Lent

+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
21 Feb 2010

Lent crept up on us quietly last week, the period when Christians around the world prepare to celebrate at Easter the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In South America and parts of Europe carnivals are celebrated just before Ash Wednesday with processions and dancing.  To some extent it is the anti-religious party emphasizing pleasure over penance, but many Catholics join in the innocent fun before settling down to the serious Lenten business of extra prayer, alms giving to help the poor and penitential practices to curb our selfishness.

Christians are not only called to faith but also to commit themselves to spiritual struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil.

In the moral sphere spiritual warfare does not condemn the world itself as evil, but it requires us to admit that evil is alive and well.  So too the Church blesses the normal sexual appetites and drives while acknowledging the need to control and purify these instincts.  Lust is real and can be damaging.

All of us were shocked by the news of the killing of the 12 year old boy at a good Catholic school in Brisbane.

It is a terrible tragedy especially for the families involved.  If this was not enough, the web site set up in sympathy for the victim was flooded with filth and violence.

We must not pretend that criminal violence among young people only happens overseas.  Many of our young people too are under huge pressures from family breakups, drugs, alcohol, violence and pornography on T.V. and the internet.

Lent should be a period of training as we struggle to improve our skills in combating the evil stirrings in our hearts and in society.  It is especially a time to improve our self control of tongue and temper.

When I was young I had a bad temper.  After one outburst my aunt, an ex-school teacher and a wise woman, explained to me that while I might settle down quickly afterwards, losing your temper is like hammering a nail into a piece of wood.

Generally the nail can be extracted easily, she went on, but it usually leaves a hole in the wood.  I never forgot the lesson.

Boys and young men need to learn self control.