It often happens that we feel very comfortable somewhere and don’t want to leave. Then we will probably remember today’s gospel and say to ourselves: Lord, we are good here! We would like this precious moment to never end. We can experience such a feeling, for example, on vacation, with a loved one, or after achieving some success. The desire to stay with Jesus is also heard from the mouth of the apostles. How did their joyful exclamation come about? Jesus had prophesied to them long ago that he must go to Jerusalem and lay down his life there.
Since they could not understand it under any circumstances, he wanted to show them that his death was inevitable. He took the three most trusted disciples to one of the Galilean mountains, probably Mount Tabor: Peter, James and John. Peter, who was to be the head of the Church, James, who was to be the first to lay down his life for Jesus, and John, who was to remain as the last living witness of all these events, and of course, all of them were to witness Jesus’ pre-mortem agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus began to pray, surely asking the Father to prove that His journey to Jerusalem and to the cross was necessary. The Father heard the Son’s prayer and proved it outwardly: first Jesus’ face, but also his garment, shone with a strong light, then the two greatest personalities of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah, appeared and talked with Jesus, and finally a cloud covered them and God’s voice was heard.
The cloud in Scripture symbolizes God’s presence. It suggests that mortal man can never see the great and infinite God. The cloud at the transfiguration of Jesus is proof that the heavenly Father is also present at that moment. The apostles even heard His words: This is my chosen Son; listen to him! At that moment, everything was clear to the apostles. They realized that Jesus is greater than Moses and Elijah, that he is the greatest because he is the Son of God. Then they longed for the moment to never end, after which Peter said Teacher, we are well here.
Let us make three booths: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. The situation is the same today. No one except Jesus Christ has so many monuments and paintings in the world. Let’s count the crosses in the cemeteries, on the streets, in the churches, in the houses… Let’s count the paintings and sculptures… How many people today publicly confess Jesus, how many love Him? Who today remembers, for example, Alexander the Great or Emperor Augustus? Who loves and adores them today? We have some sparse information about them – and that’s it! But can we count the number of people who have loved Christ, lived and died for faith in Him for two thousand years? Can we count the number of people who have given their whole lives to Him?
A few years ago, young people of Jesus Christ called him a superstar. They are excited to enter into a friendly relationship with him, with the greatest personality in the history of mankind. But we all have this opportunity every day during our visit to the temple. Let’s cherish the opportunity where Peter and I can always exclaim, “Teacher, we are fine here in your house! We are happy to meet you and receive you into our hearts, because only with you are we strong and safe. You are our superstar! Let’s conclude our reflection with the beautiful confession of St. Ambrose, for whom Jesus is a true superstar:
When I long to be healed of my sicknesses – you are a physician!
When I’m consumed by an unbearable fever – you’re a fresh spring!
When I feel remorse – You are forgiveness!
When I call for help in trouble – you are a power!
When I fear death – you are life!
When I long for the heavenly homeland – you are the way!
When clouds and darkness surround me – you are light!
When I thirst for certainty – you are the truth!
When I’m hungry for real food – you are the bread of life!
Where you are, Jesus, there is everything!
Where you are, Christ, there is peace!

An old proverb from experience says that „necessity” teaches a person to pray “. However technically and scientifically advanced our world is, situations occur in which we find ourselves powerless and at a loss. Let’s list only such facts as the announcement of the diagnosis of a malignant tumor or an earthquake, tsunami waves, armed conflicts, etc. It may seem to us who are raised under the influence of natural science thinking that turning to God in such and similar situations and waiting for help from him is unjustified. After all, the Lord God created the world and its laws and gave man free will. If he were to interfere in creating these realities, it would be a puppet show that doesn’t happen so much. And since everything is going according to the given laws anyway, even our prayer cannot change anything about it – which implies a simple conclusion that praying is useless.

However, this opinion is contradicted by the texts of the Holy Scriptures, which are read in the liturgy today. The Book of Esther captures the prayer of Queen Esther, who used it to prepare for a meeting with the Persian king. He gave full power to exterminate the Jews in his empire to the first minister. Esther is also Jewish, and her successful intervention with the king is the only hope of saving her and her nation. However, this event was also hazardous. Esther realizes that finding words that would affect the king is beyond her abilities. Even whether the king accepts her, as he decides, is not in her hands. Therefore, she prays and asks God to give her the right words and guide the king’s heart and decision in terms of saving the Jews.

From another text of the Book of Esther, we know that this intervention was successful, and in memory of this event, Jews still celebrate the Purim holiday. Jesus also encourages us to turn to the heavenly Father with absolute and persistent trust in today’s Gospel. He assures us that if we ask, we will receive: how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him.“ However, this guidance and reassurance of the Gospel may allude to the harsh reality of our experience. How often have we asked for God’s help in sickness or other danger? No salvation has come, and everything has gone with its inexorable regularity. On the other hand, there are also positive experiences. So how is it?

First, we must take seriously the laws of nature, our responsibility, and the Lord God and his omnipotence. This means doing everything in our power to manage the problem responsibly. On the other hand, however, we must realize that God is still omnipotent and that his action takes place on a different level than the laws of nature or human freedom. He can achieve his purpose without disrupting the laws of his creation or the freedom of man, and he will achieve his intentions precisely through these laws and this freedom.

However, Jesus’ assurance that the heavenly Father will give us „good things“ must also be considered. But these things are good from the point of view of God, who is full of goodness, wisdom, and love. However, this does not mean they must be “god” regarding our current feelings and understanding. We long for what we consider good. If it’s excellent, God will give it to us. If he doesn’t give us what we want, we must be sure he will give us something better.

The most potent example of this is in practice in Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. His human nature feels the impending suffering and death as something evil that he rejects that he fears, and he asks the Father to take away from him this cup of suffering. However, he adds: „ Not as I want, but as you.“ (Mt 26, 39) This request of Jesus remained seemingly unheard. He had to drink the cup of suffering to the bottom. However, Easter morning showed that the heavenly Father gave him much more: he gave him the strength to manage suffering in the spirit of love for God and people, resurrected his body for eternal life, and gave him all power in heaven and on earth. Through him, he opened the possibility for all of us to overcome death and achieve eternal life and resurrection. It follows that asking God with trust is essential. At the same time, however, it is necessary to trust in his wise and kind management and to be willing to accept his will as the best for us and others.

Practical instruction: I will confidently pray for God’s help for myself and others. At the same time, however, I will try to convey God’s helping love to my neighbors.

Prayer: Almighty God, we beg you, give us the right thoughts and resolutions and give us the willingness to act on them; and because we cannot exist without you, help us live according to your holy will, through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who is God and lives and reigns with you in union with the Holy Spirit for all ages. 

  Christian with the attribute „only if” – this is the one who claims to determine the conditions for God and faith. However, the result is not faith but ideology. Jonah was unwilling to accept that God could be merciful to sinners in Nineveh. It didn’t occur to him that he could give them a real chance and not punish them. Even a Christian can get into a similar attitude: he wants to put conditions on God himself and is unwilling to admit that God could behave differently from his ideas. This is about the so-called „Christians with conditions” who become so withdrawn into their ideas that they end up in ideology.

Jonah, stubborn in his beliefs about faith and the Lord, obstinate in his mercy: he will never leave us, knocking on the heart’s door until the end; he is there. Jonah was stubborn because he understood faith with conditions. Jonah is a model of Christians of the type „only if“, Christians with conditions: I am a Christian, but only if things are done like this. No, no, these changes are not Christian. This is heresy. This is not free. – Such Christians condition God, condition faith, and God’s action.

The attitude expressed in the words „ only if“ is an ugly path from faith to ideology. And there are so many today. These Christians are afraid. They are so scared of growth, life challenges, challenges from the Lord, and historical challenges; they are connected to their beliefs, primary beliefs, and ideologies. They are Christians who prefer ideology to faith and move away from the community, are afraid to surrender themselves into God’s hands, and like to judge everything but out of the smallness of their hearts. Two figures of the Church today are the Church of those ideologues who have nested in their ideologies and the Church showing the Lord who approaches every reality that is not hindered. The Lord will not be disgusted by this, he will not be deterred by our sins, he approaches as he approached to touch the lepers, the sick with love. Because he came to heal, he came to save, not to condemn.

I’m sure you’ve heard more than enough about holiness. There are many films and a few more books devoted to this topic. And maybe, even if you have already seen all the Holiness movies and read all the Holiness books, There will still be priests who know something about holiness. A short story is also connected to one such story. There was a priest who taught religion to children. He asked them once: who wants to be a saint? All the children raised their hands except for one boy. He looked uninvolved, downright incomprehensible. Nevertheless, the priest tried to encourage him: You don’t want to be a saint? – he asked him. No, I want to be… just normal. – replied the boy. The priest thought and, after a while, answered: That’s precisely what it is. To be expected, the way God created you.

I don’t know how the story goes, but are we enough to be expected? The kind God created us to be? In His image? Holiness has become an unattainable goal, and I dare say it is not. Holiness is not the goal; it is the foundation. The basis of me. The foundation of you. The foundation of Our God. Think about where you see holiness. I see her hidden in the little things of every day. In a smile, in an embrace, in forgiveness. Waiting for a classmate who will make you miss the bus. In taking the suitcase up the stairs, even if you don’t know the person and suspect them of having stones in them. I also see holiness in sharing food. Her day seems a little better in a relaxed seat on the tram or in the praise you give to the saleswoman. You can see holiness differently, and that’s perfectly fine. Take what you consider holiness and try to be like that today. We encourage you and the Lord to do so.

Prayer: Lord, you encourage us to be saints because You, Our God, are holy. We thank You for being our example, foundation, and rock on which we will try to build holiness today. Amen.

Questions to ponder: What does being a saint mean to you? Do you want to be a saint? What prevents you from doing so?

Lent has just begun, and many believers (finally, as it should be)are trying to experience it as a spiritual preparation for Easter, a time of repentance and fasting. And so, if they take their efforts seriously, they won’t avoid the question, „what exactly is fasting?“and „how to experience it?“Perhaps even more important is how to organize it. I think there are enough treatises and instructions on this subject, not only from spiritual literature but also from the practice of today’s church, and in general, a lot has been written and said about the post.

But today, we don’t have to go far for an answer; it’s enough for us if we listen carefully to the words of the prophet Isaiah in the first reading. Let’s put them in historical context. The Israelites experience their first years after returning from the Babylonian captivity; they have returned full of enthusiasm, but they find a plundered land, a ruined temple, full of difficulties they did not count on, and their enthusiasm begins to wear off, and their strength fades… What is more straightforward and seemingly more logical than to cling firmly to what has kept them spiritually afloat for decades, giving them strength? Namely, to the Law, its regulations, and commandments. But, instead of the norms and rules that lead them to life, they made idols out of them and absolutized them – so the result is a thorough and consistent fasting drill, but without contentment, heartless.

Isaiah feels how the life-giving content of the law disappears, and, therefore, as if through the mouth of the Lord, he instructs, stirs, and calls for true fasting. And it begins with what is easier to understand – not by further refining and chiseling Lenten commands, but by pointing out what fasting is not. At the same time, he helps himself with examples of misunderstood Lenten behavior: demonstratively fasting, theatrically pouring ashes on his head, showing himself in public in sackcloth, and chatting in the middle of ashes. Perhaps it is to increase the effect of punishing yourself with reprimands, but at the same time – and this is important! – to remain the old person with a complex and proud heart. Performing a fasting exercise that touches the body but inside, in the heart, does not change anything. Instead of transformation and reversal, only external cosmetic treatment. And what about the Lord’s prophet: „Thou shalt call this a fast, a day dear to the Lord?“

He then adds examples from the level of interpersonal relationships. You can also play Lenten theater and behave like a heartless, selfish person. Lent and repentant action are not, for example, to be angry, grumpy, and intolerant of one’s closest relatives in the family, just as being unfair to one’s co-workers, superiors, and subordinates and arguing, sobbing, resentment, envying, slandering, cursing, using violence. Or, to put it another way, eagerly looking for business, looking at where to rip off someone and where to crack something, is also not compatible with Lenten’s behavior. The Lord says again through the mouth of the prophet: „Is this the fast that I like, the day in which man is deadened?“And the lesson continues this time positively, with examples of fasting. Lent means being most just, helping others in their difficulties, accepting them as they are, and not wanting to manipulate them. Not to oppress anyone and not to despise anyone. Feed the hungry and dress the naked. Being the second brother in everything…

According to the Lord, this is the true Lenten, repentant and humble action. Its correctness is as if underlined by a promise: „Then your light will come out like a Zora, and your scar will soon heal. Your righteousness will go before you, and God’s glory will follow you. Then you shall call, and Yahweh shall answer you, shouting for help, and he shall say, Here I am.“

This promise fully balances God’s demanding demands. If we are honest and our inner attitudes and thoughts correspond to our deeds, we can count on God’s help in all situations and moments of our lives. God will become our companion and protector. And that’s not exactly enough.

At a time when a person thinks more often about the quality of his life. When does he dive inside and learn the truth about himself? He throws away the mask with which he is taught to live and sees himself truthfully: good and bad sides, his greatness and smallness, virtue and sin. These are days and moments of special favor from God; therefore, one should make good use of them. Among them are the days of Great Lent, which we began to experience. Every Sunday of Lent, we can look at our life from a different point of view. From what angle will it be today? The angle of our thinking about ourselves helps us create Jesus. His encounter with the devil directs us to reflect on a problem as old as humanity. It is the problem of the struggle between good and evil, the problem of temptation.

Let’s think deeply about why Jesus was tempted; when we think about it purely as humans and when we want to do a perfect psychoanalysis of this event, we will eventually come to the realization that no man could write this Gospel story. Man would never have come up with the idea that the Son of God would allow the devil to approach him. This is written by the inspiration of the Spirit of St. and Jesus allowed it so that we would be instructed. If by chance, we do not want to believe the words of the apostle Peter: “Be sober and watch! Your adversary, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion looking for someone to eat” (1 Pt 5, 8). Or we wouldn’t want to believe Paul’s words:“ Whoever thinks he stands, let him be careful not to fall” (1 Cor 10, 12), so that we don’t accidentally talk, that we do not know about these things, Jesus himself presents us with his experience with the devil. He warns us that the devil is not a being from fairy tales but a spiritual reality with great power, courage, and refinement. The purpose of its existence is destructive activity. It consists of a permanent desire to destroy the harmony between God, people, and the world. It is clear from Jesus’ experience that the devil attacks three sensitive places of a person.

The first sensitive place is the question of physical needs. The devil wants to make Jesus the “baker of the world,” the servant of the stomach, matter, and enjoyment:“ If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” Jesus’ counter to the devil is clear:“ Man lives not only from bread”. He did not come into the world to prepare feasts for people or to open miraculous bakeries. He is not a baker but a savior.

Furthermore, he came to feed souls hungry for God, truth, and love. Writer Pappini said that if he turned the stones on the road into bread, the dogs would also come to his feast,” but our souls would remain hungry and empty. A person needs to feed his bodily needs, but if the soul is starving, our life resembles a withered flower in a nice pot.

The prominent sensitive place of a person is the problem of property, ownership, wealth, and social status. The devil showed Jesus all the world’s riches and said:“ I will give you all their power and glory… if you bow down to me”. When the devil failed to make Jesus a baker, he wanted to make him a millionaire. He has only one condition: to take his side, the side of evil. Goethe once said that“ are people who have been striving for nothing all their lives but to get a chair higher.” Such people can be dragged down to all intrigues to reach that chair. They can humiliate, blackmail, and even kill others just to fulfill the devil’s command: become powerful and famous. They sell their honor, family, and faith to rise higher and higher. We also see it in the behavior of well-known and unknown people in our society, of whom there are more and more. It is an old human experience that whoever stops worshiping God begins to worship himself. He must make himself a god at any cost to have a reason for this.

A person’s sensitive place is the desire for excellence. The devil is attacking this place, too. He wants Jesus to jump off the temple. He failed to make him a baker or a millionaire, so he wants to make him a gambling stuntman. Jesus also rejects this offer:“ You shall not tempt the Lord your God!” It’s undoubtedly remarkable when someone can do a stunt. But often, stuntmen pay with their lives for their courage. But even someone who does “stuntman`’, for example, in the moral area of his life, can pay with his life. Who dares not keep God’s commandments, who dares to reject the sacraments even on his deathbed, who teaches others to commit grave sins? Such exceptionality causes a person’s soul to perish and sometimes premature death. Let’s remember, for example, last year’s murder of the world-famous fashion designer Versace. Perhaps he was a good designer, but his moral life was a big gamble (homosexual), and that’s why he died prematurely.

Since the devil allowed himself to tempt the Son of God, he will undoubtedly allow himself to tempt us, too. It is just a temptation, but it is not a sin. It is even a sign that we belong to God. If the devil stops tempting us, it is a dangerous signal that he no longer needs to do it. We’ve already listened to him…. And we also don’t think that when it comes to temptation, you must immediately think about the 6th and 9th—God’s commandments. The devil did not think of these commandments when he tempted Jesus. He thought of such temptations, which, when a person succumbs, means that he will almost legitimately sin against these two as well. May our daily prayer help us always to be strong enough internally against all the subtle ways the devil will use to win us over to his sinful kingdom. Someone said whoever goes to the inn with the devil must pay the bill. I believe that none of us will let him invite you.

The keyword of today’s Holy Scriptures texts is „life. Through the mouth of Moses, God calls his people: „Choose your life.” Each of us carries within us a desire for life, for a happy life. However, the problem is how to achieve such a life. It is clear to us that we have to do something about it. The prevailing opinion is that importing as much money as possible is necessary because we can treat ourselves to whatever we want to be happy with it. However, observing people’s lives more closely reveals that this is not the way to lasting happiness. So what should we do if I want to choose life?

Moses says to his people: “If you obey the commands of the Lord your God, walk in his ways and keep his decrees, commandments and statutes, you will live… because he is your life and long age…“ With the help of scientific research, we know more and more perfectly what living beings, a living cell, consist of. But we do not yet fully understand the very fact of life; it remains a secret. When it is true of biological life, the more it is true of a person’s personal life because it is too complex, mysterious a fact, rather than being able to create it ourselves and thus organize it so that we permanently experience ever fuller happiness.

As in many other areas, we follow experts’ instructions; if we want to work towards a successful goal, it is more accurate in our lives. The time of our earthly existence is too short to afford to experiment with our lives. Those who try to do this seek happiness according to their wishes once there and then elsewhere, usually at the end of their earthly life they are like disappointed castaways. If we are wise, we should trust God, who is not only the creator of life but also gives us guidelines for our decisions in his caring love. Whenever we follow them, we choose life.

In the Gospel (Luke 9, 22-25), God speaks directly to us in the person of his Son. He calls us not to cling to our ideas about life but to follow him, that is, to follow his example and word, to be faithful to him despite the difficulties and sufferings that may result from this in this real world, marked by evil and disrespect for God. According to his example, we should be so faithful to God that we are also willing to lose our earthly, carnal life. Jesus guarantees that it will not be a loss but a complete salvation of our lives. The period of Great Lent is supposed to be a time in which we resolutely step on the path to Jesus Christ in the certainty that we are thus moving towards our ever fuller life.

Practical instruction: I will ask God to strengthen my trust in him as the source and giver of life and my willingness to make decisions faithful to Jesus Christ and his truth.

Prayer: Almighty God, precede our actions with your inspiration and accompany them with your help so that we can start and complete all events with you through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who is God and lives and reigns with you in union with the Holy Spirit for all ages. 

We rise from the ashes with God, but without Him, we are dust.

„Behold, now is the time fitting; behold, now is the day of salvation! (2 Cor 6,2). This statement of the apostle Paul helps us enter the spirit of Lent. Lent is a favorable time to return to the essentials, get rid of what weighs on us, reconcile with God, and rekindle the fire of the Holy Spirit, who dwells covertly among the ashes of our fragile humanity. Return to the essential. It is a time of grace to put into practice what the Lord asked us to do in the first verse of the Word we heard: “Turn to me with all your heart” (Jl 2,12). To return to the essential, which is the Lord. The Cinderella ceremony takes us on this return journey and addresses two challenges: to return to the truth about ourselves and to return to God and our brothers.

Above all, we are to return to the truth about ourselves. Cinderella reminds us of who we are and where we come from and leads us back to the fundamental reality of life: only the Lord is God, and we are the work of his hands. We have a life while He is life. He is the Creator, while we are the fragile clay in his hands’ shape. We come from the earth and need heaven, His; with God, we rise from the ashes, but without Him, we are dust. When we humbly bow our heads to receive the ashtray, let us remember in our hearts this truth: we are to the Lord, we belong to Him. For he „kneaded man from the dust of clay and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life“ (Gn 2.7): we exist because he breathed into us the breath of life. And as a gentle and merciful Father, he also experiences fasting because he longs for us, waits for us, and expects our return. And he always encourages us not to despair, even when we fall into the dust of our fragility and sin, „for he knows what we are made of, he remembers, that we are just dust“ (PS 103,14). Let’s hear it again: He remembers that we are just dust. God knows it; on the contrary, we often forget it and think we are self-sufficient, strong, and invincible without Him. We use make-up to think of ourselves as better than we are, but we are dust.

Lent is, therefore, a time when we remember who the Creator is and who the creature is when we proclaim that only God is the Lord, only He, when we get rid of the pretended self-sufficiency and eagerness to stand in the center and be the winners, when we take ourselves off the idea that only thanks to our abilities can we be the protagonists of life and transform the world around us. This is a favorable time to convert, to change our view of ourselves above all, to look within ourselves: how many distractions and superficialities distract us from what is essential, how many times do we focus on our appetites or what we lack, move away from the center of our hearts and forget to accept the meaning of our being in the world. Lent is a time of truth, discarding the masks we wear daily to look perfect in the eyes of the world; Lent is a time to fight falsehood and hypocrisy, not in others, but within ourselves, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel. They need to look in the face and wrestle.

However, there is a second step: the ashtray also calls us to return to God and our brothers. If we return to the truth about who we are and realize that our ego alone is not enough, we will find that we exist only through relationships: the original one with the Lord and the vital ones with other people. So, the Cinderella we receive on our heads today tells us that every assumption of self-sufficiency is false and that the deification of one’s self is destructive and locks us in a cage of loneliness. We look down in the mirror of supposed perfection, imagining that we are the center of the world. Our life, on the other hand, is above all a relationship: we received it from God and our parents, and thanks to the Lord and those who stand by our side, we can always renew and regenerate it. Lent is an opportune time for the revival of our relations with God and with others: to open ourselves in silence to prayer and to come out of the firmness of our closed ego, to break the shackles of individualism and, through meeting and listening – not through isolation – to rediscover those who walk beside us every day and learn to love them again as brothers and sisters. 

Brothers and sisters, how can this be achieved? To make this journey happen and return to the truth about ourselves, God, and others, we are called to follow three main paths: alms, prayer, and fasting. They are classic means, but there is no need for news on this journey. Jesus made it clear: alms, prayer, and fasting. But it is not external ceremonies, as the Lord said, but gestures to express the renewal of the heart. Almsgiving is not a quick gesture to purify the conscience that would somewhat offset the internal imbalance, but means touching with one’s own hands and tears the suffering of the poor; prayer is not a ritual, but a dialogue of truth and love with the Father; fasting is not just a pious renunciation, but a powerful gesture that reminds our heart of what matters and what passes away. Jesus’ „ admonition retains adequate validity even for us: external gestures must always be matched by the sincerity of the soul and the inner connection of action. What is the use of tearing a garment, indeed, if the heart remains far from the Lord, that is from goodness and righteousness?“ (Benedict XVI, Ash Wednesday Homily, March 1, 2006). Too often, however, our gestures and rituals do not touch life, they do not form the truth; perhaps we do them only so that others admire us, to applaud us, to take credit. How many times does this happen? Let us remember this: in personal life, as in the life of the church, it does not matter the external appearance, human judgments, and pleasure of the world; it only depends on the point of view of God, who reads love and truth in it.

If we humbly stand before his gaze, then alms, prayer, and fasting will not remain external gestures but express who we are: God’s children and brothers to each other. Alms and merciful love will show our compassion for those in need and help us return to others; prayer will make our inner desire to meet the Father sound and make us return to him; fasting will be a spiritual gym to joyfully renounce what is useless and burdens us to become more free internally and return to the truth about ourselves—meeting the Father, inner freedom, compassion.

Dear brothers and sisters, let’s bow our heads, accept the ashtray, and brighten our hearts. Let us embark on the path of love: we are given forty opportune days to remind ourselves that the world is not to be enclosed within the narrow confines of our personal needs and to rediscover joy not in things which we are to accumulate but from caring for those who are in need and tribulation. Let us embark on a journey in prayer: we are given forty opportune days to provide God with the primacy in our lives again, to dialogue with him with all our hearts, and not in the rest of time. Let us embark on fasting: we are given forty opportune days to rediscover ourselves, to limit the dictatorship of the planning diaries, which are always full of things to do, the demands of an increasingly superficial and cumbersome ego, and they choose what matters. 

Brothers and sisters, let us not dispel the grace of this holy time: let us look at the cross and go; let us respond generously to the substantial challenges of Lent. At the journey’s end, we will meet the Lord of life with greater joy, who gives us to rise from the ashes.