Each year the church invites us to reflect on how we live our Catholic faith. Lent is a time for us to reflect and to review our life in light of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Gospels. One of the prayers that may be used as the priest imposes ashes on our head is the words of St. Mark Gospel, “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel”, Mark 1:15
As we begin our journey through Lent, I encourage all Catholics to continue our traditional Lenten practices: increased prayer, appropriate fasting, penance, and a continued effort to undertake and to foster charitable giving.
During our journey through Lent, I encourage each one of us to reflect on how we conform our lives to the principles and to the values of the Gospel. How good it would be if each one of us spend some time reading the Gospel and reflecting on how we conform our lives and attitudes to the Heart of Christ.
Our Holy Father Pope Benedict in his Lenten message spoke about the culture of justice and reminded us that evil and injustice many times comes from our own hearts. It is my hope that we would all place special emphasis during this Lenten season on the virtues of justice and charity. That we would respect each other for who we are, “children of God created in his likeness and image”; and that in all our relationships that we would treat each other as Jesus treated the people with whom He had contact with, and as revealed to us in the Gospels. Let us continue to look to Jesus as our hope and as an example of how we should live our lives for He is “the way, the truth and the life.”