We are prodigal children. We have in many ways squandered our
Father’s inheritance. Provided with a wonderful garden to live
in, we poison its air, we pollute its water, we erode its
topsoil.
Provided with a wonderful family with whom to share our lives, we
condemn many of our family members to survival-level existence, we
refuse to associate with many of them, and we contribute to the
death of many of them.
Lent is a time to ‘pass over,’ to pass from the world of
injustice we have created over to a world of reconciliation. It is a
time to “turn hatred to love, conflict to peace, death to
eternal life.”
We know that such a turn can take place because we have a Father who
sees us while we are still a long way off, who catches sight of us
and is deeply moved, who will run out to meet us, throw his arms
around our necks and kiss us.
We know that such a turn can take place because Jesus Christ brought
mankind the gift of reconciliation by the suffering and death he
endured.
The message of Lent, therefore, is clear: “we implore you, in
Christ’s name: be reconciled to God.”
The first step, of course, is to do what the younger son did:
“I will break away and return to my father, and say to him,
‘Father, I have sinned against you.’”
Such a confession will enable us to “hasten toward Easter with
the eagerness of faith and love,” and it will make possible
the rejoicing which today’s liturgy foretells and encourages.
This kingdom and this salvation ... are available to every human being as grace and mercy, and yet at the same time each individual must gain them ... through toil and suffering, through a life lived according to the gospel, through abnegation and the cross, through the spirit of the beatitudes. But above all each individual gains them through a total interior renewal which the gospel calls metanoia; it is a radical conversion, a profound change of mind and heart.
Pope Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 10, 1975.