‘Let Us Not Waste This Season Of Lent’- Pope Francis

In his 2016 Lenten message, Pope Francis called the faithful to place special emphasis on the spiritual and corporal works of mercy this Lent, taking into account the current Jubilee Year of Mercy.

Pope Francis

God’s mercy transforms human hearts; it enables us, through the experience of a faithful love, to become merciful in turn,” the Pope wrote in the short document, released Tuesday by the Vatican.

The spiritual and corporal works of mercy, the pontiff said, “remind us that faith finds expression in concrete everyday actions meant to help our neighbors in body and spirit: by feeding, visiting, comforting and instructing them.”

“On such things will we be judged,” he said.

The title of this year’s message was drawn from the Gospel of Matthew: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,” and has the subtitle: “The works of mercy on the road of the Jubilee.”

In the message, signed the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, Oct. 4 2015, the Pope said those who are truly poor are the ones who believe themselves to be rich.

“This is because they are slaves to sin, which leads them to use wealth and power not for the service of God and others, but to stifle within their hearts the profound sense that they too are only poor beggars,” he said.

“The greater their power and wealth, the more this blindness and deception can grow,” he said.

Pope Francis recounted the parable of the poor man Lazarus who would beg at the door of the rich man.

Lazarus represents Christ, the Pope said, and therefore “the possibility of conversion which God offers us and which we may well fail to see.”

This blindness “is often accompanied by the proud illusion of our own omnipotence,” he observed.

Such an illusion can take “social and political forms,” he explained, citing as examples the “totalitarian systems of the twentieth century.”

In modern times, this illusion is seen in “the ideologies of monopolizing thought and techno science, which would make God irrelevant and reduce man to raw material to be exploited.”

The Pope went on to explain how the illusion could link back to the “idolatry of money,” leading to a lack of concern for the poor “on the part of wealthier individuals and societies.”

“They close their doors, refusing even to see the poor,” he said.

“For all of us, then, the season of Lent in this Jubilee Year is a favorable time to overcome our existential alienation by listening to God’s word and by practicing the works of mercy.”

Pope Francis stressed that “the corporal and spiritual works of mercy must never be separated.”

“By touching the flesh of the crucified Jesus in the suffering, sinners can receive the gift of realizing that they too are poor and in need,” he said.

Source: Catholic Church Affairs