Pope Benedict's Message this Lent

The pope speaks of justice and injustice. Justice is usually defined as giving to everyone what is their due. But what human beings need most is not something that can be guaranteed by law. The pope writes “Just as man needs bread, so does man have even more need of God.” And what is injustice? “Injustice, the fruit of evil, does not have exclusively external roots; its origin lies in the human heart, where the seeds are found of a mysterious cooperation with evil.” So addressing the exterior causes of injustice is not enough. We need to look at our hearts. The pope points out that there is nothing we can do to free ourselves or make up for our faults. We receive justification as a gift.

“But now the justice of God has been manifested apart from law … the justice of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (3, 21-25).

“Conversion to Christ, believing in the Gospel, ultimately means this: to exit the illusion of self-sufficiency in order to discover and accept one’s own need – the need of others and of God, the need of His forgiveness and His friendship.”

“Thanks to Christ’s action, we may enter into the ‘greatest’ justice, which is that of love (cf. Rm 13, 8-10), the justice that recognizes itself in every case more a debtor than a creditor, because it has received more than could ever have been expected. Strengthened by this very experience, the Christian is moved to contribute to creating just societies, where all receive what is necessary to live according to the dignity proper to the human person and where justice is enlivened by love.”

My prayers for a very blessed and joyful Lent!

Italized text by Sr. Margaret Kerry, FSP

Sr Margaret Kerry, fsp
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Thank you, Sr. Margaret!