Catholic Online

ROME (Catholic Online) – Confront evil, wicked passions and vices with the spiritual weapons of prayer, penance and fasting, Pope Benedict XVI said on Ash Wednesday.

Pope Benedict, after his Wednesday audience, opened the Roman Catholic Church's observance of Lent with a penitential procession, late afternoon celebration of Mass at the Basilica of Santa Sabina and the imposition of ashes.

In his Feb. 21 homily delivered before placing ashes on the heads of cardinals, bishops, clergy and lay people, the pope said that the Lenten period is a time "to become reconciled with God in Jesus Christ."

The liturgy of Ash Wednesday carries with it a "double meaning," he said, pointing to the call "to an inner change, to conversion and penance" as well as referring to "the precariousness of human existence."

"We have 40 days to deepen" the relationship with God during "the austere period of Lent," Pope Benedict said, noting the faithful have "useful instruments to achieve a true inner and communal renewal: charity or almsgiving, prayer and penance or fasting."

"Such external gestures, which must be performed to please God and not to get men's approval," he said, "are acceptable to him if they express the heart's determination to serve him only in simplicity and generosity."

Fasting and other Lenten practices are motivated by "man's need to purify himself from within and detoxify himself from sin and evil," the pope said, allowing the faithful to free themselves "from the slavery of his own self " and more available "to serve his brothers."

Such actions are "spiritual weapons in the fight against evil, wicked passions and vices," he said.

In his 1,200-word 2007 Lenten message released Feb. 13, Pope Benedict said that Lent is time when Catholics are called to recognize the wounds inflicted upon the dignity of the human person, linking the nailing of Jesus to the cross with society's contempt for life and human exploitation.

The papal message focused on love, the theme of his encyclical Deus caritas est (God is love), the cross and the responsibility of Christians to respond to love in dealings with others.

"The response the Lord ardently desires of us is above all that we welcome his love and allow ourselves to be drawn to him," the pope said. "Accepting his love, however, is not enough. We need to respond to such love and devote ourselves to communicating it to others."

The papal message, dated Nov. 21, 2006, was released at the Vatican by Archbishop Paul Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum.

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, this year Feb. 21, and runs through Holy Thursday, April 5. Easter will be celebrated three days later, this year on April 8.

The pope noted the theme of this year's Lenten observance is taken from the Gospel of John (19:37): "They shall look on him whom they have pierced."

Contemplating Jesus pierced in his side nailed to the cross should move Christians "to open our hearts to others, recognizing the wounds inflicted upon the dignity of the human person," he said.

"It moves us, in particular, to fight every form of contempt for life and human exploitation and to alleviate the tragedies of loneliness and abandonment of so many people," Pope Benedict said.

He called Catholics to focus their Lenten prayer and penance on "Christ crucified who, dying on Calvary, revealed fully for us the love of God."

The pope, as he did in his encyclical, tied agape, "the self-giving love of one who looks exclusively for the good of the other" to eros, "the love of one who … yearns for union with the beloved."

"Let us look at Christ pierced in the cross! He is the unsurpassing revelation of God's love, a love in which eros and agape, far from being opposed, enlighten each other," Pope Benedict said.

"Only the love that unites the free gift of oneself with the impassioned desire for reciprocity instills a joy, which eases the heaviest of burdens," he said.

Yet, the pope stressed, that mankind from its origins has been "seduced by the lies of the evil one," rejecting "God's love in the illusion of a self-sufficiency that is impossible."

Adam, he added, was the first who "withdrew from that source of life who is God himself" and became "an extreme sign" of mankind's "loneliness and powerlessness."

The Lenten journey, he said, becomes an opportunity "to come out of ourselves in order to open ourselves, in trustful abandonment, to the merciful embrace of the father."

"Let us live Lent then," the pope urged, "in which welcoming the love of Jesus, we learn to spread it around us with every word and deed."

It is only through the expression of that love of God through its giving back "to our neighbor" can the Christian "be able to participate fully in the joy of Easter."

"May Lent be for every Christian a renewed experience of God's love given to us in Christ, a love that each day we, in turn, must 'regive' to our neighbor, especially to the one who suffers most and is in need," the pope said.

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