Benedict XVI dedicated the catechesis of his Ash Wednesday General Audience to calling the faithful to reflect upon a fundamental question – what is truly important in our lives?
“The core of the three temptations that Jesus faced is the proposal to instrumentalize God, to use Him for personal interests, for self-glory and success,” the pope said. “In essence, it is putting oneself in God’s place, eliminating Him from our existence and making Him seem superfluous. … ”
The devil wanted Jesus to “do His own thing” so to speak, to stray from the path of the Will of the Father to become a King possessed of great earthly wealth and prestige. Satan does the same thing to each of us, tempting us to use God for our own purposes, putting Him in a box to be used whenever we need Him rather than keeping Him in the center of our lives.
“Giving God the first place is a path that each Christian has to undertake. ‘Conversion’ … means following Jesus, so that His Gospel becomes the practical guide of our lives. … It means recognizing that we are creatures who depend on God, on His love … Even those who come from a Christian family … must renew daily their decision to be Christian, to give God the first place in the face of the temptations continuously suggested by a secularized culture, in the face of the criticism of many of their contemporaries.”
In our world, Christians are tested daily in both their personal and social life.
“It is not easy to be faithful to Christian marriage, to practice mercy in our everyday lives, or to leave space for prayer and inner silence,” the pope says. “It is not easy to publicly oppose the decisions that many consider to be obvious, such as abortion in the case of an unwanted pregnancy, euthanasia in the case of serious illness, or the selection of embryos to avoid hereditary diseases. The temptation to set one’s faith aside is always present and conversion becomes a response to God that must be confirmed at various times throughout our lives.”
The Holy Father then recalled the many great conversions in our time, such as that of St. Paul and St. Augustine, but also in our own time.
“But also in our age, when the sense of the sacred is eclipsed, God’s grace acts and works wonders in the lives of many people … as was the case for the Orthodox Russian scientist Pavel Florensky who, after a completely agnostic education … found himself exclaiming, ‘It’s impossible without God.’ He completely changed his life, even becoming a monk.”
He also cited the case of the intellectual Etty Hillesum (1914-1943), “a young Dutch woman of Jewish origin, who died in Auschwitz. Initially far from God, she discovered Him by looking deep within herself, writing: ‘There is a well deep within me. And God is that well.’ … In her scattered and restless life, she rediscovered God in the midst of the great tragedy of the twentieth century, the Shoah.”
He reminds that there are numerous conversions taking place all around us in this day and age involving people who left the faith and then later returned.
“In this time of Lent, in the Year of Faith, we renew our commitment to the path of conversion, overcoming the tendency to be wrapped up in ourselves and to make room for God, seeing our everyday reality with His eyes. Conversion means not being wrapped up in ourselves in the search for success, prestige, or social position, but rather of making each day, in the small things, truth, faith in God, and love, become what is most important.”
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