“Be perfect”!
Blessed John Henry Newman says, “
To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”
Lent is a
grace-filled season of change and often back to the basics. Jesus asks of us to
be ‘perfect just as your Heavenly Father is perfect.’
We are in the process of
becoming and often it is a life-long journey of becoming who God has designed
us to be. Or it is the journey of becoming perfect as God would want us to be.
This changing often is a matter of patterning our heart and lives after that of
God and the ways of God so that we may become a ‘peculiar’ people of God.
Do we
really want to be a people ‘peculiar’ to God?
Then it is the call to conversion
that must happen everyday in following the footsteps of the Lord.
Pope Francis
in his Lenten message calls the entire church to focus on a renewal that will
address the culture of indifference.
Renewal happens first within an individual
with the grace of God that is available.
Pope Francis says, “God does not ask of us anything that he himself
has not first given us.” “We love because he first has loved us” (1 Jn 4:19).
So Jesus gives us the grace to change our attitude towards the suffering, the
poor, the cast out and the thrown away people.
As renewed people we are capable
of becoming ‘islands of mercy’ where everyone is able to partake of the love
and mercy of God in and through us.
During this season of Lent can we seek out
any one person or two that we have shown indifference and make him or her feel
God’s love?
Becoming perfect simply means that we take on little projects and
work on them slowly and gently until we have fulfilled that mandate of Jesus.
Let us storm heaven for the courage to do the necessary knowing that God will
truly lead us to holiness and wholeness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ5qBoHkft4
More Lenten Reflections from the Holy Father Francis:
For Lent, Pope Francis wants parishes to be ‘islands of mercy’
From Crux.
A homeless man slept under an American flag blanket on a park bench in September in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
By Inés San Martín
ROME — In his annual message for Lent, Pope Francis once again blasted what he called a “globalization of indifference,” saying that when people grow materially comfortable they tend to forget about others, becoming unconcerned with their problems, suffering, and injuries.
He called on Christian communities to become “islands of mercy,” transforming parishes, communities, and groups into places where God’s mercy becomes visible.
“How greatly I desire that all those places where the Church is present may become islands of mercy in the midst of the sea of indifference!” said Francis.
“Our heart grows cold,” the pope said. “As long as I am relatively healthy and comfortable, I don’t think about those less well off. Today, this selfish attitude of indifference has taken on global proportions, to the extent that we can speak of a globalization of indifference.”
Facing this scenario, said the pope, “someone might be discouraged because it may seem that he [or she] cannot change anything,” since we are in a social and economic crisis that’s beyond us.
In his Lenten message, presented Tuesday in Rome, Francis said the answer to this indifference is to pray, to help others, and to recognize the need for God. These three things can be done at different levels, he said: in the Church as a whole, in parishes and communities, and individually.
With regard to the Church as a whole, the pope referred to a sense of communion that Catholics should have, calling them to share their possessions with others.
“In this sharing of holy things, no one possesses anything alone, but shares everything with others,” he said.
“Indifference to our neighbor and to God also represents a real temptation for us Christians,” Francis said, adding that in the Church, there’s no room for the indifference that so often “seems to possess our heart.”
On a parish level, Francis said that every community is called to go outside of itself and engage in the life of the greater society of which it is a part, paying special attention of the poor and those who are far away.
“The Church is missionary by her very nature; she is not self-enclosed, but sent out to every nation and people,” he said.
On a personal level, the pope called on Catholics to avoid being caught up in a spiral of distress and powerlessness created by endless news reports and troubling images of human suffering.
Francis also called for all dioceses around the world to join his initiative of “24 Hours for the Lord,” a penitential celebration to be observed March 13-14 that aims to place the Sacrament of Reconciliation (confession) at the center of the Church’s mission of spreading the Gospel.
Pope Francis first talked about the “globalization of indifference” in 2013, when he went to Lampedusa, an Italian island where thousands of African migrants arrive yearly in the hopes of a better life in Europe.
“We have become used to the suffering of others,” Francis said at the time. “It doesn't affect us. It doesn’t interest us. It’s not our business.”
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