Living in Love

Today I share, summarized in my own words, part of Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino’s message for this holy season of Lent. It can help us a great deal to reflect in these very turbulent days. The message is titled “Living in Love: No to Violence!” (cf. Eph 4:15).

The Cardinal reminds us that we are now fully into Lent, the forty days before the celebration of the Passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a favorable time to renew and strengthen our faith and our love for the Lord. In the liturgy, he notes, we often hear the prophets, Saint John the Baptist and Jesus himself calling us to conversion, that is, to leave sin behind and to live “the truth in love,” as Saint Paul teaches (cf. Eph 4:15).

To be converted, he explains, is to set aside sin, spiritual lukewarmness or religious indifference, to change our lives and grow in our faith. If we want to be faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ, whose Word is the word of eternal life, we must be converted. He invites us to “be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect” (cf. Mt 5:48).

To help us, the Church proposes the Lenten practices of prayer, penance or mortification, and almsgiving or Christian charity. Prayer, which means speaking with God, meditating on his love, getting to know his teachings better and lifting our souls to the things of God, is a privilege of human beings. The Cardinal invites us to give more time and importance to reading the Bible, to thinking about the things of God, and to intensifying religious practices such as the Rosary, personal prayer and visits to the Blessed Sacrament; to receive the Sacrament of Penance; and above all to take part every Sunday in the Eucharist, the celebration of the death and glorious resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and to receive Holy Communion frequently.

Mortification or sacrifice, he says, means on the one hand bearing life’s difficulties willingly, and on the other giving up certain pleasures and comforts for love of God, uniting ourselves to the sufferings of our Divine Savior’s passion and death. By depriving ourselves of something we like, or doing well what costs us effort, we master our bad inclinations and strengthen our will to fight against sin.

Almsgiving, charity toward our brothers and sisters most in need, also leads us to be generous, to help others, and to have a lasting attitude of goodness and solidarity, as befits those who know that the greatest commandment is to love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves (cf. Mt 22:36-39).

The concrete practice of charity, the living out of Christian love, is fundamental, the Cardinal says, and very necessary in our present circumstances. In recent weeks many regions of the country and our city of Caracas have been the scene of serious political and social conflict, with a great deal of violence that has left some people dead and many injured, and that has stirred up hatred and resentment in many.

So, whatever each person’s political sympathies, he insists that we Catholics must banish hatred, rancor and revenge from our hearts. He recalls that the leadership of the Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference has already addressed these problems in its statements, rejecting violence from wherever it comes, calling on the Government to respect citizens’ right to demonstrate, to listen to the demands of those protesting and to solve the problems at their root, and demanding sanctions for anyone who may have committed crimes during the demonstrations or in their repression, whether armed civilians or members of the State security forces.

He invites us, while continuing to defend our rights, to drive hatred and rancor out of our hearts and truly live in love. No to violence! Let us fulfill our civic duties according to our conscience, he says, but keeping in mind what the Lord says in the Sermon on the Mount: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:44-45).

He asks us to use Lent to grow in our faith, to leave sin behind, to intensify our religious practice, to become better and better, and to live truly in love of God and love of neighbor, and he repeats: no to violence. Finally, he asks us to pray a great deal this Lent for Venezuela, so that we Venezuelans may solve our problems peacefully, all seeking the common good, and to entrust these intentions to the Lord through the motherly intercession of Mary Most Holy, Our Lady of Coromoto.