The Lenten journey has begun: out of the slavery of the land of Egypt, through the desert, to the freedom of the Promise Land.
Sorry, can you repeat? What do you mean by ‘slavery’ and ‘freedom’? Pharaoh, Egypt, desert? What are they?
We all run a huge risk: Lent in abstract. In his Lenten Message Pope Francis spoke very clearly: “No abstract journey! If our celebration of Lent is to be concrete, the first step is to open our eyes to reality, (our reality).”
Pharaoh wants subjects, not sons and daughters. The house of Egypt is a house of slaveries and idols. We can become attached to money, projects and ideas, our position or a tradition, even to certain individuals. Instead of making us move forward, they paralyze us. When we serve idols we become like them: mute, blind, deaf, immobile.
The desert is the place and time where our freedom can mature in a personal decision not to fall back into slavery. In the desert, during these 40 days of Lent, we take concrete actions. Prayer, almsgiving and fasting are not three unrelated acts, but a single movement of openness and self-emptying, in which we cast out the idols that weigh us down and all the attachments that imprison us.
It is Lent, no abstract Lent! We act, we chose, we desire.
Father Ivano