Faith and charity go hand in hand with hope
We pass the portico of Holy Week with a final part of the Pope’s message for Lent 2024.
To the extent that this Lent has been one of conversion, then, lost humanity will feel a thrill of creativity; the sparkle of a new hope.
I would like to say to them, as I did to the young people I met in Lisbon last summer: “Search and risk, search and risk. At this historic moment the challenges are enormous, the groans 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 through” (Speech to university students, August 3, 2023).
It is the courage of conversion, of coming out of slavery. Faith and charity go hand in hand in this small hope. They teach her to walk and, at the same time, it is she who drags them forward.
To think and pray:
- To the extent that this Lent has been a time of conversion… you will feel a thrill of creativity… Creativity is the ability to generate original, novel and valuable ideas. It is the ability to think unconventionally, break established patterns and find original solutions to the challenges that arise. Pope Francis says in Evangelii Gaudium number 178 that the Holy Spirit possesses infinite inventiveness. . How am I doing in terms of creativity, original, novel and valuable ideas? Do I think unconventionally? Do I break the established patterns at any time? Do I (we) find original solutions to the challenges that arise? Where do these ideas, patterns, solutions… come from? Where are you taking me?
- We are not in agony, we are in labor. Search and risk… How do I live the present personal, work, family, community, ecclesial, congregational, social, world moment? Is it agony or is it childbirth? Looking for? When I find, do I take a risk?
On this Palm Sunday, let us enter with Jesus into Jerusalem with our gaze fixed on Him. May contemplating Him save us from temptation. To each his own. Maybe, today,
– from the temptation to conform and not to seek;
– from the temptation of intuiting the path and not taking risks;
– from the temptation to ignore the newness of the Spirit brought to us by our companions in life because they sound crazy.
Let us go up to Jerusalem. Let us listen to the Passion. Let us stop where the Lord meets us and tells us: trust, seek, take risks…. trust.
