MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS
FOR LENT 2020

"In the name of Christ we ask you to be reconciled to God" (2 Cor 5:20)

February 10, 2022

The Lord grants us again this year a favorable time to prepare to celebrate with a renewed heart the great Mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the foundation of personal and community Christian life. We must continually return to this Mystery, with our minds and with our hearts. In fact, this Mystery does not stop growing in us to the extent that we allow ourselves to be involved in its spiritual dynamism and we embrace it, responding freely and generously.

1. The Paschal Mystery, foundation of conversion

The Christian's joy springs from listening to and accepting the Good News of the death and resurrection of Jesus: the kerygma. This summarizes the Mystery of a love “so real, so true, so concrete, that it offers us a relationship full of sincere and fruitful dialogue” (Ap. Exhort. Christus vivit, 117). Whoever believes in this announcement rejects the lie of thinking that we are the ones who give rise to our life, while in reality it is born from the love of God the Father, from his will to give life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10). . On the other hand, if we prefer to listen to the persuasive voice of the "father of lies" (cf. Jn 8:45) we run the risk of sinking into the abyss of meaninglessness, experiencing hell already here on earth, as many facts unfortunately testify to us. dramatic aspects of personal and collective human experience.

Therefore, in this Lent 2020 I would like to address to each and every Christian what I already wrote to young people in the Apostolic Exhortation Christus Vivit: «Look at the open arms of the crucified Christ, let yourself be saved again and again. And when you come to confess your sins, firmly believe in his mercy that frees you from guilt. Contemplate his blood spilled with so much affection and allow yourself to be purified by it. “This way you can be reborn, again and again” (no. 123). Jesus' Easter is not an event from the past: by the power of the Holy Spirit it is always current and allows us to look and touch with faith the flesh of Christ in so many people who suffer.

2. Urgency of conversion

It is healthy to contemplate more deeply the Paschal Mystery, through which we have received God's mercy. The experience of mercy, in fact, is possible only in a "face to face" with the crucified and risen Lord "who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:20). A dialogue from heart to heart, from friend to friend. That is why prayer is so important during the Lenten season. More than a duty, it shows us the need to correspond to the love of God, which always precedes us and sustains us. In fact, the Christian prays with the awareness of being loved without deserving it. Prayer can take different forms, but what truly counts in the eyes of God is that it penetrates within us, until it touches the hardness of our heart, to convert it more and more to the Lord and to his will.

So, in this favorable time, let us allow ourselves to be guided like Israel in the desert (cf. Hos 2:16), so that we can finally hear the voice of our Husband, so that it resonates in us with greater depth and availability. The more we allow ourselves to be fascinated by his Word, the more we will be able to experience his free mercy towards us. Let us not let this time of grace pass in vain, with the presumptuous illusion that we are the ones who decide the time and manner of our conversion to Him.

3. God's passionate will to dialogue with his children

The fact that the Lord once again offers us a favorable time for our conversion should never be taken for granted. This new opportunity should awaken in us a sense of recognition and shake our drowsiness. Despite the presence—sometimes dramatic—of evil in our lives, as well as in the life of the Church and the world, this space offered to us for a change of course manifests God's tenacious will not to interrupt the salvation dialogue with us. In Jesus crucified, whom “God made sin for us” (2 Cor 5:21), this will has reached the point of making all our sins fall on his Son, to the point of “setting God against God,” as he said. Pope Benedict XVI (cf. Enc. Deus caritas est, 12). In fact, God also loves his enemies (cf. Mt 5:43-48).

The dialogue that God wants to establish with every man, through the Paschal Mystery of his Son, is not like that attributed to the Athenians, who "were busy with nothing other than telling or hearing the latest news" (Acts 17,21). This type of charlatanry, dictated by an empty and superficial curiosity, characterizes the worldliness of all times, and in our days it can also be insinuated in a deceptive use of the media.

4. Wealth to share, not to accumulate just for yourself

Placing the Paschal Mystery at the center of life means feeling compassion for the wounds of the crucified Christ present in the numerous innocent victims of wars, of abuses against the life of both the unborn and the elderly, of the multiple forms of violence, of environmental disasters, of the unfair distribution of the earth's goods, of human trafficking in all its forms and of the unbridled thirst for profit, which is a form of idolatry.

Today it is still important to remind men and women of good will that they must share their goods with those most in need through almsgiving, as a form of personal participation in the construction of a more just world. Sharing with charity makes man more human, while accumulating carries the risk of brutalizing him, since he closes himself in on his own selfishness. We can and must go even further, considering the structural dimensions of the economy. For this reason, in Lent 2020, from March 26 to 28, I have summoned young economists, entrepreneurs and change-makers to Assisi, with the aim of helping to design a more fair and inclusive economy than the current one. As the Magisterium of the Church has repeated many times, politics is an eminent form of charity (cf. Pius XI, Address to the FUCI, December 18, 1927). It will also be taking care of the economy with this same evangelical spirit, which is the spirit of the Beatitudes.

I invoke the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary over the coming Lent, so that we may hear the call to allow ourselves to be reconciled with God, fix the gaze of our hearts on the Paschal Mystery and convert ourselves to an open and sincere dialogue with the Lord. In this way we can be what Christ says about his disciples: salt of the earth and light of the world (cf. Mt 5:13-14).

Rome, next to Saint John Lateran, October 7, 2019
Memory of Our Lady, the Virgin of the Rosary

LINK TO OTHER MATERIALS: IT'S LENT - VIA CRUCIS - CONCEPTIONIST LENT, HERE