Lent Appeal
Lent invites us to conversion, to a change in mindset, so that life’s truth and beauty may be found not so much in possessing as in giving, not so much in accumulating as in sowing and sharing goodness….Alms-giving is a way of touching the sufferings of the poor with our own hands and heart. (Pope Francis)
On this Lenten journey, back to what is essential, the Gospel proposes three steps which the Lord invites us to undertake without hypocrisy and pretence: prayer, almsgiving, fasting.
Prayer reunites us to God. Charity unites us to our neighbour. Fasting unites us to ourselves.
- Lent invites us to focus, first of all on the Almighty, in prayer, which frees us from that horizontal and mundane life where we find time for self but forget God.
- Lent invites us to focus on others, with the charity that frees us from the vanity of acquiring and of thinking that things are only good if they are good for me.
- Lent invites us to look inside our heart, with fasting, which frees us from attachment to things and from the worldliness that numbs the heart.
(Pope Francis)