Meetings in the desert …

The liturgical readings in this Lenten period retrace the Exodus of the Jews in the long crossing of the desert.

A harsh and hostile way, made of trials and sacrifices, renunciations and hopes.

Who of us sometimes does not feel like in that desert? How many are the situations that put us to the test?

How many times we feel abandoned, excluded, we are afraid to face the future and we doubt the Divine intervention in our lives?

Yet in this journey we are not alone, God himself made man wanted to show us that with prayer and fasting the desert can becomes instead a place of purification and growth in faith.

Like Jesus in the desert we can pray and to rediscover the essence of a relationship between father and son, from time and place that can seem sterile but enclosing the mutual need to love and trust.

In the desert to fast from anything that takes us away from God. Eliminate anything that does not allow us to devote our time to the Lord, or that distracts us from the path entrusted to us.

In the aridity of this   world to fight the evil, giving up to our selfishness, to all the diabolical machinations that want to infect and destroy ourselves. In the final sacrifice of the Cross to give everything by consolidating the Covenant of Love sealed with the Blood of Christ for our salvation.

God gave us his Son, who in turn has given us himself, and what we are willing to give?

26/27/28 February 2016

37th International Marathon of Prayer for the Suffering

In the desert … towards You, Lord

“The Lord has forsaken me,
    my Lord has forgotten me.”
¹⁵ Can a woman forget her nursing child,
    or show no compassion for the child of her womb?