Now Is the Day of Salvation

Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning. The expression with all your heart is important: it means from the core of our thoughts and feelings, from the wellspring of our free decisions, choices, and actions, in an act of complete and radical freedom.  But is such a return to God possible? 

Yes, because there is a power which does not reside in our own hearts, but springs from God’s own heart.  It is the power of his mercy.  The prophet goes on to say: Return to the Lord, your God, for gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishing.  To return to the Lord is possible as a grace, for it is God's own work and the fruit of our faith in his mercy.  This return to God becomes a concrete reality in our lives only when the Lord's grace penetrates and deeply shakes us, enabling us to rend our hearts.  In our own day, lots of people are ready to rend their garments in the face of scandals and acts of injustice — the fault naturally of others — but few seem prepared to do something about their own hearts, their own consciences, and their own intentions, allow ing the Lord to transform, renew, and convert them.

Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. These words of the Apostle Paul also echo in our hearts with an urgency which leaves no room for absence or inertia.  The frequent repetition of the word now tells us that we cannot let this moment pass: it is given to us as a unique and unrepeatable opportunity.  The Apostle fixes his gaze on the sharing which Christ wanted to characterize his life, by taking upon himself all that is human, even our sin.

This return to God becomes a concrete reality in our lives only when the Lord's grace penetrates and deeply shakes us...

Saint Paul's words are forceful: God made him to be sin for our sake.  Jesus, the innocent one, the holy one who did not know sin, took upon himself the burden of sin by sharing with humanity its wages of death, even death on a cross.  In this, God's immersion in human suffering and the abyss of evil, is the root of our justification.  To return to God with all your heart on this Lenten journey means embracing the cross, following Christ along the path which leads to Calvary, unto complete self-giving.  It is a journey which teaches us each day to abandon our selfishness and self-absorption in order to make room for God, who opens and transforms our hearts.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us begin our Lenten journey with joyful confidence.  May we feel deep within us the call to conversion, to return to God with all our heart, accepting his grace which makes us new men and women, with that astonishing newness which is a share in the very life of Jesus.  May none of us be deaf to this appeal, which also comes to us in the austere rite, at once so simple and so evocative, of the imposition of ashes.  May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church and the model of all authentic disciples of the Lord, accompany us throughout this Lenten season.