With Ash Wednesday approaching, the words of Pope Francis’ 2016 Ash Wednesday message are worth reflection:
With great wealth and power, there often comes a “blindness … accompanied by the proud illusion of our own omnipotence, which reflects in a sinister way the diabolical ‘you will be like God’ (Gen. 3:5), which is the root of all sin. This illusion can likewise take social and political forms, as shown by the totalitarian systems of the 20th century, and, in our own day, by the ideologies of monopolizing thought and technoscience, which would make God irrelevant and reduce man to raw material to be exploited. This illusion can also be seen in the sinful structures linked to a model of false development based on the idolatry of money, which leads to lack of concern for the fate of the poor on the part of wealthier individuals and societies; they close their doors, refusing even to see the poor. ...
... Let us not waste this season of Lent, so favorable a time for conversion! We ask this through the maternal intercession of the Virgin Mary, who, encountering the greatness of God’s mercy freely bestowed upon her, was the first to acknowledge her lowliness (cf. Luke 1:48) and to call herself the Lord’s humble servant (cf. Luke 1:38)."
