A Moral Climate Change

In his Lenten message 2018 our Holy Father Pope Francis is calling our attention to the Gospel love or charity getting frozen by the moral climate fast changing into freezing point. This is a good metaphor for the dangerous over-turn of moral values where wrong is now right because everybody is doing it, and right is now wrong because nobody is doing it. This is his reflection on Matthew 24:12, “Because of the increase of iniquity, the love of many will grow cold.” He calls these purveyors of iniquity false prophets as snake charmers “who manipulate human emotions in order to enslave others.

He cites symptoms like momentary pleasures mistaken as happiness, slavery to profit, self-interest and self-sufficiency, and many others which imprison the human heart.

The pope’s advice “for each of us… to peer into our heart to see if we are falling prey to the lies of these false prophets… to look closely, beneath the surface, and to recognize what leaves a good and lasting mark on our hearts, because it comes from God and is truly for our benefit.” The Church as Mother and Teacher offers us this Lenten season “the soothing remedy of prayer, alms-giving and fasting” which will be our reflection for February 11 Shalom.