Saint Gertrude Parish - Lasne

Meditation by Pope Francis

We begin our Lenten journey. It opens with the words of the prophet Joel, which point us in the right direction. It is an invitation that springs from the heart of God, who, with open arms and longing eyes, implores us: “Return to me with all your heart” (Joel 2:12). Return to me. Lent is a journey back to God. How many times, busy or indifferent, have we said to him: “Lord, I’ll come to you later, just wait… I can’t today, but tomorrow I’ll start praying and doing something for others.” And so on, day after day. Now God is calling to our hearts. In life, we will always have things to do and excuses to make, but, brothers and sisters, today is the time to return to God.

“Return to me,” he said, “with all your heart.” Lent is a journey that involves our whole life, our whole being. It is a time to examine the paths we are traveling, to find the way back home, to rediscover the fundamental connection with God, on whom all things depend. Lent is not a collection of good deeds; it is discerning where our heart is oriented. This is the center of Lent: where is my heart oriented? Let us try to ask ourselves: where is the navigator of my life leading me, toward God or toward myself? Do I live to please the Lord, or to be noticed, praised, preferred, in first place, and so on? Do I have a “dancing” heart, one that takes a step forward and a step back, that loves the Lord a little and the world a little, or a heart steadfast in God? Am I comfortable with my hypocrisies, or am I struggling to free my heart from the duplicity and falsehood that bind it?

The Lenten journey is an exodus, an exodus from slavery to freedom. These forty days recall the forty years during which God's people journeyed through the desert to return to their ancestral land. But how difficult it was to leave Egypt! It was more difficult to leave the Egypt of God's people's hearts, that Egypt they always carried within them, than to leave the land of Egypt itself… It is very difficult to leave Egypt. During the journey, there was always the temptation to long for the past, to turn back, to cling to memories of the past, to some idol. For us too, it is the same: the journey back to God is hindered by our unhealthy attachments; it is held back by the seductive bonds of vice, by the false securities of money and appearances, by the paralyzing lament of victimhood. To walk, we must unmask these illusions.

But let us ask ourselves: how then should we proceed on the journey towards God? The return journeys, which the Word of God tells us about, come to our aid.

Let us look at the prodigal son and understand that it is time for us, too, to return to the Father. Like this son, we too have forgotten the fragrance of home, we have squandered precious possessions on things of lesser value, and we have been left empty-handed and with unhappy hearts. We have fallen: we are children who continually fall, we are like little children who try to walk but fall to the ground, and who need to be picked up each time by their father. It is the Father's forgiveness that always sets us back on our feet: God's forgiveness, Confession, is the first step on our journey back. I have spoken of Confession; I recommend to confessors: be like the Father, not with the whip, but with the embrace.

Then we need to return to Jesus, to do as the cleansed leper did when he returned to thank him. Ten people were healed, but he alone was also saved, because he returned to Jesus (cf. Lk 17:12-19). We all have spiritual illnesses, and we cannot heal them on our own; we all have deep-rooted vices, and we cannot eradicate them on our own; we all have fears that paralyze us, and we cannot overcome them on our own. We need to imitate the leper who returned to Jesus and threw himself at his feet. We need Jesus' healing; we must lay our wounds before him and say to him: “Jesus, I am here before you, with my sin, with my miseries. You are the physician; you can set me free. Heal my heart.”

Again: the Word of God asks us to return to the Father, asks us to return to Jesus, and we are called to return to the Holy Spirit. The ashes on our heads remind us that we are dust and to dust we shall return. But upon our dust, God has breathed his Spirit of life. So we cannot live chasing after dust, following things that exist today and will disappear tomorrow. Let us return to the Spirit, the giver of life, let us return to the Fire that rekindles our ashes, to this Fire that teaches us to love. We will always be dust, but, as a liturgical hymn says, dust in love. Let us return to pray to the Holy Spirit, let us rediscover the fire of praise, which burns away the ashes of lamentation and resignation.

Brothers and sisters, our journey back to God is possible only because his journey to us has already taken place. Otherwise, it would not have been possible. Before we went to him, he descended to us. He went before us; he came to meet us. For us, he descended lower than we could have imagined: he became sin, he became death. This is what Saint Paul reminded us: “For us, God made him who had no sin to be sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). So as not to leave us alone and to accompany us on our journey, he descended into our sin and our death; he touched sin, he touched our death. Therefore, our journey consists of letting ourselves be taken by the hand. The Father who calls us back is the One who leaves the house to come and find us; the Lord who heals us is the One who allowed himself to be wounded on the cross; the Spirit who transforms our lives is the One who breathes with strength and gentleness upon our dust.

Here, then, is the Apostle's plea: "Be reconciled to God" (v. 20). Be reconciled: the path is not based on our own strength; no one can be reconciled to God by their own strength, they simply cannot. The conversion of the heart, with the gestures and practices that express it, is only possible if it begins with the primacy of God's action. It is not our abilities and merits to display that draw us back to him, but his grace to receive. Grace saves us; salvation is pure grace, pure gratuitousness. Jesus told us this clearly in the Gospel: it is not the righteousness we practice before others that makes us righteous, but our sincere relationship with the Father. The beginning of returning to God is recognizing that we need him, that we need his mercy, that we need his grace. This is the right path, the path of humility. Do I feel that I need something, or do I feel self-sufficient?

Today we bow our heads to receive the ashes. At the end of Lent, we will humble ourselves even further to wash the feet of our brothers and sisters. Lent is a humble descent into ourselves and toward others. It is understanding that salvation is not a climb for glory, but a humbling of love. It is making ourselves small. On this path, so as not to lose our way, let us place ourselves before the cross of Jesus: it is the silent throne of God. Let us look each day at his wounds, the wounds he bore to Heaven and which he shows to the Father every day in his prayer of intercession. Let us look each day at his wounds. In these openings, let us recognize our emptiness, our shortcomings, the wounds of sin, the blows that have hurt us. And yet, precisely there, we see that God does not point his finger at us, but that he opens his hands wide to us. His wounds are open for us, and by these wounds we have been healed (cf. 1 Pet 2:25; Is 53:5). Let us embrace them, and we will understand that it is precisely there, in life's most painful emptiness, that God awaits us with his infinite mercy. Because there, where we are most vulnerable, where we feel the most shame, he has come to meet us. And now that he has come to meet us, he invites us to return to him, to rediscover the joy of being loved.

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MASS, BLESSING AND IMPPOSITION OF ASHES

HOMILY OF POPE FRANCIS

Saint Peter's Basilica

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

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