Daily Catholic Reflections on the Daily Readings
Ash Wednesday: March 2, 2022
Scripture:
Joel 2:12-18
2 Corinthians 5:20—six:two
Matthew six:1-half-dozen, 16-18
Reflection:
Our kickoff reading for today sets out the challenge of Lent for u.s.a.: a phone call from God to "return to me with your whole center." An expression of penance was to tear one'southward clothing. Just God says: "Rend your hearts, not your garments." We are to tear our hearts open up. The call is to become beyond an external return to God and render with our "whole heart."
Equally Christians, our wholehearted turning to God is in many spiritual conversions throughout our lives, as we fall more than deeply in love with God, and all that God loves, the whole world. We might ask ourselves: where does our love for God and God's earth telephone call us into deeper conversion this Lent?
St. John Paul 2 was the kickoff Pope to telephone call us to "ecological conversion." In 2001 he said that "humanity has disappointed God's expectations" by devastating plains and valleys, polluting h2o and air, and disfiguring the Globe's habitat. "We must therefore encourage and support the 'ecological conversion' which in contempo decades has made humanity more sensitive to the ending to which information technology has been heading," St. John Paul II said.
In his encyclical Laudato Si' released in 2015, Pope Francis echoes St. John Paul Two. Pope Francis identifies our current ecological crisis every bit a "summons to profound interior conversion." What everyone needs, he writes, is an "'ecological conversion,' whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ get evident in their human relationship with the world around them." (LS 217).
The Lenten tradition of fasting ("giving something upwardly") helps us experience our dependency on God. Possibly this Lent our fasting volition as well help the states experience our interdependence with all Life in our common journey on this planet. Pope Francis has some suggestions of what we can practise, and some things nosotros tin give up:
"…….ecology responsibility can encourage ways of acting which directly and significantly affect the world effectually us, such every bit fugitive the apply of plastic and newspaper, reducing h2o consumption, separating decline, cooking merely what can reasonably be consumed, showing care for other living beings, using public transport or car-pooling, planting trees, turning off unnecessary lights, or any number of other practices. All of these reflect a generous and worthy inventiveness which brings out the best in homo beings."
Patty Gillis is a retired Pastoral Minister. She served on the Board of Directors at St. Paul of the Cantankerous Passionist Retreat and Briefing Center in Detroit. She is currently a member of the Laudato Si Vision Fulfillment Squad and the Passionist Solidarity Network.
Source: https://passionist.org/daily-reflections/
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