name was lost in obscurity, but God spoke it. Please do not be surprised… God kept quiet about the rich man’s name, because he did not find it written in heaven. He spoke the poor man’s name, because he found it written there, indeed he gave instructions for it to be written there.”

The story tells us something about riches: the rich are inclined to define themselves by what they own, not by what they are. Riches can clog up your inner being, so that you do not know who you are. Then you look out from that place of not-knowing and you see other people, but you do not really see them; you only see what they own – or do not own. Others looked through the doorway and saw a poor man there; the rich man looked and saw nobody. That is the subtlety of this story: the rich man was neither cruel nor kind to Lazarus; Lazarus was invisible to him. Jesus told this story to the rich, to their faces, as an accusation against them. He told

it to the Pharisees, who as Luke said, “loved money” (16:14). It has the same import as Luke’s version of the Beatitudes: “Alas for you who are rich!” (6:24).

Friday 2 March: Gn. 37:3-4, 12-13, 17-28: Joseph is loved by his father and despised by his brothers. In this sad story the providence of God is at work on many levels. Mt. 21:33-43, 45-46: As in the story of Joseph, we again see rejection being turned to good account by our merciful God. When Jesus tells this story about the vineyard he is really talking about His country and the people who ran it. They were quite aware of this, “The chief priests and the Pharisees… realized that Jesus was referring to them.” It wasn’t a story to flatter them; it enraged them. That means that it frightened them – lying just behind anger there is always fear. They were frightened because He said they were going to lose poser. They were religious leaders and He told them, “The kingdom of heaven will be taken from you and given to people who will yield a harvest.”

This is not just a story about a comfortable ‘long ago’; it is for the Church of today. If we are not “producing the goods,” others will. Many people, experiencing lack of community and spiritual support in their parishes, are looking to new religions and cults for support.

Saturday 3 March:

Mi. 7:14-15, 18-20: The fact that a sinful people often ignored the message of the prophets ‘from days of old’ is offset here by the prophet Micah’s deep sense of God’s ever-present faithfulness and forgiving love. Lk. 15:1-3, 11-32: Those gathered round Jesus to hear this parable would have known other two-brother stories, where the younger brother assumes the place of the elder brother, e.g., Esau and Jacob (Gen. 25:27-34, 27:1-36), and Joseph and his brothers (Gen. 37:1-4). Jesus could have drawn any kind of picture of God He wanted. This is the one He drew. God is rich in mercy, abounding in love. The ‘Almighty God’ of our youth didn’t always leave us with that impression, but the truth was never lost on the saints. Julian of Norwich wrote, “Our courteous Lord will show Himself to the soul full joyfully and with glad countenance and friendly welcoming, as if He had been in

pain and in prison, saying sweetly, ‘My dear one, I am glad that you are come to me: in all your woe I have always been with you, and now you see my love, and we will be united in bliss.”

This heart-warming story of God is essential to our Lenten diet. Without it, our efforts to lead a better life only lead us into self-righteousness – or despair. Which brings us to the older brother. Remember that when Jesus told this story he was surrounded by a crowd of surly scribes and Pharisees. They were objecting to his friendliness towards sinners. Jesus captured them perfectly in the figure of the older brother. Celebration was foreign to him, he was enjoying his resentment, he was a kill-joy, he had no heart. And he was stingy. Any of us, if we’re not careful, could slip into that dreary role. We can become so focused on doing our duty that we disregard all other values. The Pharisees were like a group of angry elder brothers; they accused Jesus of being a glutton and a drunkard (Lk. 7:34), because he knew how to celebrate. But they were not able to make him like themselves. In fact he spoke of the kingdom (the presence) of God as a banquet (Mt. 22). Again, it was not lost on the saints. Julian again: “Our sins are forgiven by mercy and grace, and we are received with joy, jut as it will be when we come to heaven.”

40 DAYS? Throughout most of Christian history, if you asked any Catholic how long the Lenten fast was, they would have replied, without hesitation, "40 days." In recent years, however, a number of different answers have begun to appear, often spread by well-meaning Catholic apologists who have come to mistaken conclusions by examining current Church documents without consideration of the historical development of the Lenten fast, and the difference between Lent as a penitential season and Lent as a liturgical season. In this brief examination of the history of Lent, we will see that:

The relatively recent development of the Easter Triduum as its own liturgical season has not affected the length of the Lenten fast;

The Lenten fast has been, and remains, exactly 40 days; The Sundays in Lent have never been, and still are not, part of the Lenten fast.

Lent as a Liturgical Season Until very recently, the liturgical season of Lent and the Lenten fast were coextensive, running from Ash Wednesday until Holy Thursday, when the Easter season began at the start of the Easter Vigil. With the revision of the rites of Holy Week in 1956, however, a new liturgical emphasis was placed on the Triduum, understood at that time as encompassing Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. With the revision of the calendar in 1969, the Triduum was extended to include Easter Sunday as well, and the General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar issued by the Sacred Congregation of Divine Worship offer this definition of the Easter Triduum (para. 19): The Easter triduum begins with the evening Mass of the Lord's Supper, reaches its high point in the Easter Vigil, and closes with Evening Prayer on Easter Sunday. Until 1969, the Triduum had been considered part of the liturgical season of Lent. With the separation of the Easter Triduum as its own liturgical season—the shortest in the liturgical year—the liturgical season of Lent was necessarily redefined. As the General Norms put it (para. 28)), liturgically Lent runs from Ash Wednesday until the Mass of the Lord's Supper exclusive.

This redefinition of the Lenten liturgical season has led some to conclude that Lent is 43 days long, counting all of the days from Ash Wednesday to Spy Wednesday, inclusive; or 44 days long, if we include Holy Thursday, since the Mass of the Lord's Supper begins after sundown on Holy Thursday. And if we're speaking of the liturgical season as currently defined by the Church, either 43 or 44 days is a reasonable answer for the length of Lent. But neither answer is correct if we are speaking of the Lenten fast. The 40 Days of the Lenten Fast The current Catechism of the Catholic Church (para. 540) states: By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert. The 40 days mentioned here are not figurative or approximate; they are not a metaphor; they are literal. They are tied, as the 40 days of Lent have always been for Christians, to the 40 days that Christ spent in fasting in the desert after His baptism by John the Baptist. Paragraph 538-540 of the current Catechism of the Catholic Church speak of the "salvific meaning of this mysterious event," in which Jesus is revealed as "the new Adam who remained faithful just where the first Adam had given in to temptation." By uniting "herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert," the Church participates directly in this salvific act. It's no wonder, then, that from a very early period in the Church's history, a literal 40 days of fasting has been seen as necessary by Christians. The History of the Lenten Fast In the language of the Church, Lent has historically been known by the Latin term Quadragesima—literally, 40. These 40 days of preparation for the Resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday were, again, not approximate or metaphorical but literal, and taken very seriously as so by the entire Christian Church from the days of the Apostles. As the great liturgical scholar Dom Prosper Guéranger writes in Volume Five of his masterwork The Liturgical Year, The Apostles, therefore, legislated for our weakness, by instituting, at the very commencement of the Christian Church, that the Solemnity of Easter should be preceded by a universal Fast; and it was only natural, that they should have made this period of Penance to consist of Forty Days, seeing that our Divine Master had consecrated that number by his own Fast. St. Jerome, St. Leo the Great, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Isidore of Seville, and others of the Holy Fathers, assure us that Lent was instituted by the Apostles, although, at the commencement, there was not any uniform way of observing it. Over time, however, differences arose over how the 40 days of fasting were to be observed—though never of the necessity of 40 days of fasting. In Volume Four of The Liturgical Year, Dom Guéranger discusses Septuagesima, the traditional season of preparation for Lent, which originated in the Eastern Church: The practice of this Church being never to fast on Saturdays, the number of fasting-days in Lent, besides the six Sundays of Lent, (on which, by universal custom, the Faithful never fasted,) there were also the six Saturdays, which the Greeks would never allow to be observed as days of fasting : so that their Lent was short, by twelve days, of the Forty spent by our Savior in the Desert. To make up the deficiency, they were obliged to begin their Lent so many days earlier . . .

In the Western Church, however, the practice was different: The Church of Rome had no such motive for anticipating the season of those privations, which belong to Lent; for, from the earliest antiquity, she kept the Saturdays of Lent, (and as often, during the rest of the year, as circumstances might require,) as fasting days. At the close of the 6th century, St. Gregory the Great, alludes, in one of his Homilies, to the fast of Lent being less than Forty Days, owing to the Sundays which come during that holy season. "There are," he says, "from this Day (the first Sunday of Lent) to the joyous Feast of Easter, six Weeks, that is, forty-two days. As we do not fast on the six Sundays, there are but thirty-six fasting days; … which we offer to God as the tithe of our year." The Christians of the West, however, desired that their Lenten fast would, like that of their Eastern brethren, be exactly 40 days, and so, as Dom Guéranger writes, The last four days of Quinquagesima Week, were added to Lent, in order that the number of Fasting Days might be exactly Forty. As early, however, as the 9th century, the custom of beginning Lent on Ash Wednesday was of obligation in the whole Latin Church. All the manuscript copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary, which bear that date, call this Wednesday the In capite jejunii, that is to say, the beginning of the fast; and Amalarius, who gives us every detail of the Liturgy of the 9th century, tells us, that it was, even then, the rule to begin the Fast four days before the first Sunday of Lent. The importance of a literal 40-day period of fasting cannot be stressed enough; as Dom Guéranger writes, There can be no doubt, but that the original motive for this anticipation,—which, after several modifications, was limited to the four days immediately preceding Lent,—was to remove from the Greeks the pretext of taking scandal at the Latins, who did not fast a full Forty days. . . . Thus it was, that the Roman Church, by this anticipation of Lent by Four days, gave the exact number of Forty Days to the holy Season, which she had instituted in imitation of the Forty Days spent by our Savior in the Desert. And in that final sentence from Dom Guéranger, we see the continuity with the line quoted earlier from para. 540 of the current Catechism of the Catholic Church ("By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert."), in the understanding of both the purpose and the length of the Lenten fast. Sundays Are Not, and Never Have Been, Part of the Lenten Fast If the Church, both East and West, considered it of paramount importance that the Lenten fast be exactly 40 days, why did the Western Church extend the Lenten fast back to Ash Wednesday, which falls 46 days before Easter? Dom Guéranger spells it out for us, in this excerpt from Volume Five of The Liturgical Year: We have already seen, in our Septuagesima [Volume Four], that the Orientals begin their Lent much earlier than the Latins, owing to their custom of never fasting on Saturdays, (or, in some places, even on Thursdays). They are, consequently, obliged, in order to make up the forty days, to begin the Lenten Fast on the Monday preceding our Sexagesima Sunday. These are the kind of exceptions, which prove the rule. We have also shown, how the Latin Church,—which, even so late as the 6th Century, kept only thirty-six fasting days during the six weeks of Lent, (for the Church has never allowed Sundays to be kept as days of fast,)—thought proper to add, later on, the last four days of Quinquagesima, in order that her Lent might contain exactly Forty Days of Fast.

"[F]or the Church has never allowed Sundays to be kept as days of fast . . . " Thus, we arrive at the traditional formula, in the Western Church, for how the 40 days of lent are calculated:

Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday, inclusive, is 46 days; There are six Sundays in this period, which "the Church has never allowed . . . to be kept

as days of fast"; 46 days minus 6 Sundays equals the 40 days of the Lenten fast

The Church continues today to regard every Sunday as a "little Easter." As the Church's 1983 Code of Canon Law notes (Canon 1246): Sunday, on which by apostolic tradition the paschal mystery is celebrated, must be observed in the universal Church as the primordial holy day of obligation. (This is why, by the way, Easter and Pentecost, as important as they are, are never listed as separate holy days of obligation: Both fall on Sunday, and all Sundays are holy days of obligation.) All holy days of obligation, or solemnities, have an exalted status in the Church. They are days on which penitential obligations, such as our obligation to abstain from meat on Fridays, are lifted, as Canon 1251 notes (emphasis added): Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. The continuous tradition of the Church, East and West, applies today, both during Lent and throughout the year: Sundays are not days of fasting. Any sacrifice that we make as part of our observance of the 40-day Lenten fast is not binding on the Sundays of Lent, because the Sundays of Lent are not, and never have been, part of the Lenten fast.

MESSAGE of the HOLY FATHER FRANCIS for LENT 2018 6/2/2018

(The following is the Message of the Holy Father for Lent 2018 on the theme: “Because of the increase of iniquity, the love of many will grow cold” (Mt 24: 12).)

“Because of the increase of iniquity, the love of many will grow cold” (Mt 24: 12) Dear Brothers and Sisters, Once again, the Pasch of the Lord draws near! In our preparation for Easter, God in His providence offers us each year the season of Lent as a “sacramental sign of our conversion”.[1] Lent summons us, and enables us, to come back to the Lord wholeheartedly and in every aspect of our life. With this message, I would like again this year to help the entire Church experience this time of grace anew, with joy and in truth. I will take my cue from the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew: “Because of the increase of iniquity, the love of many will grow cold” (24:12). These words appear in Christ’s preaching about the end of time. They were spoken in Jerusalem, on the Mount of Olives, where the Lord’s passion would begin. In reply to a question of the disciples, Jesus foretells a great tribulation and describes a situation in which the community of believers might well find itself: amid great trials, false prophets would lead people astray and the love that is the core of the Gospel would grow cold in the hearts of many. False prophets Let us listen to the Gospel passage and try to understand the guise such false prophets can assume.

They can appear as “snake charmers”, who manipulate human emotions in order to enslave others and lead them where they would have them go. How many of God’s children are mesmerized by momentary pleasures, mistaking them for true happiness! How many men and women live entranced by the dream of wealth, which only makes them slaves to profit and petty interests! How many go through life believing that they are sufficient unto themselves, and end up entrapped by loneliness! False prophets can also be “charlatans”, who offer easy and immediate solutions to suffering that soon prove utterly useless. How many young people are taken in by the panacea of drugs, of disposable relationships, of easy but dishonest gains! How many more are ensnared in a thoroughly “virtual” existence, in which relationships appear quick and straightforward, only to prove meaningless! These swindlers, in peddling things that have no real value, rob people of all that is most precious: dignity, freedom and the ability to love. They appeal to our vanity, our trust in appearances, but in the end they only make fools of us. Nor should we be surprised. In order to confound the human heart, the devil, who is “a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44), has always presented evil as good, falsehood as truth. That is why each of us is called to peer into our heart to see if we are falling prey to the lies of these false prophets. We must learn to look closely, beneath the surface, and to recognize what leaves a good and lasting mark on our hearts, because it comes from God and is truly for our benefit. A cold heart In his description of hell, Dante Alighieri pictures the devil seated on a throne of ice,[2] in frozen and loveless isolation. We might well ask ourselves how it happens that charity can turn cold within us. What are the signs that indicate that our love is beginning to cool? More than anything else, what destroys charity is greed for money, “the root of all evil” (1 Tim 6:10). The rejection of God and his peace soon follows; we prefer our own desolation rather than the comfort found in his word and the sacraments.[3] All this leads to violence against anyone we think is a threat to our own “certainties”: the unborn child, the elderly and infirm, the migrant, the alien among us, or our neighbor who does not live up to our expectations. Creation itself becomes a silent witness to this cooling of charity. The earth is poisoned by refuse, discarded out of carelessness or for self-interest. The seas, themselves polluted, engulf the remains of countless shipwrecked victims of forced migration. The heavens, which in God’s plan, were created to sing His praises, are rent by engines raining down implements of death. Love can also grow cold in our own communities. In the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I sought to describe the most evident signs of this lack of love: selfishness and spiritual sloth, sterile pessimism, the temptation to self-absorption, constant warring among ourselves, and the worldly mentality that makes us concerned only for appearances, and thus lessens our missionary zeal.[4] What are we to do? Perhaps we see, deep within ourselves and all about us, the signs I have just described. But the Church, our Mother and Teacher, along with the often bitter medicine of the truth, offers us in the Lenten season the soothing remedy of prayer, almsgiving and fasting. By devoting more time to prayer, we enable our hearts to root out our secret lies and forms of self-deception,[5] and then to find the consolation God offers. He is our Father and he wants us to live life well.

Almsgiving sets us free from greed and helps us to regard our neighbor as a brother or sister. What I possess is never mine alone. How I would like almsgiving to become a genuine style of life for each of us! How I would like us, as Christians, to follow the example of the Apostles and see in the sharing of our possessions a tangible witness of the communion that is ours in the Church! For this reason, I echo Saint Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians to take up a collection for the community of Jerusalem as something from which they themselves would benefit (cf. 2 Cor 8:10). This is all the more fitting during the Lenten season, when many groups take up collections to assist Churches and peoples in need. Yet I would also hope that, even in our daily encounters with those who beg for our assistance, we would see such requests as coming from God Himself. When we give alms, we share in God’s providential care for each of His children. If through me God helps someone today, will He not tomorrow provide for my own needs? For no one is more generous than God.[6] Fasting weakens our tendency to violence; it disarms us and becomes an important opportunity for growth. On the one hand, it allows us to experience what the destitute and the starving have to endure. On the other hand, it expresses our own spiritual hunger and thirst for life in God. Fasting wakes us up. It makes us more attentive to God and our neighbor. It revives our desire to obey God, who alone is capable of satisfying our hunger. I would also like my invitation to extend beyond the bounds of the Catholic Church, and to reach all of you, men and women of good will, who are open to hearing God’s voice. Perhaps, like ourselves, you are disturbed by the spread of iniquity in the world, you are concerned about the chill that paralyzes hearts and actions, and you see a weakening in our sense of being members of the one human family. Join us, then, in raising our plea to God, in fasting, and in offering whatever you can to our brothers and sisters in need! The fire of Easter Above all, I urge the members of the Church to take up the Lenten journey with enthusiasm, sustained by almsgiving, fasting and prayer. If, at times, the flame of charity seems to die in our own hearts, know that this is never the case in the heart of God! He constantly gives us a chance to begin loving anew. One such moment of grace will be, again this year, the “24 Hours for the Lord” initiative, which invites the entire Church community to celebrate the sacrament of Reconciliation in the context of Eucharistic adoration. In 2018, inspired by the words of Psalm 130:4, “With you is forgiveness”, this will take place from Friday, 9 March to Saturday, 10 March. In each diocese, at least one church will remain open for twenty-four consecutive hours, offering an opportunity for both Eucharistic adoration and sacramental confession. During the Easter Vigil, we will celebrate once more the moving rite of the lighting of the Easter candle. Drawn from the “new fire”, this light will slowly overcome the darkness and illuminate the liturgical assembly. “May the light of Christ rising in glory dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds”,[7] and enable all of us to relive the experience of the disciples on the way to Emmaus. By listening to God’s word and drawing nourishment from the table of the Eucharist, may our hearts be ever more ardent in faith, hope and love. With affection and the promise of my prayers for all of you, I send you my blessing. Please do not forget to pray for me.

From the Vatican, 1 November 2017

Solemnity of All Saints

[1] Roman Missal, Collect for the First Sunday of Lent (Italian). [2] Inferno XXXIV, 28-29. [3] “It is curious, but many times we are afraid of consolation, of being comforted. Or rather, we feel more secure in sorrow and desolation. Do you know why? Because in sorrow we feel almost as protagonists. However, in consolation the Holy Spirit is the protagonist!” (Angelus, 7 December 2014). [4] Evangelii Gaudium, 76-109. [5] Cf. BENEDICT XVI, Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi, 33. [6] Cf. PIUS XII, Encyclical Letter Fidei Donum, III. [7] Roman Missal (Third Edition), Easter Vigil, Lucernarium.