Lent

The goal is to be able to wear on Easter night the ability to look into each other's eyes with the light of the risen Jesus, our hope. The wisdom of Mother Church, always a teacher of life, immerses the period of the forty days of Lent in the river of our baptism, swimming with the energy acquired in the exercise of prayer, preserved in the use of the pure necessary, to flow into the beneficial stream of charity: it is the desire to not be able to be happy alone.  To help us rediscover the soul of prayer, courtesy of the newspaper Avvenire we publish this writing by Ermes Ronchi.

"Lord, teach us to pray." Everything prays in the world: the trees of the forest and the lilies of the field, the golden ears of wheat, mountains and hills, rivers and springs, the cypresses on the hill and the infinite patience of the light. They pray without words: "every creature prays singing the hymn of his existence, singing the psalm of his life" (Japanese Bishops' Conference). The disciples did not ask the Master for a prayer or some formulas to repeat; they already knew many of them, they had an entire psalter to act as their guiding star. But they ask: "Teach us to stand before God as you stand, in your nights of vigil, in your cascades of joy, with an adult and child heart at the same time." 

«To pray is to reattach the earth to the sky» (M. Zundel): teach us to reattach ourselves to God, as one attaches the mouth to the source.
«And he said to them: when you pray say “Father”». 

All the prayers of Jesus that the Gospels have handed down to us begin with this name. It is the name of the source, the word of beginnings and childhood, the name of life. Praying is addressing God by calling him "father", saying "dad", in the language of children and not in that of the rabbis, in the dialect of the heart and not in that of the scribes. He is a God who knows about hugs and home; an affectionate, close, warm God, from whom we receive the few indispensable things to live well.
«Hallowed be your name». 

Your name is “love”. May love be sanctified on earth, by everyone, throughout the world. May love sanctify the earth, transform and transfigure this story of ferocious or indifferent idols.
«Your kingdom come». Yours, the one where the poor are princes and children enter first. And may it be more beautiful than all dreams, more intense than all the tears of those who lived and died in the night to reach it.
«Continue to give us our daily bread every day». 

We are here, together, all dependent on heaven every day. Give us bread that is "ours" and not just "mine", shared bread, because if one is full and one is dying of hunger, that is not your bread. And if the fragrant bread, which awaits us at the center of the table, is too much for us, give us good seed for our land; and if ready-made bread is not something for adult children, provide good yeast for the hard dough of the days.
«And take away our sins from us». 

Throw them away, out of mind. Embrace our fragility and we, like you, will embrace the imperfection and fragility of all.
"Do not abandon us to temptation." 

Don't leave us alone to chant our fears. But take us by the hand and pull us out of everything that hurts, from everything that weighs on the heart and ages it and stuns it.
Father you love, show us that to love is to defend every life from death, from every type of death.