My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord,
Joseph Ratzinger was elected Bishop of Rome when he was 78 years old; most of us by that point in our lives are already many years into retirement. Reflecting on his election, the newly elected Pontiff remarked, “As the trend in the ballots slowly made me realize that – in a manner of speaking the guillotine would fall on me – I started to feel quite dizzy… I thought that I had done my life’s work and could now hope to live out my days in peace… I told the Lord with deep conviction, ‘Don’t do this to me. You have younger and better (candidates) who could take up this great task with a totally different energy and with different strength.’” Yet Pope Benedict has very capably led the Church through a tumultuous time.
As we begin Lent during this Year of Faith, we are encouraged by the message of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, with a theme, “Believing in charity calls forth charity,” reminding us of the Gospel passage from 1 John 4:16, “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.”
The relationship between faith and charity is very definable. These two virtues remind us of the intimate connection between our faith lives and our lives of charity. The Holy Father, in his great Encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est,” explained the relationship between faith and individual belief which allows us to encounter God, who is all love, and which also brings us to understand the love of neighbor. It is the love of Christ that urges us forth as 2 Corinthians 5:14 reminds us.
Lent is the time when charity becomes our life in faith, since the entire Christian life is a response to God’s love. The Holy Father reminds us, “Baptism (sacramentum fidei) precedes the Eucharist (sacramentum caritatis), but is ordered to it, the Eucharist being the fullness of the Christian journey.”
Pope Benedict continues, “In a similar way, faith precedes charity, but faith is genuine only if crowned by charity. Everything begins from the humble acceptance of faith (“knowing that one is loved by God”), but has to arrive at the truth of charity (“knowing that one is loved by God”), which remains forever, as the fulfillment of all of the virtues. (1 Cor 13:13).”
During the time of Lent, we have the opportunity to relive the grace of our baptism. We do so by performing works of charity. Ash Wednesday reminds us of the call to repentance by way of exercising charity. The presence of God rests in our Lenten observance, and gives us an opportunity to make faith come alive. The Holy Father, in his Lenten message, also says, “Faith without works is like a tree without fruit: the two virtues imply one another. Lent invites us, through the traditional practices of the Christian life, to nourish our faith by careful and extended listening to the word of God and by receiving the sacraments, and at the same time to grow in charity and in love for God and neighbor, not least through the specific practices of fasting, penance and almsgiving.”
The Lenten program given in the Gospel of Ash Wednesday is simple and, yet, direct. “We must decrease, He must increase.” In other words, we must die to self. And so what will be our Lenten practices this year to facilitate this dying to self? How will we fast and from what will we abstain? What penances are appropriate in our life? What penances can perhaps change our lifestyle to make it more in conformity with the virtue of charity? And, finally, what alms should we give, what sacrifices can we make to increase our love of God and neighbor?
In announcing his decision to renounce the Petrine ministry, the Pope stated, “I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering.”
In the humble opinion of this spectator, the Lord will respond, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
As we put out into the deep this Lent, we know the goal of deepening our faith through the exercise of charity, which will culminate in the celebration of the Pascal Mystery at this Easter. Like the Holy Father, in humility and prayer, we must come to see our own limitations and entrust ourselves to the plan of God. In order to arrive at the glorious mystery, however, we must die to self. And so we begin this Lent in that spirit of self-denial. We will discover, like Pope Benedict, that by denying self, we will find our true selves in Jesus Christ.