Message of His Holiness Pope Francis for Lent 2016

1. Mary, the image of a Church which evangelizes because she is evangelized In the Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, I asked that “the season of Lent in this Jubilee Year be lived more intensely as a privileged moment to celebrate and experience God’s  mercy” (Misericordiae Vultus, 17).  By calling for […]

1. Mary, the image of a Church which evangelizes because she is evangelized
In the Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, I asked that “the season of Lent in this Jubilee Year be lived more intensely as a privileged moment to celebrate and experience God’s  mercy” (Misericordiae Vultus, 17).  By calling for an attentive listening to the word of God and encouraging  the initiative “24  Hours for the  Lord”, I  sought  to  stress  the  primacy  of  prayerful  listening  to  God’s   word, especially  his  prophetic  word.   The mercy of  God  is a proclamation  made to the world, a proclamation which each Christian is called to experience at first hand.  For this reason, during the season  of Lent I will send out Missionaries  of Mercy as a concrete sign to everyone of God’s closeness and forgiveness.
After receiving the Good News told to her by the Archangel Gabriel, Mary, in her Magnificat, prophetically sings of the mercy whereby God chose her.  The Virgin of Nazareth, betrothed to Joseph, thus becomes the perfect icon of the Church which evangelizes, for she was, and continues to be, evangelized  by the Holy Spirit, who made her virginal womb fruitful.  In the prophetic tradition, mercy is strictly related ­ even on the etymological  level – to the maternal womb (rahamim) and to a generous, faithful and compassionate goodness (hesed) shown within marriage and family relationships.

2. God’s covenant with humanity: a history of mercy
The mystery of divine mercy is revealed in the history of the covenant between God  and his people Israel.  God shows himself ever rich in mercy, ever ready to treat his people with deep tenderness and compassion,  especially at those tragic moments when infidelity  ruptures the bond of the covenant,  which then needs to be ratified more firmly in justice and truth.   Here is a true love story, in which God plays the role   of the betrayed father and husband, while Israel plays the unfaithful child and bride.  These domestic images – as in the case of Hosea (cf. Hos 1-2) – show to what extent God wishes to bind himself to his people.
This love story culminates  in the  incarnation  of God’s  Son.   In Christ, the father pours forth his boundless mercy even to making him “mercy incarnate” isericordiae  Vultus, 8).   As a man, Jesus of Nazareth is a true son of Israel; he embodies that perfect hearing required of every Jew by the Shema, which today too is the         heart of God’s  covenant with Israel: “Hear, 0 Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Dt 6:4-5).  As the Son of God, he is the Bridegroom who does everything to win over the love of his bride, to whom he is bound by an unconditional love which becomes visible in the eternal wedding feast.
This is the very heart of the apostolic kerygma, in which divine mercy holds a central and fundamental place.  It is “the beauty of the saving love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ who died and rose from the dead” (Evangelii Gaudium, 36), that first proclamation which “we  must hear again and again in different ways,  which  we  must  announce  one  way  or  another  throughout   the  process  of catechesis, at every level and moment” (ibid., 164).  Mercy “expresses God’s  way of reaching out to the sinner, offering him a new chance to look at himself, convert, and relieve” (Misericordiae Vultus, 21), thus restoring his relationship with him.
 
3. The works of mercy
God’s mercy transforms human hearts; it enables us, through the experience of faithful love, to become merciful in turn.    In an ever new miracle, divine mercy shines forth in our lives, inspiring each of us to love our neighbour and to devote ourselves to what the Church’s  tradition calls the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. These works remind us that faith finds expression in concrete every day action meant  to  help our  neighbours  in  body  and  spirit:  by  feeding,  visiting, comforting and instructing them. On such things will we be judged.  For this reason, I expressed my hope that “the  Christian people may reflect on  the corporal and spiritual works of mercy; this will be a way to reawaken our conscience, too often dull in the face of poverty, and to enter more deeply into the heart where the poor have a special experience of God’s mercy” (ibid., 15).  For in the poor, the flesh of Christ “becomes visible in the flesh of the tortured, the crushed, the scourged, the malnourished, and the exiled. .. to be acknowledged, touched, and cared for by us” (ibid.).   It  is  the unprecedented and scandalous mystery of the extension in time of the suffering of the Innocent Lamb, the burning bush of gratuitous love.  Before this love, we can, like Moses, take off our sandals (cf. Ex 3:5), especially when the poor are our brothers or sisters in Christ who are suffering for their faith.
In the light of this love, which is strong as death (cf. Song 8:6), the real poor are  revealed  as  those  who  refuse  to  see  themselves  as  such.    They consider themselves rich, but they are actually the poorest of the poor.  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.   The greater their power and wealth, the  more this blindness and deception can grow. It can even reach the point of being blind to Lazarus begging at their doorstep (cf. Lk 16:20-21).  Lazarus, the poor man, is a figure of Christ, who through the poor pleads for our conversion.  As such, he represents the possibility of conversion which God offers us and which we may well fail to see. Such blindness is accompanied by the proud illusion of our own omnipotence, which reflects in a sinister way the diabolical “you  will be like God” (Gen 3:5) which is the root of all sin.     This  illusion  can  likewise  take  social  and  political  forms,  as shown  by the to Pritarian systems of the twentieth century, and, in our own day, by the ideologies of monopolizing  thought  and  techno-science,  which  would  make  God  irrelevant  and reduce man to raw material to be exploited.     This illusion can also be seen in the sinful  structures  linked  to a  model  of  false development  based on  the  idolatry of money, which leads to lack of concern for the fate of the poor on the part of wealthier individuals and societies; they close their doors, refusing even to see the poor.
For all of us, then, the season of Lent in this Jubilee Year is a favourable time to overcome our existential alienation by listening to God’s  word and by practising the   works of mercy.  In the corporal works of mercy we touch the flesh of Christ in our brothers and sisters who need to be fed, clothed, sheltered, visited; in the spiritual works of mercy – counsel, instruction, forgiveness, admonishment  and prayer – we touch more directly our own sinfulness.   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.  By taking this path, the “proud”,  the “powerful” and the “wealthy” spoken of in the Magnificat can also be embraced  and  undeservedly  loved by the crucified  Lord who died and rose for them.   This love alone is the answer to that yearning for infinite happiness and love that we think we can satisfy with the idols of knowledge, power and riches. Yet the danger always remains that by a constant refusal to open the doors of their arts to Christ who knocks on them in the poor, the proud, rich and powerful will end up condemning themselves and plunging into the eternal abyss of solitude which is Hell.  The pointed words of Abraham apply to them and to all of us: “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them” (Lk 16:29).  Such attentive listening will  prepare us to celebrate the final victory over sin and death of the Bridegroom.
Let us not waste this season of Lent, so favourable a time for conversion!  We ask this through the maternal intercession of the Virgin Mary, who, encountering the greatness of God’s mercy freely bestowed upon her, was the first to acknowledge her williness (cf. Lk 1:48) and to call herself the Lord’s humble servant (cf. Lk 1:38).
Source: www.skeparchy.org/… letters/holy-fathers-message-for-lent-2016