Lent reminds us that our life must be transformed in Christ.
The Church invites us, throughout these forty days, to consider the treasures of love and life which God our Lord offers us so generously. But, at the same time, she reminds us that God expects our free response. For that reason, “Lent should suggest to us these basic questions: Am I advancing in my faithfulness to Christ? in my desire for holiness? in a generous apostolate? in my daily life, in my ordinary work among my colleagues?"
Each one of us, silently, should answer these questions, and we will see that we need to change again if Christ is to live in us, if Jesus' image is to be reflected clearly in our behavior. If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. Christ is saying this again to us, whispering it in our ears: the cross each day. As St Jerome puts it: "Not only in time of persecution or when we have the chance of martyrdom, but in all circumstances, in everything we do and think, in everything we say, let us deny what we used to be and let us confess what we now are, reborn as we have been in Christ."
It's an echo of St Paul's words: Once you were all darkness. Now, in the Lord, you are all daylight. You must live as children of the light. Where light has its effect, men walk in all goodness, holiness and truth, seeking those things which please God.
“Conversion is the task of a moment; sanctification is the work of a lifetime… Therefore, we must be ready to begin again, to find again -in new situations- the light and the stimulus of our first conversion. And that is why we must prepare with a deep examination of conscience, asking our Lord for his help, so that we'll know him and ourselves better. If we want to be converted again, there's no other way."
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” – Laozi.
Jesus loves you; you must know and love him, to be transformed into Christ, and acquire his fortitude and courage.
“When you love someone a lot, you want to know things about them. We meditate on the life of our Lord, from his Birth in a manger to his Death on the Cross, and then his Resurrection. And we hold our Lord's life in our memory as if it were a film. So, without needing a book, just by closing our eyes at any moment, we can contemplate him, and live with him and with our Blessed Lady, who is his Mother and ours, and with the holy women, and the Apostles. We conjure up his image, not as if we were watching a film, but as if we ourselves were actually part of that film, by virtue of our love."
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