Pope: Lent a time of spiritual combat
Below is a translation of the Holy Father’s Angelus reflection:
Dear brothers and sisters!
Last Wednesday, with the traditional rite of ashes, we enter into Lent, a time of conversion and penance in preparation for Easter. The Church, which is mother and teacher, calls all its members to be renewed in the spirit, to re-orientate closely to God, denying the pride and selfishness in order to live in love. In this Year of Faith Lent is a favorable time to rediscover the faith in God as a criterion-the basis of our life and the life of the Church. This always involves a battle, a spiritual battle, because the spirit of evil naturally opposed to our sanctification and seeks to make us deviate from the way of God for this, the first Sunday of Lent, the Gospel is proclaimed every year of Jesus' temptations in the desert.
Jesus, in fact, after receiving '"endowment" as the Messiah - "anointed" by the Holy Spirit - the Baptism in the Jordan, was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Upon starting his public ministry, Jesus had to expose and reject the false images of Messiah that the tempter proposed. But these temptations are false images of man, in every time undermine the conscience, disguised as proposed affordable and effective, even good. The evangelists Matthew and Luke have three temptations of Jesus, diversifying in part only for the order. Their core is always in God to exploit for their own interests, giving more importance to the success or material goods. The tempter is sneaky: it goes directly to evil, but to a fake well, making believe that the true reality is power and that meets the basic needs. In this way, God becomes secondary, is reduced to half, ultimately becomes unreal, no longer matters, vanishes. Ultimately, what is at stake in the temptations faith, because God is at stake In the decisive moments of life, but, in hindsight, at any time, we are at a crossroads: we want to follow me or God? The individual interest or the real Well, what is really good?
How do we teach the Fathers of the Church, the temptations are part of the "descent" of Jesus in our human condition, into the abyss of sin and its consequences. A "descent" that Jesus has come to the end, until the death of the cross and the underworld of extreme separation from God in this way, He is the hand that God has tended to man, the lost sheep, to bring it back safety. As Saint Augustine teaches, Jesus took from us the temptation, to give us his victory (cf. Enarr. Psalmos in, 60.3: PL 36, 724). So we did not fear to face us also fight against the spirit of evil, the important thing is that we do with him, with him, the Winner. And to be with him turn to the Mother, Mary: Let us invoke with filial trust in times of trial, and she will feel the powerful presence of her divine Son, to reject the temptations with the Word of Christ, and thus put God at the center of our lives.
Last Wednesday, with the traditional rite of ashes, we enter into Lent, a time of conversion and penance in preparation for Easter. The Church, which is mother and teacher, calls all its members to be renewed in the spirit, to re-orientate closely to God, denying the pride and selfishness in order to live in love. In this Year of Faith Lent is a favorable time to rediscover the faith in God as a criterion-the basis of our life and the life of the Church. This always involves a battle, a spiritual battle, because the spirit of evil naturally opposed to our sanctification and seeks to make us deviate from the way of God for this, the first Sunday of Lent, the Gospel is proclaimed every year of Jesus' temptations in the desert.
Jesus, in fact, after receiving '"endowment" as the Messiah - "anointed" by the Holy Spirit - the Baptism in the Jordan, was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Upon starting his public ministry, Jesus had to expose and reject the false images of Messiah that the tempter proposed. But these temptations are false images of man, in every time undermine the conscience, disguised as proposed affordable and effective, even good. The evangelists Matthew and Luke have three temptations of Jesus, diversifying in part only for the order. Their core is always in God to exploit for their own interests, giving more importance to the success or material goods. The tempter is sneaky: it goes directly to evil, but to a fake well, making believe that the true reality is power and that meets the basic needs. In this way, God becomes secondary, is reduced to half, ultimately becomes unreal, no longer matters, vanishes. Ultimately, what is at stake in the temptations faith, because God is at stake In the decisive moments of life, but, in hindsight, at any time, we are at a crossroads: we want to follow me or God? The individual interest or the real Well, what is really good?
How do we teach the Fathers of the Church, the temptations are part of the "descent" of Jesus in our human condition, into the abyss of sin and its consequences. A "descent" that Jesus has come to the end, until the death of the cross and the underworld of extreme separation from God in this way, He is the hand that God has tended to man, the lost sheep, to bring it back safety. As Saint Augustine teaches, Jesus took from us the temptation, to give us his victory (cf. Enarr. Psalmos in, 60.3: PL 36, 724). So we did not fear to face us also fight against the spirit of evil, the important thing is that we do with him, with him, the Winner. And to be with him turn to the Mother, Mary: Let us invoke with filial trust in times of trial, and she will feel the powerful presence of her divine Son, to reject the temptations with the Word of Christ, and thus put God at the center of our lives.
