Lent - Return to me with all your heart

Joel 2:12
Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning

“Return to me with all your heart… Return to the Lord.” Pope Francis said these words apply to everyone, and exclude no one; “we all want to return to the merciful heart of the Father.”

Pope Francis said Lent is a time for saying no: no to “spiritual asphyxia” caused by indifference; no to “the toxic pollution of empty and meaningless words”; no to “a prayer that soothes our conscience, an almsgiving that leaves us self-satisfied, a fasting that makes us feel good”, no to all forms of exclusion.”

But Lent is also a time for remembering, a time “to reflect and ask ourselves what we would be if God had closed His doors to us.” It is a time, too, the Pope said, to ask where we would be without so many people who have helped us along our journey.

And so, Pope Francis concluded, “Lent is a time to start breathing again… the time to open our hearts to the breath of the One capable of turning our dust to humanity.” 

source: Vatican Radio

How and Why to Return to Sunday Mass

Come, let us return to the LORD

Hosea 6: 1 - 6
1 "Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn, that he may heal us; he has stricken, and he will bind us up.
2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.
3 Let us know, let us press on to know the LORD; his going forth is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth."
4 What shall I do with you, O E'phraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away.
5 Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light.
6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings.