Lent: Prayer and Love
March 2nd, 2022
Solemn Feast of Ash Wednesday
Meditation of the day of Pontiff Samuel
(Draft)
Dear faithful, let us remain grafted into the Word of the Saviour, so that prayer may return to the centre of our daily life during this Lenten Season, by trusting and entrusting ourselves to the will and the Goodness of the Father.
A prayer made with heart. A prayer made inwardly. A prayer made from heart to heart with the Father: a Father who is Good, a Father who is Holy, a Father who loves His sons and who now is closer to us than ever.
Here is that the love jointly with prayer, becomes the protagonist of this Time of Lent. A greater love towards God and a greater love towards our neighbours, towards our brothers, towards all those whom the Holy Spirit will place every day on our path.
Let the Spirit be the day-to-day guide of your quotidian life. Let the Holy Spirit guide your steps on the path of love, on the path of peace, so to remain humble and joyful and to thank the Father for the personal calling received and to pray to the Father that it may bear fruit, and not mere appearances. The outward appearance belongs to the hypocrites, to those who use the Name of God only for ‘showing off’.
Whoever loves God, loves Him in essence and substance. Not an outward appearance, not hypocrisy, but essential and substantial love, so that everything may concur to the good of God’s sons.
We offer this day, this beginning of Lent to the Father. We offer to the Father all the love we have for His Heart. We offer the love inside every family: husband-wife, parents-children, brothers-sisters, so that love may circulate in the family, the domestic church. And thus we offer to the Father our daily life, our work, our relationship with those we are called to work with, so that we may manifest true brotherhood, also in this, as far as possible. And thus, day after day, we shall arrive at the day of Resurrection, to be reborn anew, together with Christ the Lord and, even more consciously, to live the Kingdom, the New Jerusalem, established here by the Father to welcome all the sons who desire to love Him even more, or at least desire to change the kind of their participation in the Plan of Love and Salvation wanted by the Father.
Come to the Little Cradle of Baby Jesus, where the divine Child awaits you in order to welcome you, to bless you, and to cleanse from sin all those who ask for it with a sincere heart.
This is the meaning of this Holy Time of Lent. On the example of Maria Giuseppina, the Maiden of God, who taught us how to live our every time with her simplicity and her extraordinariness, let us live this Time, every moment, placing, I say again, prayer and love for God and our neighbours at the centre once again.