Holy Father's Message for Lent 2024
Through the wilderness God leads us to freedom
"Dear brothers and sisters:
When our God reveals Himself, He communicates freedom: "I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of a place of slavery" (Ex 20,2). Thus opens the Decalogue given to Moses on Mount Sinai. The people know well what exodus God is talking about; the experience of slavery is still imprinted on their flesh. They receive the ten words of the covenant in the desert as the way to freedom. We call them "commandments", underlining the power of the love with which God educates his people. The call to freedom is, in fact, a vigorous call. It is not exhausted in a single event, because it matures along the way. Just as Israel in the desert still carries Egypt within her - indeed, she often misses the past and murmurs against heaven and Moses - so too today the people of God carry within them oppressive bonds that they must decide to abandon. We become aware of this when we lack hope and wander through life as in a desolate wasteland, without a promised land towards which we can walk together. Lent is the time of grace in which the desert once again becomes - as the prophet Hosea announces - the place of first love (cf. Os 2,16-17). God educates his people to abandon their slavery and experience the passage from death to life. As a bridegroom he draws us back to himself and whispers words of love to our hearts.
The exodus from slavery to freedom is not an abstract path. In order for our Lent to be concrete, the first step is to want to see the reality. When at the burning bush the Lord drew Moses and spoke to him, he immediately revealed himself as a God who sees and above all hears: "I have seen the oppression of my people, who are in Egypt, and I have heard the cries of pain, caused by their taskmasters. Yes, I am well acquainted with their sufferings. That is why I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a land that is fertile and spacious, to a land flowing with milk and honey" (Ex 3,7-8). Today too, the cry of so many oppressed brothers and sisters reaches heaven. Let us ask ourselves: does it also reach us, does it shake us, does it move us? Many factors distance us from one another, denying the fraternity that unites us from the beginning.
On my trip to Lampedusa, faced with the globalization of indifference, I asked two questions, which are becoming more and more topical: "Where are you?" (Gn 3,9) and "Where is your brother?" (Gn 4,9). The Lenten journey will be concrete if, listening to them again, we confess that we are still under the dominion of Pharaoh. It is a dominion that leaves us exhausted and makes us insensitive. It is a model of growth that divides us and robs us of the future; that has polluted the earth, the air and the water, but also souls. For although our liberation has already begun with baptism, there remains in us an inexplicable longing for slavery. It is like an attraction to the security of what we have already seen, to the detriment of freedom.
God is moved
I would like to point out a detail of no small importance in the story of the Exodus: it is God who sees, who is moved and who liberates, not Israel who asks for it. Pharaoh, in fact, destroys even dreams, steals the sky, makes a world in which dignity is trampled underfoot and authentic bonds are denied, seem unchangeable. In other words, it succeeds in keeping everything subject to it. Let us ask ourselves: do I desire a new world, and am I willing to break my commitments to the old one? The witness of many brother bishops and of a great number of those who work for peace and justice convinces me more and more that what needs to be denounced is a deficit of hope. It is an impediment to dreaming, a mute cry that reaches to heaven and touches the heart of God. It resembles that longing for slavery that paralyzes Israel in the desert, preventing it from moving forward. The exodus can be interrupted. Otherwise it would not be explained that a humanity that has reached the threshold of universal fraternity and levels of scientific, technical, cultural and legal development, capable of guaranteeing the dignity of all, walks in the darkness of inequalities and conflicts.
God never tires of us. Let us embrace Lent as the powerful time in which his Word addresses us once again: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of a place of slavery" (Ex 20,2). It is a time of conversion, a time of freedom. Jesus himself, as we remember every year on the first Sunday of Lent, was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tested in his freedom. For forty days he will be before us and with us: he is the Son incarnate. Unlike Pharaoh, God does not want subjects, but sons. The desert is the space in which our freedom can mature into a personal decision not to fall back into slavery. In Lent, we find new criteria of judgment and a community with which to embark on a path we have never traveled before.
You are my beloved Son
This implies a struggleThe book of Exodus and the temptations of Jesus in the desert tell us clearly. To the voice of God, who says: "You are my beloved Son" (Mc 1:11) and "you shall have no other gods before me" (Ex 20:3), the lies of the enemy are in fact opposed. More fearsome than Pharaoh are the idols; we could consider them as his voice in us. Feeling omnipotent, recognized by all, taking advantage over others: every human being feels within himself the seduction of this lie. It is a well-worn path. Therefore, we can become attached to money, to certain projects, ideas, objectives, to our position, to a tradition and even to some people. Those things instead of driving us, will paralyze us. Instead of uniting us, they will pit us against each other. There is, however, a new humanity, that of the small and humble who have not succumbed to the charm of lies. While idols render mute, blind, deaf and immobile those who serve them (cf. Salt 115:8), the poor in spirit are immediately open and well disposed; they are a silent force for good that heals and sustains the world.
It's time to act, and in Lent to act is also to stop. Stop at prayerto welcome the Word of God, and to stop like the Samaritan, before the wounded brother. Love of God and love of neighbor is one love. To have no other gods is to stop before the presence of God, in the flesh of one's neighbor. This is why prayer, almsgiving and fasting are not three independent exercises, but a single movement of opening, of emptying: away with the idols that weigh us down, away with the attachments that imprison us. Then the atrophied and isolated heart will awaken. Therefore, slow down and stop. The contemplative dimension of life, which Lent will help us rediscover, will mobilize new energies. Before the presence of God we become sisters and brothers, we perceive others with new intensity; instead of threats and enemies we find companions and fellow travelers. This is God's dream, the promised land toward which we march when we leave slavery.
The synodal form of the Church, which in recent years we have been rediscovering and cultivating, suggests that Lent should also be a time of community decisionsI invite all Christian communities to do this: to offer their faithful moments to reflect on their lifestyles, to take time to verify their presence in the neighborhood and their contribution to improving it. I invite all Christian communities to do this: to offer their faithful moments to reflect on lifestyles; to take time to verify their presence in the neighborhood and their contribution to improving it. Woe to us if Christian penance were like that which saddened Jesus. He also says to us: "Do not look sad, as do the hypocrites, who disfigure their faces so that it will be seen that they are fasting" (Mt 6,16). Rather, let joy be seen in the faces, let the fragrance of freedom be felt, let that love be released that makes all things new, beginning with the smallest and closest. This can happen in every Christian community.
Sparkle of a new hope
To the extent that this Lent is one of conversion, then, lost humanity will feel a thrill of creativity; the sparkle of a new hope. I would like to say to you, as I did to the young people I met in Lisbon last summer: "Seek and risk, seek and risk. In this historical moment the challenges are enormous, the groans are painful - we are living a third world war in bits and pieces - but we embrace the risk of thinking that we are not in agony, but in labor; not at the end, but at the beginning of a great spectacle. And it takes courage to think this" (Speech to university students3 August 2023). It is the courage of conversion, of coming out of slavery. Faith and charity take this little hope by the hand. They teach her to walk and, at the same time, it is she who drags them forward. I bless you all and your Lenten journey". Pope Francis, 2024.
