Archbishop Joseph Mercieca last Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, wrote this year's Lenten Pastoral Letter.

A Curia spokesman pointed out that, for various years, this pastoral letter was prepared jointly by the Archbishop of Malta and the Bishop of Gozo.

Since the Diocese of Gozo now has a new bishop, this year the bishops felt it appropriate that the Mgr Mario Grech should dedicate his first pastoral letter specifically for the faithful in the Gozo diocese.

This is the full text of Archbishop Mercieca's letter, signed jointly with Curia chancellor Mgr Carmel Zammit:

At the beginning of the holy period of Lent, it is good and proper that we, as individuals and as a community, stop to reflect for a while on what we need to do to ensure that this special time in the life of Christians does not come and go without leaving abundant spiritual fruit in our lives.

In today's hectic and consumeristic way of life, with the kind of lifestyles often proposed to us by certain mentalities and cultures that are setting God aside ever more, it may easily happen that we, perhaps without really wanting to or without us noticing it, start moving away from God and stop behaving according to what God expects from us in our lives.

One of the major signs that man is moving away from God is when man starts thinking that the measure of what is good or bad for himself is exclusively in his own hands and it is up to him alone to decide about it. When man is overcome and gripped by this big temptation of our time, man gives the cold shoulder to God and starts doing whatever he likes and pleases him. This would lead to bad consequences in man's relations with the Creator and his neighbour.

When man sets himself on such a road, he would be inviting the kind of harm that emerges from the sort of egoism that engulfs man when he starts considering solely what he wants for himself, and which he feels is good for him at that particular moment of his life, without any reference to God's will.

Many of the disorders of our time are rooted in the big mistake that man commits when he forgets that God wants us to love Him above all with all our hearts, and to love our neighbour as ourselves.

The call of Lent

Lent offers us the occasion so that, whatever our past has been, we reconcile ourselves with God and our neighbour.

During Lent, the Church calls us to prayer, penance, fasting, self-sacrifice, to placing ourselves before God, and to rediscover ourselves and what God has prepared for us. The Church does not do this as if to punish us or sadden our hearts, but to remind us how much God loves us, and to show how we can respond to His love.

During Lent, the Church reminds us of our call, as human beings, to things beyond worldly and material goods that can easily divert us from what is essential. The Church also reminds us of our fundamental calling: we come from God, and have to return to God by reaching towards the Resurrection which is the path opened and prepared for us by the Risen Redeemer.

Lent is therefore a time of a great truth, a profound truth which encourages us to change and renew ourselves, restores hope in us, and helps us embrace all that brings to us peace with God and neighbour.

The prodigal son

Sin causes us a lot of harm. It distances us from God and neighbour. However, whatever the gravity of our guilt before God and before man, we should not lose heart. Whoever we are, whatever our behaviour in life, God still loves us and continues to do so.

If we feel ourselves distanced from God, the source of the problem would be just with us and the obstacles caused to us by sin. However, even if our past is marred with some kind of injustice, wrong doing, division, harm, or some other human weakness, this does not mean that God no longer loves us. God continues to offer us healing. God continues to invite and encourage us to return to him so that he could welcome and embrace us in the same way the Father of the Parable welcomed and embraced his prodigal son.

That son, who received from his father the portion of the inheritance that was due to him, left home, and went to a far country where he squandered his possessions in loose living, may be compared to the man of every period. The parable indirectly reminds us of every breach of the covenant of love, every loss of grace, every infidelity.

In the narrative of the prodigal son, the figure of the father reveals God as a Father. The conduct of the father in the parable and his whole behaviour, which manifest his internal attitude, enable us to rediscover all the threads of God's mercy. The father of the prodigal son shows himself faithful to his fatherhood, faithful to the love that he had always lavished on his son. This fidelity is expressed in the parable not only by the father's immediate readiness to welcome the son who returned to him after having squandered his inheritance. The father expresses this fidelity more fully by his expressed joy, and the big feast he organised to welcome anew his son in the love and dignity of the same house from which the son had gone away of his own choosing.

Infinite mercy

We all know that God's perfection is infinite. God's mercy is the same: it is without any limit, infinite. Also infinite therefore is God's enthusiastic readiness to receive every prodigal son who returns home. The power of forgiveness which flows continually from the sacrifice of the Divine Lamb knows no end. No human sin can prevail over, or limit, this power of love that forgives.

The power of forgiveness gained through Christ's sacrifice can only be limited on the part of man if he lacks good will, desire to convert, and readiness to repent. In other words, this power can only be limited by man's persistence in obstinacy, opposing God's grace in him, and rejecting truth especially the witness of the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ.

No one should lack the courage to make the necessary step to return to the Father who is inviting him to accept the forgiveness acquired for us by Christ. After all, we know that our ties with the Father as his sons and daughters cannot be removed or eliminated by some doing, whatever this may be. The prodigal son realised this truth: it was precisely this realisation that led him to understand the kind of dignity he had lost away from his father's house, and so stands up to return, repented, to his father's love and peace.

'Forgive us as we forgive'

Man not only finds and sees God's mercy, but is also called to show mercy towards others. Christ's teaching was very clear: "Blessed are the merciful, they shall have mercy shown them."

The beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount indicate the way of conversion and of reform in life. However, the beatitude referring to those who are merciful is particularly eloquent in this regard. Man attains the mercy of God to the extent that he himself is internally transformed in the spirit of that love towards his neighbour.

Each time we say the prayer Jesus himself taught us, the "Our Father", we pray to God to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Let us, during this Lent, put in practice always better this so powerful prayer to the Father.

The Lord will help us, during this Lent, to strive so that, through mercy and forgiveness, we manage to restore love and peace wherever these are weak or missing - in marriage, in the family, at work, in the community, in society, in politics.

Let us return to the House of the Father.

God, our Father, is waiting for us to meet Him, repentant of our failures, so that through His Son who entered this world to redeem us, He changes us into new persons, friends with God and with each other. Let us not be afraid. God expects only that we open our hearts to him, because the Lord wants to live in us.

We impart on you our pastoral blessing as a pledge of all heavenly favours.