Homily

Wednesday we began Lent. The proposal is simple and direct, as it needs to penetrate into the many habits and convictions in that jungle of defences and mistrust, which always makes us the same as ourselves - not very vulnerable and incapable of humbling ourselves in a beginning which is always necessarily poor. The priest when he put ashes on our forehead repeated to us, “Change your heart and believe in the good news.” Jesus confronted evil in the desert, “tempted by Satan,” says Mark’s Gospel. Thus begins Jesus’ agony, the struggle between life and death. Jesus’ entire life was an agony, a struggle against Evil and its Prince. Yes, this is why the time is fulfilled. The Lord, lover of people, comes to do battle against humanity’s enemy, the one who sows division, who is behind the instinct of pride and love for self. This is why he asks for conversion. It is not a pious exercise, something additional for the righteous, or an option for the mediocre. Jesus asks us to change because he loves the world and cannot accept it as it is; he does not want your life to be lost, he does not consider it lost; he wants it to be better and rescued from a sad mediocrity. Those who do not change maintain themselves always the same and end up, even without choosing to, giving themselves over to deaf and dumb idols. How often we prefer these idols to a passionate lover like Jesus! Yes, because we really fear love, we reduce it to our narrow limitations, we flee from the one who loves, like the rich young man bound to his riches, who chooses sadness because he does not know how to abandon himself to the one who had fixed his gaze on him and loved him.
Lent is an itinerary. For those who love fast, easy, immediate solutions, who rely on first impressions, who have distaste for the humiliation of a discipline of the heart; who become victims of their own superficial judgments, for a generation like ours who mistakes complexity for indecision and thinks that all choices are always open, Lent is an insistent invitation, reiterated and affectionate. The one who changes is the one who is aware of the abyss of his or her heart and begins the way of repentance. Lent is a time of forgiveness and joy because we find our heart again, listening to a father who loves and renews. The righteous ones find no joy. They do not ask for forgiveness and do not know how to forgive. They must finally grab unto their hypocrisy so as not to fall into the abyss of sin, since they do not believe in forgiveness. They do not know how to cry tears; they flee the pain of bitterness, the humiliation of discovering themselves as they are and asking for help. But they remain prisoners of their own sadness. The sinner who acknowledges his or her condition finds consolation. Let us look in our heart: are we not poor in love, cold, fearful, aggressive, unfaithful, inconstant, full of grudges, ruled by instinctive pride? Does not our heart easily fill with so many fears and enmities, mistrusts, hostility? Does our heart not become limitless, voracious for satisfaction, confrontations, and small affirmations of our self?
There is great need to change our heart because the world is full of enmity and violence. The world cannot live without heart. Starting with ours. Who can give a heart to a world that is passionate only about material things, about the market, about that which doesn’t save? Who will give back the many years that hunger and hardness of life have robbed from millions of poor people? Who will take away from the hearts of many people the habit of violence, the path of barbarity that annuls mercy and compassion?
Lent is the pressing invitation to welcome the proposal of changing the world, beginning with our heart. Like sin and complicity with evil always have always an effect on others; similarly when we change we will be building a world of peace, decontaminating it of violence. A good heart makes the life of so many good. Jesus’ disciples are called to be caring people who take others’ life to heart. This is what Jesus did first.
Jesus urges us, “Believe the good news.” Believing in the Gospel means trusting the naivety of the Father who embraces the son and clothes him with his forgiveness, without merits or atonement, just because he has come back to Him. Believing the Gospel means that this word is a way of peace and that the world is not unreformable. Believing the Gospel means being sure that a heart full of good feelings and spirituality overcomes the logic of war and can hasten the day of peace. Believing the Gospel means believing in the power of prayer. In this time let us open the Gospel frequently, let us silence our reasoning in order to listen to the Word of God; let us implore God with the sick, the suffering, those struck by evil. Thus we will rediscover anew God’s covenant of love. God has granted the world to humanity, but he admonished them to respect human life, their blood, that no one live uninterested in another’s life. God’s commandment is against violence. The one who converts, who becomes peaceful, reconstructs this covenant. In the depths of the human heart there is a desire for peace. Lent is the opportune time to find again within one’s own heart and that of one’s neighbour that rainbow of peace, so that the deluge of violence and the storms of self-love may end. And may many, who scrutinize heaven imploring help and protection, who ask for peace and hope, be able to see that rainbow that start from our hearts and from those who welcome peace.