Lent is “a time to renew our faith, hope and charity,” Pope Francis emphasized in one of his Ash Wednesday messages.
For his part, when asked the possibility of making a “good Lenten journey or of missing Lent, Adrien Candiard, a Dominican friar, answered the journalist of the website La Croix. (French only)
“I don’t know if we can miss it, I don’t know if we can make it. If we make a heroic effort during Lent, we’ve missed everything. Spiritual life is not a video game in which you go from level to level, mastering the game’s data. Spiritual life is about letting the Holy Spirit work in us. We don’t master this process. We open ourselves to it, we receive it, we wait for it, but we do not direct it. Moreover, the spiritual life is rarely linear. Therefore, Lent is a time of effort, when we try to put things in their proper place and refocus on what is essential.”
In this important liturgical season, Development and Peace, the official international solidarity organization of the Catholic Church in Canada and a member of Caritas Internationalis, has launched its campaign under the theme “In Solidarity for the Earth – Feeding Hope”. The Share Lent campaign supports people in the Global South who are working to defend their land and protect land, water, the environment and human life.
The campaign is inspired by the messages of Pope Francis’ last encyclical Fratelli Tutti, which, among other things, reminds us that “justice and solidarity cannot be obtained once and for all; they must be conquered every day. “(Fratelli Tutti, 11.) The objective is to share love and express our solidarity with the people of the countries of the South, whose needs are increasing more than ever in these particularly difficult times.
For tools and more information on how to contribute to this campaign, visit the Development and Peace website.
In parallel, several dioceses are preparing documents to animate celebrations and times of reflection during this period. Various pedagogical resources have been put forward by a French NGO for international development, a partner of the SNMM in association with the French Bishops’ Conference. They include a spiritual booklet, an animation booklet and a liturgical booklet. (French only)
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops offers a series of video clips.