“We always have things to do and apologize, but now, brothers and sisters, it is time to return to God …”
Pope Francis said this Wednesday: ‘We will always have things to do and apologize, but it is now time to return to God, brothers and sisters. ”
The pope urged us to use fasting to ‘find the way that leads to the house.’
Here’s the full text of his homily from this morning’s Ash Wednesday Mass (highlight ours).
~
We now embark on our Spring Journey, which begins with the words of the prophet Joel. They point out the path we must follow. We hear an invitation that arises from the heart of God, who pleads with us with open arms and longing eyes: “Return to me with all your heart” (Joel 2:12). Return to me. Lent is a journey of return to God. How many times in our activity or indifference have we said to him, “Lord, I will come to you later, just wait a minute … I can not come today, but tomorrow I will start praying and doing something for others. “. We do it every time. At the moment, however, God is speaking to our hearts. In this life we will always have things to do and apologize, but now is the time to return to God, brothers and sisters.
Return to me, he says, with all your heart. Spring is a journey that involves our whole life, our whole being. It is a time to reconsider the path we are taking, to find the path that leads us home, and to rediscover our deep relationship with God, on whom everything depends. Lent is not just about the small sacrifices we make, but about determining where our hearts are directed. This is the essence of fasting: to ask where our hearts are directed. Let us ask: Where does my navigation system take me – to God or to myself? Do I live to please the Lord, or am I noticed, praised, put in charge …? Do I have a “wobbly” heart that takes a step forward and then one backward? Do I love the Lord a little and the world a little, or is my heart steadfast in God? Am I content with my hypocrisy, or am I working to free my heart from the ambiguity and falsehood that binds it?
The journey of fasting is an exodus, an exodus from slavery to freedom. These forty days correspond to the forty years that God’s people traveled through the wilderness to return to their homeland. How difficult it was to leave Egypt! It was harder for God’s people to leave Egypt from the heart, which brought them into Egypt, than to leave Egypt. It is difficult to leave Egypt behind. During their journey there was a temptation to always yearn for leeks, to turn back, to cling to memories of the past or to this or that idol. So it is with us: our journey back to God is blocked by our unhealthy attachments, held back by the seductive traps of our sins, by the false security of money and appearance, by the paralysis of our dissatisfaction. To embark on this journey, we must unmask these illusions.
But we can ask ourselves: how then do we return to God? We can be led by returns that are described in the word of God.
We can think of the prodigal son and realize that it is also for us it is time to return to the Father. Like that boy, we too have forgotten the familiar scent of our home, squandered a precious inheritance on meager things and ended up with empty hands and an unhappy heart. We have fallen down, like little children constantly falling, toddlers trying to walk but keep falling and have to be picked up time and time again by their father. it is the Father’s forgiveness which always makes us sit on our feet again. God’s forgiveness – confession – is the first step on our journey back. When I mention confession, I confessively ask that they should be like fathers and not offer a stick, but an embrace.
We must then return to Jesus, like the leper who, after being healed, came back to thank him. Although ten were healed, he was the only one saved because he returned to Jesus (cf. Lk 17: 12-19). All of us have mental weaknesses that we cannot cure on our own. All of us have profound vices that we cannot uproot alone. All of us have crippling fears that we cannot overcome on our own. We must follow that leper, who returned to Jesus and fell at his feet. We need Jesus’ healing, we must present our wounds to him and say: “Jesus, I am in your presence, with my sin, with my sorrows. You are the doctor. You can set me free. Heal my heart ”.
The word of God once again asks us to return to the Father, to return to Jesus. It also has call us return to the Holy Spirit. The ashes on our heads remind us that we are dust and that we return to dust. But on this dust of ours, God breathed His Spirit of life. So we no longer have to live our lives and chase dust, chase things that are here today and are gone tomorrow. Let us return to the Spirit, the Giver of Life; let us return to the Fire that raises us as, to the Fire that teaches us to love. We will always be dust, but as a liturgical hymn says: ‘dust in love’. Let us pray and rediscover the Holy Spirit again the fire of praise, which consumes the ashes of lamentation and resignation.
Brothers and sisters, we return trip for God is possible only because he first traveled to us. Otherwise it would be impossible. Before we ever came to him, he came to us. He preceded us; he came down to meet us. For our sakes he lowered himself more than we can ever imagine: he became sin, he became death. Thus St. Paul tells us, “For our sakes God made him sin” (2 Cor 5:21). He accepted our sin and our death not to leave us, but to accompany us on our journey. He touched our sin; he touched us dead. Our journey was then approx. let him take us by the hand. The Father who invites us to come home is the same one who left the house to come looking for us; the Lord who heals us is the same one who made himself suffer on the cross; the Spirit that enables us to change our lives is the same one that breathes softly, yet powerfully on our dust.
This is therefore the apostle’s plea: “Reconcile yourself to God” (verse 20). Be reconciled: the journey is not based on our own strength. No one can be reconciled to God on his own. Deep repentance, with the deeds and practices it expresses, is only possible if it begins with the primacy of God’s work. What enables us to return to him is not our own ability or merit, but his offer of grace. Grace saves us; salvation is pure grace, pure free. Jesus says this clearly in the Gospel: what we justify is not the righteousness we show before others, but our sincere relationship with the Father. The beginning of the return to God is the recognition of our need for him and his mercy, our need for his grace. This is the right path, the path of humility. Do I feel in need, or do I feel self-sufficient?
Today we bow our heads to receive ashes. At the end of Lent we will bend even lower to wash the feet of our brothers and sisters. Fasting is a humble descent within and toward others. It is about realizing that salvation is not a rise to glory, but a descent into love. It’s about getting little. If we do not stray from our journey, let us face it the cross of Jesus: the silent throne of God. Let us daily remember his wounds, the wounds he brought to heaven and showed daily to the Father in his prayer of intercession. Let us think daily about these wounds. In it we recognize our emptiness, our shortcomings, the wounds of our sin and all the hurt we have experienced. But even there we clearly see that God points his finger at no one, but rather opens his arms to embrace us. His wounds were wounded for our sakes, and through the wounds we were healed (cf. 1 pet 2:25; Is 53: 5). By kissing the wounds, we will realize that there, in the most painful wounds of life God awaits us with his infinite grace. Because there, where we are the most vulnerable, where we feel the most shame, he came to meet us. And after meeting us, he invites us to return to him, to rediscover the joy of beloved.
