Dear Friends,
In his message to the Church for this Lenten season, Pope Francis bases his reflections on a line taken from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, which reads as follows: “Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up. So then, while we have the opportunity, let us do good to all” (Galatians 6:9-10). The use of the word “opportunity” resonates well with what we heard on Ash Wednesday in another text also from St. Paul, taken from his Second Letter to the Corinthians where he writes, “We appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For [God] says: ‘In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you.’ Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:1b-2). Lent is a uniquely graced time of year, an opportunity for us to turn our lives over to God, to ask the Lord to help us turn our lives toward him, an opportune time to do good.
In his reflection, Pope Francis focuses on our not growing tired of doing good, and his first point centers on not growing tired of praying. Jesus teaches us to “pray always without becoming weary” (Luke 18:1). Prayer focuses us on our need for God. If we think we do not need God, that we need nothing but ourselves, we are living a life of illusion that will end in disaster. We need God and in light of that, we need to make room for God, make time for God in our daily lives through regular, consistent and fervent prayer. Prayer is not optional for one who believes. It is, in fact, an essential lifeline, without which we will find our lives drifting, more and more filled with
meaninglessness and less and less with direction and purpose. Lent is a good time for us to begin to pray if we are not in the habit of doing so, or to pray more fervently if we are. Time spent before the Blessed Sacrament is time well spent, as is the regular meditative recitation of the Rosary, as is quiet and meditative reading of the Scriptures.
The Holy Father then urges us not to grow tired of uprooting evil from our lives. We are all sinners, and anyone who thinks that he/she is not is either very good at rationalization or not very good at taking a long and serious look at how she/he lives. We all have “beams” in our own eyes that we tend to ignore, not see, or rationalize away. We can be self-centered, smug, self-righteous, arrogant, and condescending, and the list of sins and faults can go on at great length. It almost goes without saying that any proper Lenten observance includes a worthy celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, a good confession. Interestingly, the Pope singles out our ever-increasing use (and misuse) of the digital media, which tends to impoverish human relationships. A good penance this Lent might be for us to put the cell phones down and seek to encounter others more integrally, as Pope Francis says, through “authentic encounters” face-to-face and in person.
Finally, the Holy Father urges us not to grow tired of doing good in active charity towards our neighbors. We are living in stressful times, emerging from a two-year pandemic and now faced with possible global conflict as well as economic hardship. The temptation is to withdraw from being charitable, to save more and more for ourselves and to give less to others. One of the “legs” of traditional Lenten observance is sharing with those in need, almsgiving. We can and should give something from our abundance (even if the abundance is not as large as it was a few months ago) to help those in need. We have local charities we can support such as the John Rigely Food Pantry, our parish twinning ministry with St. Therese Parish in Haiti (through the Lenten Healing Tree Initiative), as well as the Beth-El Shelter. We can also make a gift or a pledge to the 2022 Archbishop’s Annual Appeal, which is now getting underway.
Pope Francis gives us all some serious food for thought so that we can make the most of this opportune time of grace, Lent of 2022. May God bless our Lenten observance this year!