POPE'S LENTEN MESSAGE
Pope’s Lenten message on faith that urges charity
Pope Benedict
XVI is urging Christians worldwide during Lent this year to develop a deeper
personal relationship with God in Christ which will awaken their love and open
their spirits to others. “As a result, love of neighbour will no longer be for
them a commandment imposed, so to speak, from without, but a consequence
deriving from their faith, a faith which becomes active through love,” the Pope
says in his Lenten message released in the Vatican on Friday, February 01,
2013.
“Believing in Charity
Calls Forth Charity – We have come to know and to believe in the love God has
for us,” is the theme of Pope Benedict’s message for Lent this year, which
begins on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 13. Lent is a period of 40 weekdays marked by
prayer, penance, fasting and good works, as spiritual preparation for
Christianity’s greatest feast – Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of
Christ after His passion and death. Reflecting on the “indissoluble
interrelation" between the theological virtues of faith and charity the
Pope said “when we make room for the love of God, we become like him, sharing
in his own charity.” “The Christian life consists in continuously scaling the
mountain to meet God and then coming back down, bearing the love and strength
drawn from him, so as to serve our brothers and sisters with God’s own love.”
In this regard, the Pope said that “the greatest work of charity is
evangelization,” as it is the “highest and the most integral promotion of the
human person.” Works of charity the Pope said are born of faith and flow from
the grace that God gives in abundance. “Faith without works is like a tree
without fruit: the two virtues imply one another,” the Holy Father said. He
further compared the relationship between faith and charity to the relationship
between Baptism, the sacrament of faith, and the sacrament of love, the
Eucharist, which is the fullness of the Christian journey.
pope's message
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