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Last Updated: Friday - 09/24/2010
Week of February 11, 2008
Lent is time of conversion, return to God
By CAROL GLATZ
Catholic News Service
Vatican City
Lent is time of conversion, return to God
Pope Benedict
By
Lent is a time to return to God’s loving embrace and to remember that true happiness can only come from being a friend of Jesus, Pope Benedict said.
The Lenten journey is a time of conversion which means “letting oneself be overcome by Jesus and with him return to the Father,” the pope said during his weekly general audience Feb. 6, Ash Wednesday.
“When modern man declares his total independence from God, he becomes a slave to himself, and often he finds himself inconsolably lonely,” Benedict said.
“Striving for success, yearning for prestige and the quest for comfort — when these completely absorb one’s life” to the point of neglecting God, happiness does not ensue.
He said experience has shown that having one’s expectations and needs fulfilled is not what brings contentment.
“In reality, the only joy that makes the human heart overflow is that which comes from God” because humanity thirsts for a joy that is infinite and resistant to being quashed by daily worries, he said.
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