Call to conversion in Lent

Archbishop Joseph Mercieca and Bishop Nikol Cauchi, in their Pastoral Letter for Lent, encouraged everyone to move ahead along the path of conversion, especially during the liturgical season of Lent.

This is the full text of the pastoral letter, dated Ash Wednesday:

Back to God

Lent recalls the mystery of Christ in the desert.

With his unique experience of sacrifice in the desert, Jesus shows how he surrendered completely to the will of the Father.

The Church offers the liturgical season of Lent so that we may renew ourselves internally through the Word of God and learn to live always better the love which Christ instills in the heart of all those who believe in him.

Lent helps us realise better not only our human frailty but also how, through conversion, we may live under the protection of God and close to the loving Lord who never stops seeking us, to embrace us in his love.

The culture of doubt

We are living at a time when man is passing through a strong experience wherein, among other things, man is losing his sense of direction.

We are living in an era in which man is harbouring doubts about everything: including God's will, as shown to us by the one and only Saviour of mankind.

We are living in a mentality where doubt is becoming a culture, and where one is seeing the emergence of the wrong conviction that there is nothing which is absolute, and therefore we should not be afraid to live according to what, in our view, better suits our particular circumstances.

Much of what used to serve as a point of reference to our predecessors, as they were convinced that it was based on solid foundations, is now ending being caught in the ups and downs of the waves of doubts. This is very often also encouraged by certain media discussions that, by the way they are organised and conducted, end up in creating more confusion instead of helping one to understand and see things more clearly.

Although the Divine Lord told us, loudly and clearly, that the Truth is He, the Only Son of God, one meets situations where, in the so-called search for truth, one finds people sowing and cultivating the mentality that there is more than one truth, and that there exist only opinions.

One also meets persons who interpret the moral vision and teachings of the Church, based on the Gospel of Christ, as if they were rules that restrict man and create obstacles for the person, instead of rules that help Christians to live according to the will of God, as in fact they are.

The Gospel cannot be changed

A situation has been reached where certain people are saying that the Church should revise and change her teaching in line with current times and according to today's human desire, otherwise it will be her fault if she loses followers.

Similar statements are often made with reference to Christian teaching regarding certain sectors, for instance that only God may decide about the gift of life, and that God wills that marriage should be between one man and one woman until death.

It sometimes also happens that sexual activity outside marriage, contraception, cohabitation, infidelity, and the absence of a moral and spiritual vision of the marriage covenant are depicted as unavoidable in today's world, in spite of the harm that such behaviour causes, not only to those concerned, but also to the common good of society.

Yet, whoever presents such arguments would be forgetting something which is of fundamental importance: the teachings of the Church are not human precepts, but the Law of God himself. The Church pronounces, teaches and defends this law with all her might.

No one in the Church, not even the Pope, can change anything from Christ's teaching.

The Church can change, or establish her own ecclesiastical laws, as it did with the passage of time. However, the Church can never change anything from Christ's teaching, or that which has a direct link to what Christ taught.

Christ knew that his teaching was not easy to follow. He also knew that the kind of sacrifices his teaching requested from man might have scared people away. Nonetheless, Christ remained clear in his teaching, even when, afraid of the sacrifice that Christ required from man, there were some who renounced, and stopped following Christ.

All this shows that man would be making a serious mistake if he thought that he could continue to follow Jesus but, at the same time, chooses to embrace Christ's teaching only whenever it suited him or her to be able to continue living as he or she pleases.

Living as Christians to the full

Whoever wants to follow Christ fully has to embrace and live all the Evangelical values as passed on to us by the Divine Teacher. Man will be seriously misleading himself if he believes that one can be a full Christian, even if one chooses whatever one deems fit from the Evangelical values and the teachings of the Church, based on the will of God.

We have to bear in mind that there are certain elements in Christian teaching which, if we reject them, we cannot truly remain full Christians because these same elements constitute the foundations on which the evangelical message is based. There are also certain teachings which we cannot avoid or interpret in our own way without violating our Christian conscience.

When it comes to religion, it is not a question of seeing what appeals or otherwise to us, what is easy or most difficult, what people and public opinion are saying. To truly embrace our religion, we have to ask what God wants from us, what Christ commands us or prohibits us from doing, and what is the teaching of the Church who, according to Christ's mandate as the custodian and protector of this teaching, pronounces and defends it from errors.

We need to be consistent. If we truly want to be full followers of Christ, we need to make all the necessary decisive choices and sacrifices that Christ's teaching demands from us. Whoever we are, Christianity has the same requirements: to embrace Christ in faith and to apply his teachings in the concrete situations of life.

One meets people who claim that what is important is that one is sincere with oneself. This is truly important. Everyone is obliged to do what his well-formed conscience tells him is right. However, being sincere means that we are honestly convinced that we are making every effort to ensure we are doing the right thing. The person honestly searching for the truth does not stop at asking whether he or she is moving ahead according to his or her personal opinion, but also asks whether his or her choice and decision are truly according to what is right.

A time for conversion

At the beginning of our spiritual Lenten journey, we bishops would like to encourage everyone to move ahead along the path of conversion, a path that leads to an ever-deeper knowledge of the mystery of goodness, which God has prepared for each and every one of us.

Through his experience in the desert, Jesus showed us the kind of strength man could acquire when, through prayer, man seeks God's help not to be afraid in the face of sacrifice, and to choose what is good.

Prayer helps us, personally and as a community, to attain the strength needed for authentic Christian living in full fidelity to Christ as he continues to live on, in the communion of his Church.

As Christians we have to feel it our grave duty to learn about our religion always more, and to strive to live it always better. We have to be always on the alert to avoid erroneous opinions invading our belief, or having our behaviour stained with actions that are contrary to the Lord's teachings.

We have to strengthen the foundations of our nation's dear religion to avoid ending up in the same situation of the man of the Gospel parable who built his house on sand, seeing it ending up in rubble the moment it faced heavy rains and strong winds.

It is necessary, therefore, that we all seek a true conversion, which can only happen through authentic and continued learning. This is required of every category of Christians, but in particular of the new generations: children, adolescents and young people. In this way, we will be able to ensure that, also in the future, our faith in Christ, brought to us by our Father Saint Paul the Apostle, will remain intact.

Rich in mercy

God knows that we are weak human beings... that we often find it very difficult to abide by his will. However, God is also rich in mercy. The Law of God is the way it is, because it is designed according to man's best well being.

On the other hand, whatever our shortcomings in following the will of God, the Lord will continue to love us and wait for our contrition and return to him.

Holy Mary, our Mother, who through her obedience to the will of God was the first to share in the glory that the Lord has in store for his children, will surely help us.