Brian Hamilton

Remember that you are dust

Today begins Lent, season of somber penitence. The cruciform ash on our foreheads makes public our frailty—“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”—and our failure to conform our lives to that cross we display. Fasting, weeping, and mourning, we vow to make our way back towards God (Joel 2:12). As we travel, we should hold in our prayers these words from Pope Benedict XVI in Sunday’s address on Luke 6:27, “Love your enemies”:

This page of the gospel is rightly considered the “magna carta” of Christian nonviolence; it does not consist in surrendering to evil—as claims a false interpretation of “turn the other cheek” (Luke 6:29)—but in responding to evil with good (Romans 12:17-21), and thus breaking the chain of injustice. It is thus understood that nonviolence, for Christians, is not mere tactical behavior but a person’s way of being, the attitude of one who is convinced of God’s love and power, who is not afraid to confront evil with the weapons of love and truth alone. Loving the enemy is the nucleus of the “Christian revolution,” a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power. The revolution of love, a love that does not base itself definitively in human resources, but in the gift of God, that is obtained only and unreservedly in his merciful goodness. Herein lies the novelty of the Gospel, which changes the world without making noise. Herein lies the heroism of the “little ones,” who believe in the love of God and spread it even at the cost of life.

Dear brothers and sisters: Lent, which begins this Wednesday, with the rite of the distribution of ashes, is the favorable time in which all Christians are invited to convert ever more deeply to the love of Christ.

Let’s pray unceasingly for conformity to this love of Christ, a love which extends even to enemies by the power of God, so that we do not wear this cross in vain.

21 February 2007 |
tags: Benedict XVI, Repentance