Cardinal  Felipe Arizmendi , Bishop Emeritus of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and responsible for the Doctrine of the Faith at the  Mexican Episcopal Conference (CEM) , offers Exaudi readers his weekly article.

FACTS

We are beginning Lent, a time to correct our mistakes and strive to rise with Christ to a new life. However, for some, this time goes unnoticed. For others, it is merely a custom of receiving ashes and watching Holy Week reenactments as entertainment.

Some people make sacrifices, both to control their eating and drinking and to unite themselves with the Passion of Jesus, offering their deprivations for the forgiveness of their own and others’ sins. Some offer to forgo bread or tortillas, abstain from watching so much television and putting their cell phones aside for a while, get up earlier, and help more with household chores. Others offer to abstain from alcoholic beverages during these days, but once they’re over, they return to their old habits. Their sacrifice is commendable and should not be underestimated, but we would all hope that this self-control would be more consistent, for their own good and for the well-being of their families.

Conversely, there are those who consider themselves almost perfect and refuse to acknowledge their own mistakes. They blame others for everything, but they themselves refuse to accept that they are also failing. It’s like in a marriage: the husband, especially if he’s one of those old-fashioned machos, refuses to accept that he’s wrong and blames his wife for everything; nothing seems right to him, due to his own ingrained machismo. And vice versa: the wife who feels perfect and doesn’t embrace the changes she should make in her behavior and character, for the sake of the children and the marriage. The worst flaw is not accepting one’s own mistakes.

LIGHTNING

Pope Leo XIV, in his Message for this Lent, invites us to open our hearts to God and to others. And he proposes some very specific abstinences from language. He says:

“Lent is the time when the Church, with maternal solicitude, invites us to put the mystery of God back at the center of our lives, so that our faith may regain its momentum and our hearts may not be scattered among the worries and distractions of daily life.

Every path of conversion begins when we allow ourselves to be touched by the Word and receive it with docility of spirit. There is, therefore, a link between the gift of God’s Word, the space of hospitality we offer it, and the transformation it brings about. For this reason, the Lenten journey becomes a propitious opportunity to listen to the voice of the Lord and renew our commitment to follow Christ, walking with Him along the road that leads up to Jerusalem, where the mystery of His passion, death, and resurrection is fulfilled.

This year I would like to draw attention to the importance of giving space to the Word through listening, since the willingness to listen is the first sign that manifests the desire to enter into a relationship with the other.

God himself, by revealing himself to Moses from the burning bush, shows that listening is a distinctive feature of his being: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt and have heard them crying out in pain” (Ex 3:7). Listening to the cry of the oppressed is the beginning of a story of liberation, in which the Lord also involves Moses, sending him to open a path of salvation for his children reduced to slavery.

Listening to the Word in the liturgy educates us to listen more authentically to reality. Among the many voices that permeate our personal and social lives, Sacred Scripture enables us to recognize the voice that cries out from suffering and injustice, so that it does not go unanswered. Entering into this inner disposition of receptivity means allowing ourselves to be instructed by God today to listen as He does, until we recognize that the plight of the poor represents a cry that, throughout human history, constantly challenges our lives, our societies, our political and economic systems, and especially the Church. 

If Lent is a time for listening, fasting is a concrete practice that prepares us to receive the Word of God. Abstaining from food, in fact, is an ancient and irreplaceable ascetic exercise on the path to conversion.

However, for fasting to retain its Gospel truth and avoid the temptation to make hearts proud, it must always be lived with faith and humility. Fasting should also include other forms of deprivation aimed at helping us adopt a more sober lifestyle. Therefore, I would like to invite you to a very concrete and often underappreciated form of abstinence: abstaining from using words that affect and hurt our neighbor. Let us begin to disarm language by renouncing hurtful words, hasty judgment, speaking ill of those who are absent and cannot defend themselves, and slander. Let us strive, instead, to learn to choose our words carefully and cultivate kindness: in our families, among friends, in the workplace, on social media, in political debates, in the media, and in Christian communities. Then, many words of hatred will give way to words of hope and peace.  

ACTIONS

The Pope himself recommends:  “Let us ask for the grace to live a Lent that makes our ear more attentive to God and to those most in need. Let us ask for the strength of a fast that also extends to our tongues, so that words that wound may diminish and space for the voices of others may grow. And let us commit ourselves to making our communities places where the cry of those who suffer finds welcome and where listening generates paths to liberation, making us more willing and diligent in helping to build the civilization of love.”