{"id":2961,"date":"2007-02-13T10:38:44","date_gmt":"2007-02-13T10:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/lent-is-coming.html"},"modified":"2007-02-13T10:38:44","modified_gmt":"2007-02-13T10:38:44","slug":"lent-is-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/lent-is-coming.html","title":{"rendered":"Lent is coming"},"content":{"rendered":"

And the Pope’s message for Lent has been released:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Focused on the theme \u201cThey will look on the one whom they have pierced\u201d (Jn 19:37), the document highlights how God\u2019s love is both \u201cagape<\/em>\u201d \u2013 \u201cthe oblative love of he who seeks exclusively the good of the other\u201d \u2013 and \u201ceros<\/em>\u201d \u2013 \u201cthe love of he who desires to possess what he lacks, which yearns for union with the loved one\u201d. The theologian pope explained that the love of God is certainly agape<\/em>: \u201cEverything that the human creature is and has is divine gift\u201d. But it is also eros<\/em>: \u201cThe Creator of the universe shows for the people he has chosen a predilection that transcends all human motivation.\u201d And \u201cthe Omnipotent awaits the \u2018yes\u2019 of his creatures like a young bridegroom await that of his bride.\u201d But \u201cunfortunately, humanity, from its origins, seduced by the lies of Evil, closed itself off from the love of God in the illusion of impossible self-sufficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, God did not admit defeat. Rather, the \u2018no\u2019 of man was like a decisive push that induced him to manifest his love in all its redemptive strength.\u201d And it is the Cross in which the \u201cfullness of God\u2019s love\u201d is revealed. <\/p>\n

Lent, then, is a time of contemplation and reflection about the Cross. \u201cThe answer that the Lord wants from us is first of all that we welcome his love and allow ourselves to be drawn by Him. Accepting his love, however, is not enough. We must match it and commit ourselves to communicating it to others: Christ \u2018draws me to him\u2019 to unite with me, so that I may learn to love my brothers with his very love.\u201d<\/p>\n

The contemplation of the Cross, with its missionary character, also prompts us \u201cto open our hearts to others, recognizing the wounds inflicted on the dignity of the human being; it pushes us especially to fight against all forms of contempt for life and exploitation of people and to ease the tragedy of solitude and neglect of so many people.\u201d Benedict XVI added: \u201cMay Lent be for each Christian a renewed experience of the love of God given to us in Christ, a love that we should seek daily in our turn to \u2018give again\u2019 to our neighbour, especially those who are suffering and in need. Only thus can we participate fully in the joy of Easter.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here’s the English full text.<\/a><\/p>\n

Fr. Z was at the press conference and has observations:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The document was signed on 21 November 2006.  It is very short.  It constitutes quite a break with Messages of the past.  This message is strongly theological, providing starting points.  Messages in the past were strong practical, exploring themes like \u201cMarginalization of the Poor\u201d (1977) and \u201cWorld Hunger\u201d (1996).  This time he is much more explicitly theocentric, returning to the fundamental building block of Deus caritas est.  <\/em>Cordes said that he could only speculate why the Holy Father has changed the style of the Lenten message.  <\/p>\n

Cordes, in his comments, seemed to desire to bring the discussion away from the theological dimension and right away pass to the concrete exercise of charity.  In a way I had the sense that he wanted to talk about something other than the message.  To accomplish this they enlisted the help of an old Italian priest Fr. Oreste Benzi, founder of the \u201cPope John XXIII<\/span>\u201d houses which work for the marginalized.  Benizi gave a sustained fervorino<\/em> (over a half hour).  His experience working with the very difficult cases life can reveal reminded me that there are those who service the Church at a desk and those who serve at a gutter or a bedside<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And the Pope’s message for Lent has been released: Focused on the theme \u201cThey will look on the one whom they have pierced\u201d (Jn 19:37), the document highlights how God\u2019s love is both \u201cagape\u201d \u2013 \u201cthe oblative love of he who seeks exclusively the good of the other\u201d \u2013 and \u201ceros\u201d \u2013 \u201cthe love of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nLent is coming - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/lent-is-coming.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lent is coming - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}