The Lord secures justice and the rights of all the oppressed. —Psalm 103: 6
What have you given up for Lent? How’s that working for you? I pose these questions because I sometimes wonder if we should think about a new way of fasting.
Pope Francis has coined the expression, “globalization of indifference,” a feeling of distress and powerlessness that causes individuals and communities to withdraw into themselves, closing “the door through which God comes into the world and the world comes to him” (Lent 2015). He writes in Evangelii Gaudium, “Sometimes we are tempted to be that kind of Christian who keeps the Lord’s wounds at arm’s length. Yet Jesus wants us to touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others. He hopes that we will stop looking for those personal or communal niches which shelter us from the maelstrom of human misfortune and instead enter into the reality of other people’s lives and know the power of tenderness. Whenever we do so, our lives become wonderfully complicated and we experience intensely what it is to be a people, to be part of a people.” Give up your box!
In his Lenten message for 2016, Pope Francis speaks of mercy as a means for transformation of our attitudes and lives, “God’s mercy transforms human hearts; it enables us, through the experience of a 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. . .in concrete everyday actions. . .this will be a way to reawaken our conscience, too often grown dull in the face of poverty, and to enter more deeply into the heart of the Gospel where the poor have a special experience of God’s mercy.” Give up indifference toward the oppressed and walk with them instead–make this a turning point in your spiritual life.
Barbara Molinari Quinby, Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Raleigh, NC