Ash Wednesday

Justice, love, and faith are intimately related. In his 2010 Lenten message Pope Benedict XVI alludes to this:

Conversion to Christ, believing in the Gospel, ultimately means this: to exit the illusion of self-sufficiency in order to discover and accept one’s own need – the need of others and God, the need of His forgiveness and His friendship. So we understand how faith is altogether different from a natural, good-feeling, obvious fact: humility is required to accept that I need Another to free me from "what is mine," to give me gratuitously "what is His." This happens especially in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. Thanks to Christ’s action, we may enter into the "greatest" justice, which is that of love (cf. Romans 13, 8-10), the justice that recognizes itself in every case more a debtor than a creditor, because it has received more than could ever have been expected.

Strengthened by this very experience, the Christian is moved to contribute to creating just societies, where all receive what is necessary to live according to the dignity proper to the human person and where justice is enlivened by love.

I am spending this week at a training session on Peace and Reconciliation with Caritas staff from all the dioceses and the national office. Two trainers from Caritas Colombia are leading the sessions. This is the second of a series of week long workshops for Caritas workers in Honduras.

The challenge for true is great, especially as the need for justice is so pressing and true reconciliation in Honduras is not possible without a commitment to truth and justice.