Vatican
City, 10 February 2016 (VIS) - This afternoon, Ash Wednesday, the
beginning of Lent, Pope Francis celebrated Holy Mass in St. Peter's
Basilica, with the rite of the blessing and imposition of the ashes
and the conferral of the mandate to the Jubilee Missionaries of
Mercy. Cardinals, bishops and more than 700 Missionaries
concelebrated with the Holy Father, who at the end of the Mass
conferred upon the Missionaries their mandate and the faculty of
absolving sins reserved to the Apostolic See. There are more than a
thousand Missionaries of Mercy throughout the world, bearing special
witness in each Church to the extraordinary nature of the Jubilee.
In
his homily, the Holy Father remarked that at the beginning of the
Lenten period, the Word of God addresses two invitations to us: "The
first, as St. Paul said, is to let ourselves be reconciled with God
... as Christ knows the weakness of our heart; He sees that it is
wounded by the evil we have committed and suffered; He knows how much
we are in need of forgiveness, and He knows that we need to feel we
are loved in order to do good. We are not able to do this by
ourselves: therefore the apostle does not tell us to do something,
but rather to let ourselves be reconciliated with God. ... He
vanquishes sin and lifts us up from our miseries, if we entrust them
to Him. It is up to us to recognise that we are in need of mercy; it
is the first step on the Christian path and means entering through
the open door that is Christ, where He Himself, the Saviour, awaits
us and offers us a new and joyful life".
There
are some obstacles to the doors of the heart, and the Pope included
among these the "temptation to lock the doors, or rather to live
with our sin, minimising it, always justifying it, thinking that we
are no worse than others; in this way, however, we lock up our soul
and stay trapped inside, prisoners of evil. Another obstacle is our
shame at opening the secret door of the heart. Shame, in reality, is
a good symptom, as it indicates that we want to reject evil; however,
one must not convert in fear". The third obstacle is that of
"distancing ourselves from the door, which happens when we close
ourselves up in our miseries, when we dwell on them continually,
linking the negative aspects among them to the point of casting
ourselves into the darkest depths of the soul. We become familiar
with the sadness we do not want, we are discouraged and we become
weaker when faced with temptation. This happens when we stay by
ourselves, closing ourselves away and hiding from the light, whereas
only the grace of the Lord can free us".
God's
second invitation comes from the prophet Joel: "Return to me
with all your heart". "If there is a need to return, it is
because we have drifted away", observed the Holy Father. "It
is the mystery of sin: we have drifted away from God, from others,
from ourselves. It is not difficult to become aware of this: we all
see how we struggle to truly trust in God, to entrust ourselves to
Him as our Father, without fear; how arduous it may be to love
others; how much it costs us to truly do good, while we are attracted
and seduced by so many material things, which vanish and in the end
leave us poor. Alongside this history of sin, Jesus inaugurated a
history of salvation. The Gospel that opens Lent invites us to be
active agents, embracing three remedies, three forms of 'medicine'
that cure us from sin".
The
first is "prayer, the expression of openness and trust in the
Lord: it is a personal encounter with Him, that reduces the distances
created by sin. Praying means saying, 'I am not self-sufficient, I
need You. You are my life and my salvation'". The second
medicine, continued the Pope, is "charity, to overcome the
sensation of extraneousness in relation to others. True love, in
fact, is not an external act; it is not about giving in a
paternalistic fashion to ease our conscience, but rather accepting
those who are in need of our time, our friendship and our help".
Finally, "fasting, penance to free ourselves of the dependencies
of the past and to learn to become more sensitive and merciful. It is
an invitation to simplicity and sharing: giving up something from our
own table, some of our own goods, to rediscover the true good of
freedom".
"Turn
to me, says the Lord, turn with all your heart. Not only by external
acts", emphasised the Holy Father at the end of his homily, "but
rather from the very depths of our selves. Jesus calls us to live
prayer, charity and penance with coherence and genuineness,
conquering hypocrisy. May Lent be a time for 'pruning' away falsity,
worldliness and indifference, so as not to think that 'everything is
fine if I am fine', to understand that what counts is not approval,
the pursuit of success or consent, but rather the purity of heart and
life to rediscover Christian identity, which is love that serves, not
selfishness that serves itself".
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