“This year too the Lord grants us a propitious time to prepare to celebrate with a renewed heart the great Mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the cornerstone of personal and community Christian life. We must continually return to this Mystery, with our mind and heart. In fact, it does not cease to grow in us to the extent that we allow ourselves to be involved in its spiritual dynamism and adhere to it with a free and generous response": the Pope's message for Lent 2020 announced at the beginning of the week begins with these thoughts with the title "«We beseech you in the name of Christ: be reconciled to God" (2 Cor 5,20:XNUMX)".

In the text, speaking of the "urgency of conversion", Francis underlines that "it is healthy to contemplate more deeply the Paschal Mystery, thanks to which God's mercy has been given to us.'experience of mercy, in fact, is only possible in one "face to face” with the crucified and risen Lord «who loved me and gave himself up for me" (Gal 2,20:XNUMX). A dialogue - says the Pope - heart to heart, from friend to friend. Here's whyé Prayer is so important in the Lenten season. Before being a duty, it expresses the'need to correspond to'love of God, which always precedes us and sustains us. The Christian, in fact, prays in the awareness of being loved unworthily. Prayer can take on different forms, but what really matters in the eyes of God is that it delves into us, reaching the point of scratching the hardness of our heart, to convert it more and more to Him and to His will”.

Referring to the evangelical teaching of sharing material and spiritual goods, the Pope indicates the spiritual need to "put the Paschal Mystery at the center of life", which "means feeling compassion for the wounds of the crucified Christ present in the many innocent victims of wars , of the abuses against life, from the unborn to the elderly, of the multiple forms of violence, of environmental disasters, of the unequal distribution of the earth's goods, of human trafficking in all its forms and of the unbridled thirst for profit, which is a form of idolatry."

He then states that “even today it is important to call men and women of good will to share their goods with those most in need through almsgiving, as a form of personal participation in building a more equal world. Sharing in charity makes man more human; accumulating risks brutalizing him, closing him in his own selfishness”.

Finally, the Pope recalled the Assisi meeting scheduled for March with these words: “We can and must go even further, considering the structural dimensions of the economy. For this reason, in Lent 2020, from 26 to 28 March, I summoned young economists, entrepreneurs and change-makers to Assisi, with the aim of contributing to outlining a more just and inclusive economy than the current one. As the magisterium of the Church has repeatedly repeated, politics is an eminent form of charity (see Pius XI, Speech to the FUCI, 18 December 1927). The same will be true of dealing with the economy with this same evangelical spirit, which is the spirit of the Beatitudes."