LENT CHALLENGES OUR ROUTINE AND SETS US ON A PATH OF CONVERSION

Vatican City, 6 March 2014 (VIS) – Yesterday, Ash Wednesday, the Holy Father presided over the traditional procession of penitence from the Church of St. Anselm on the the Aventine Hill to the Basilica of Santa Sabina, on the same Roman hill. Numerous cardinals, archbishops and bishops take part, along with the Benedictine monks of St. Anselm, the Dominican fathers of Santa Sabina, and the faithful.

After the procession, Pope Francis presided over the celebration of the Eucharist with the rite of blessing and the imposition of the ashes. The Pope received them from the hands of Cardinal Jozef Tomko, titular of the basilica, and subsequently imposed them on the cardinals and various monks, religious and faithful. Following the proclamation of the Gospel, he gave a homily in which he emphasised that the conversion of the heart is the characteristic of Lent. “We are called upon to undertake a path in which, challenging our routine, we make efforts to open … our hearts, to go beyond simply tending our own gardens.

“We know that this increasingly artificial world makes us live in a culture of 'doing' of the 'useful', where without realising we exclude God from our horizons. But we exclude the horizon itself! Lent calls to us to 'shake ourselves up', to remember that we are creatures, simply that we are not God. When I watch, in my little daily environment, some battles to occupy space, I think: these people play at being God the Creator. They still have not understood that they are not God”.

But, towards others too, “we run the risk of closing ourselves up, of forgetting them. But only we are called to by the difficulties and suffering of our brothers, only then can we undertake our path of conversion towards Easter”. To walk this spiritual path, three elements are necessary: prayer, fasting and charity. All three involve “the importance of not allowing oneself to be dominated by appearances: what counts is not appearance, but what we have inside”.

Prayer is “the strength of of the Christian and of every believer. In the weakness and the fragility of our life, we may turn to God with the trust of His sons and enter into communion with Him. And Lent is a time for prayer, “a more intense and prolonged prayer … more able to take on the needs of our brothers; prayer of intercession, to intercede before God for many situations of poverty and suffering”.

Fasting “has meaning only if it truly attacks our security, and if it brings benefits to others, if it helps us to cultivate the approach of the good Samaritan, who turns to his brother and takes care of him. Fasting involves choosing a sober style of life; a life without waste, without discarding things. Fasting helps us to train our hearts in simplicity and sharing”.

Giving to charity “means giving freely, because in this way we gives to someone from whom we expect nothing in return. Giving freely should be one of the characteristics of the Christian who, aware of having received everything freely from God, that is, undeservingly, learns to give freely to others. … Giving to charity helps us to live the free nature of the gift, which is freedom from the obsession of possession, of the fear of losing what we have”.

“With its invitation to conversion”, concluded Pope Francis, “Lent providentially reawakens us, shakes us from our torpor, from our risk of living by inertia. … Why must we return to God? Because something is not quite right in us, and is not right in society or in the Church, and we need to change, to turn things around. This is what is meant by needing to convert! Once again, Lent makes its prophetic call to us, to remind us that it is possible to achieve something new within ourselves and around ourselves, simply because God is faithful … and continues to be rich in goodness and mercy, always ready to forgive and start again from the beginning”.

AUDIENCES

Vatican City, 6 March 2014 (VIS) – Today, the Holy Father received in audience Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS

Vatican City, 6 March 2014 (VIS) – The Holy Father has:

- appointed Bishop Andre Marceau of Perpignan, France, as bishop of Nice (area 4,283, population 1,204,000, Catholics 774,000, priests 204, permanent deacons 38, religious 290), France.

- appointed Bishop Antonio Carlos Felix of Lux, Brazil, as bishop of Governador Valadares (area 14,373, population 551,000, Catholics 387,000, priests 77, permanent deacons 10, religious 49), Brazil. He succeeds Bishop Werner Franz Siebenbrock, S.V.D., whose resignation upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

FRANCIS: DO NOT GET USED TO BEHAVIOUR THAT ANAESTHETISES THE HEART

Vatican City, 5 March 2014 (VIS) – This morning the Holy Father celebrated the general audience with 30,000 faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square. Pope Francis dedicated this Ash Wednesday's catechesis to the Lenten journey of forty days that leads us to the Easter Triduum, and recalled the two suggestions offered to us by the Church in this period: to be more aware of the redemptive work of Christ, and to live our Baptism in a more committed way.

“The awareness of the wonders that the Lord carried out for our salvation should lead our minds and hearts to gratitude to God”, he said, and added, “Fully living out our Baptism – and this is the second invitation – means not becoming inured to the situations of degradation and poverty that we encounter when walking the streets of our cities and towns. There is the risk of passively accepting certain types of behaviour and of not marvelling at the sad realities that surround us. We grow accustomed to violence, as if it were a normal part of our daily news; we get used to seeing our brothers and sisters sleeping in the streets, as they have no roof to shelter them. We are used to refugees who search of freedom and dignity, but are not received as they should be. We get used to living in a society that claims to be able to do without God, in which parents do not teach their children how to pray or how to make the sign of the Cross. This inurement to forms of behaviour that are not Christian, that are the easy way, anaesthetise the heart!” He asked the faithful present, “Do your children know how to make the sign of the Cross? Do they know how to pray the Our Father or the Hail Mary?”.

Francis explained that Lent comes to us “as a Providential moment for changing our route, for recovering our capacity to react when faced with the realities of evil that always challenge us. Lent should be lived as a time of conversion, of renewal at personal and community levels by drawing closer to God and through trusting adhesion to the Gospel. In this way, we are able to look upon our brothers and their needs with new eyes”.

The Pope remarked that this moment is “favourable for converting to love for one's neighbour; a love that assumes the gratitude and mercy of the Lord Who made himself poor so that by his poverty we might become rich, and invited all to “invoke with particular trust the protection and help of the Virgin Mary, so that she, the first believer in Christ, might accompany us in days of intense and penitential prayer, to allow us to celebrate, purified and renewed in spirit, the great Paschal mystery of her Son”.

THE POPE URGES ACTION AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Vatican City, 5 March 2014 (VIS) – Pope Francis has sent a message to the faithful in Brazil on the occasion of the annual Lenten “Fraternity Campaign”, which this year takes on the theme of “Brotherhood and human trafficking”, and whose slogan will be “For freedom Christ has set us free”.

“During the next forty days, we will seek to be more aware of the infinite mercy God has given to us and asks us to give to others, especially those most in need: 'You are free! Go and help your brothers to be free!'. In this sense, and wishing to mobilise Christians and persons of good will in Brazilian society against the social ill of human trafficking, our Brazilian brother bishops propose this year the theme 'Fraternity and human trafficking'”.

“It is not possible to remain indifferent before the knowledge that human beings are bought and sold like goods! I think of the adoption of children for the extraction of their organs, of woman deceived and obliged to prostitute themselves, of workers exploited and denied rights or a voice, and so on. And this is human trafficking. 'It is precisely on this level that we need to make a good examination of conscience: how many times have we permitted a human being to be seen as an object, to be put on show in order to sell a product or to satisfy an immoral desire? The human person ought never to be sold or bought as if he or she were a commodity. Whoever uses human persons in this way and exploits them, even if indirectly, becomes an accomplice of this injustice'. Moving on to the family level, entering into the home, how often do we see that even there, often there is abuse. Parents who enslave their children, children who enslave their parents; married couples who, forgetting their duty in receiving this gift, exploit one another as if they were products for consumption, disposable products; the elderly ,without a place in society and children and adolescents without a voice. How many attacks to the basic values of the fabric of family life and social coexistence. Yes, there is a need to profoundly examine our consciences. How can one proclaim the joy of Easter, without lending support to those who are denied their freedom on this earth?”.

He continues, “Be sure: if I offend the human dignity of others, it is because I have previously divested myself of my own. And why have I done this? For power, fame, material goods … in exchange for my dignity as a a son or daughter of God, whose salvation comes at the price of Christ's blood on the Cross and is guaranteed by the Holy Spirit who calls inside us, 'Abba, father!'. Human dignity is the same for all human beings; if I trample that of another, I also trample my own. Christ freed us so that we might live free in freedom! … I hope that Christians and persons of good faith may make efforts to ensure that men, women, young people or children may never more be victims of human trafficking. It is the most effective foundation for re-establishing human dignity and proclaiming Christ's Gospel in towns and country, because Jesus wishes to sow life in abundance everywhere”, concludes the Holy Father.