Lent is a time to break free from slavery and act to free others who suffer from the multiple forms of slavery that afflict the world, Pope Francis said.
Even if baptism began a process of liberation, “there remains within us an inexplicable desire for slavery. A kind of attraction to the security of familiar things, to the detriment of our freedom,” the pope said in his message of Lent, which begins on February 14 for Latin-rite Catholics.
Echoing the tragedy of the ancient Israelites, a modern-day pharaoh “stifles dreams, blocks the view of heaven, gives the impression that this world, in which human dignity is trampled and authentic connections denied, can never change “, said the Pope. wrote.
“We must combat the deficit of hope that stifles dreams and the silent cry that reaches heaven and touches the heart of God,” he wrote.
Released by the Vatican on February 1, the text of the pope’s Lenten message focuses on God’s call to abandon the bonds of slavery, with the title “Through the desert, God leads us to freedom,” taken from the Book of Exodus (20:2).
God allows people to embark on a new journey and experience “an Easter from death to life,” the pope wrote.
“Even today we remain under the rule of Pharaoh. A reign that makes us weary and indifferent. A model of growth that divides us and deprives us of a future,” he said. “The land, air and water are polluted, but so are our souls.”
And, he writes, there are “the idols that we have erected for ourselves,” such as the desire to be all-powerful, to be admired by all and to dominate others. “We can get attached to money, to certain projects, ideas or goals, to our position, to a tradition, even to certain individuals”, all this only paralyzes people and creates conflicts.
“Lent is a time of conversion, a time of freedom” during which Christians seek to rediscover the call and promise of God, he writes. “It is time to act, and during Lent, action also means stopping. Stopping in prayer, to receive the word of God, stopping like the Samaritan in the presence of a brother or sister. hurt sister.”
Through prayer, almsgiving and fasting, Christians experience “an opening and a self-emptying, in which we cast out the idols that weigh us down, the attachments that imprison us,” the pope wrote.
Francis invited every Christian community to ask its members to “rethink their way of life” and examine their role in society and the contribution they can make to its improvement.
The Synodal Church seeks “community decisions” that are “capable of changing the daily lives of individuals and entire neighborhoods, such as how we acquire goods, care for creation, and strive to include those who pass through unnoticed or scorned. he said.
“Let us ask ourselves: do I want a new world? Am I ready to abandon my compromises with the old one?” the pope wrote, inviting the faithful to “continue searching and be willing to take risks.”
Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development, presented the Lenten message during a press conference at the Vatican.
“Traditionally, Lent is a time to review our lives and to individually confront the need for personal conversion,” he said. However, the pope also challenges the faithful to seek to change the world.
As believers and citizens, he said, Christians should ask themselves: “Where are we on this journey with so many brothers and sisters at home and around the world crying out and asking us to walk with them? ?
“By accepting the gift of Lent, each Christian community can accompany its members in the face of the challenges of our time,” the cardinal said, because “the hoped-for changes in the world begin with a change in me and in you.”
Emilia Palladino, a professor in the social sciences department at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, said “current inequalities are an abomination.”
There is a divide between “the haves and the have-nots” and an outright denial of “human dignity and basic human rights for entire sections of humanity kept in slavery,” she said.
In 2023, she said, three in ten people did not have access to essential health services and around 2 billion people faced hunger in order to meet expenses related to medical care and medicines, according to the World Health Organization.
In 2023, she said, there are still 152 million children and adolescents victims of child labor, according to the International Labor Office. Some 40,000 of them work in the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they extract coltan, needed to make smartphones, tablets and computers, tools that end up becoming a form of dependency for d ‘others.
In 2021, she added, 28 million people were forced into forced labor and 22 million into forced marriage, in addition to countless victims of human trafficking, according to a United Nations report.
This is where the lack of hope exerts its power, she explained, because the enormity and scale of these problems serve as a depressing justification for inaction.
“But we can change the little that has been given to us: a way of life that is more respectful of ourselves, others and the environment; relearning solidarity and fraternity, first at home; building together a healthy work environment , promoters of the common good and not slaves to profit at all costs,” she declared.
The Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development asked Mauro Pallotta, an Italian street artist, known as “Maupal”, to help illustrate the pope’s message with a new drawing each week throughout the period. of Lent, which ends on March 28, Holy Thursday.
His first illustration, published before Lent, depicts an image of Francis pushing a wheelbarrow containing a sack full of faith through a desert of nails “which represent idols old and new, and our captivity,” he said.
Nails in the road would pierce the rubber wheel and stop the journey, but by “following Pope Francis, who opens the way with the power of faith,” the road becomes passable for all “and the goal achievable,” a- he declared. .
