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
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