The
Roman Catholics all over the world are marking today, Wednesday, February 14,
2018 as the Ash Wednesday, just as Pope Francis has warned against snake
charmers, reports ITRealms.
Ash
Wednesday, ITRealms gathered is in
the Roman Catholic Church calendar the beginning of the Lenten season for the
year, which will last some 40 days before the commemoration of Easter, the
death of Jesus Christ.
The
Catholic Pontiff, Pope Francis in his 2018 Lenten message with the theme: ‘Because of the increase of iniquity, the love of many will
grow cold’ (Mt 24:12), said, once again, the Pasch of
the Lord draws near! Noting that its in preparation for Easter, and God
in his providence offers mankind each year the season of Lent as a “sacramental
sign of our conversion”.
Lent,
he said, summons man, and enables him, to come back to the Lord wholeheartedly
and in every aspect of life, calling for a new experience within the church.
“With this message, I
would like again this year to help the entire Church experience this time of
grace anew, with joy and in truth. I will take my cue from the words of
Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew: “Because of the increase of iniquity, the love
of many will grow cold” (24:12).
.
These words appear in
Christ’s preaching about the end of time. They were spoken in Jerusalem,
on the Mount of Olives, where the Lord’s passion would begin. In reply to
a question of the disciples, Jesus foretells a great tribulation and describes
a situation in which the community of believers might well find itself: amid
great trials, false prophets would lead people astray and the love that is the
core of the Gospel would grow cold in the hearts of many.
“Let us
listen to the Gospel passage and try to understand the guise such false
prophets can assume.
“They can appear as
“snake charmers”, who manipulate human emotions in order to enslave others and
lead them where they would have them go. How many of God’s children are
mesmerized by momentary pleasures, mistaking them for true happiness! How
many men and women live entranced by the dream of wealth, which only makes them
slaves to profit and petty interests! How many go through life believing
that they are sufficient unto themselves, and end up entrapped by loneliness!
“False prophets can also
be “charlatans”, who offer easy and immediate solutions to suffering that soon
prove utterly useless. How many young people are taken in by the panacea
of drugs, of disposable relationships, of easy but dishonest gains!
“How many more are
ensnared in a thoroughly “virtual” existence, in which relationships appear
quick and straightforward, only to prove meaningless! These swindlers, in
peddling things that have no real value, rob people of all that is most
precious: dignity, freedom and the ability to love.
“They appeal to our
vanity, our trust in appearances, but in the end they only make fools of us.
Nor should we be surprised. In order to confound the human heart,
the devil, who is “a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44), has
always presented evil as good, falsehood as truth.
“That is why each of us
is called to peer into our heart to see if we are falling prey to the lies of
these false prophets. We must learn to look closely, beneath the surface,
and to recognize what leaves a good and lasting mark on our hearts, because it
comes from God and is truly for our benefit.
”In his description of hell, Dante Alighieri pictures the devil
seated on a throne of ice, in frozen and loveless isolation. We might
well ask ourselves how it happens that charity can turn cold within us.
What are the signs that indicate that our love is beginning to cool?
“More than anything else,
what destroys charity is greed for money, “the root of all evil” (1 Tim6:10).
The rejection of God and his peace soon follows; we prefer our own desolation
rather than the comfort found in his word and the sacraments. All this
leads to violence against anyone we think is a threat to our own “certainties”:
the unborn child, the elderly and infirm, the migrant, the alien among us, or
our neighbour who does not live up to our expectations.
Creation itself becomes a
silent witness to this cooling of charity. The earth is poisoned by
refuse, discarded out of carelessness or for self-interest. The seas,
themselves polluted, engulf the remains of countless shipwrecked victims of
forced migration. The heavens, which in God’s plan, were created to sing
his praises, are rent by engines raining down implements of death.
Love can also grow cold
in our own communities. In the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii
Gaudium, I sought to describe the most evident signs of this lack of love:
selfishness and spiritual sloth, sterile pessimism, the temptation to
self-absorption, constant warring among ourselves, and the worldly mentality
that makes us concerned only for appearances, and thus lessens our missionary
zeal.”
Nkem Nweke/GEE
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