Feb 22 Sun - Is personal conversion the main requirement of this Lent?

Описание: Feb 22 Sun
Is personal conversion the main requirement of this Lent?

"You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve."
These words, addressed by our Lord Jesus Christ to Satan, are the program of life for man, called to the service of God and God alone. Yet, throughout his life, man is exposed and susceptible to all "temptations," driven by the devil, who does everything possible to dominate and manipulate man by trying to set him against God.

Faced with Satan, who promises man even "all the kingdoms of the world" in exchange for worship, Jesus responds with the light and strength of the Word of God, who had warned the chosen people against the temptation of idolatry.

Lent is a time for inner conversion. Sacred Scripture presents human life in its relationship with God as a continuous inner conversion. God, in His infinite love, calls man to live in communion with Him. But man is fragile, weak, sinful; therefore, to enter into communion with God, he must reverse the path that leads him to evil; he must even change ways of thinking that are opposed to the will and word of God.

And Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, calls men to conversion: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Lent represents in the life of the Church a cry for conversion: "If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts." Lent is a continuous, urgent call to the urgency of authentic interior conversion.

Conversion is fundamentally a turning away from sin and a going toward the living God. This is the invitation of the prophet Hosea, who insists on the interior character of authentic conversion, always stirred and inspired by love and knowledge of God.

Conversion is a gift from God, which man must ask for with fervent prayer and which Christ has earned for us. This is what today's liturgy has led us to meditate on in the passage from St. Paul's Letter to the Romans: through the disobedience of the first Adam, sin and death entered the world and dominate man. But if it is true that "through the offense of the one man (that is, Adam), death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ."

Christians, strengthened by the power that comes from Christ, increasingly distance themselves from sin, from specific sins, mortal or venial. Moreover, by overcoming evil inclinations, vices, and habitual sin, they will increasingly weaken the inclination to sin. This occurs to the extent that grace, God's gift, granted by the merits "of one man, Jesus Christ," abounds in us more and more.

In this way, conversion is a gradual, effective, continuous struggle to pass from the "old" Adam to the "new" one, who is Christ. This exhilarating spiritual process, during the period of Lent, must become particularly conscious and incisive in every Christian.