Young people should not be afraid to take initiatives to be close to those who wept, Bishop Mario Grech said in his pastoral letter for Lent.

In his letter, which is being read in Gozitan churches this weekend and which can be read in the pdf documents below, Bishop Grech spoke about the people he saw weeping throughout his life as a priest - some with happiness, many others of a broken heart.

“Whatever the reason for the tears in your eyes, God who is weeping with you wishes to let you savour his compassion and mercy. His tears mix with yours and transform salty tears to sweet tears, because divine tears are the dew of the Holy Spirit,” he said.

“I want to encourage those who weep. I wish to remind them that if we humans do not take notice of them and leave them to wail on their own, God loves them so much that He bends over them and cries with them...”

Bishop Grech said that this applied to every kind of wailing, “but mostly if our weeping is the silent cry due to all kinds of spiritual weakness we might have.”

He noted that nowadays, many, through their egoism and indifference, were not prepared to weep with those who wept.

“Very few people give their time for someone who weeps. This behaviour exposes the fact that human poverty is increasing.  Although, on the one hand, crocodile tears have become more evident because there are those who know too well that if they do not cry they would not suck from either private entities or from government, on the other hand, there are others whose tear ducts seem blocked or their hearts have become hard as stone. These are capable of closing their eyes and ears when faced by the real suffering of the others. And so, nowadays there are many who weep alone.”

People, he said, were also weeping in the Church.

“There are those who are seeking  bread (the Word of God) but are receiving a “stone”; there are those who wish to celebrate the sacraments but cannot; there are those who yearn for a renewed Church but is finding strong resistance; there are those who have been confused by the bad example of some of us priests; there are those who trusted us but were deceived; there are those who were flabbergasted by the separations and piques among us; there were some who cracked and were shown the main door.

“Jesus weeps on this type of Church as he wept over Jerusalem..."

He said it was a pity that there remained people in the Church who still could not understand that work intended to reduce the suffering causing weeping was more important than any other activity.

He appealed to Christians to profit from this time of Lent so that, with God’s help, there would be less weeping through sorrow and more tears of  joy.

“I believe that with a little attention we can continue to multiply gestures that are witness to our loving and merciful heart.”

He also appealed to young people to help build a world where there would be no weeping and to not be afraid to take initiatives to be close to those who wept.