CNS STORY: Call to conversion isn't about making people feel bad, pope says

POPE-SUNDAY Mar-8-2010 (340 words) With photos. xxxi

Call to conversion isn't about making people feel bad, pope says

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Lenten call to conversion is not an attempt to make people feel bad about themselves, but to promote their true good, which is eternal life, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Celebrating Mass March 7 at the Rome parish of St. John of the Cross and reciting the Angelus at the Vatican afterward, the pope focused on the day's Gospel story in which Jesus tells his followers they must convert or they will perish.

At the parish, which was founded in 1989, the pope said Lent is "an invitation to the conversion of our lives and to doing appropriate acts of penitence."

The crowd Jesus was addressing in the day's Gospel story thought that people who met a sudden and violent death were sinners, while the fact that members of Jesus' audience were still alive meant they had nothing to worry about, the pope said.

But Jesus warned them that by not recognizing their own sins and not setting out on the path to conversion, they would not be saved, he said.

"During Lent, each one of us is called by God to make a change, thinking and living according to the Gospel, correcting things in our way of praying, acting, working and relating to others," he said.

"Jesus makes this appeal to us not with an aim of severity, but because he is concerned for our welfare, our happiness and our salvation," the pope said.

Reciting the Angelus later with visitors in St. Peter's Square, the pope said the Gospel story teaches Christians not to look for fault among the victims of disasters, but to recognize how much they need God in their own lives and to ask for the strength to convert.

"In the face of sin, God reveals himself to be full of mercy and does not hesitate to call sinners to avoid evil, to grow in his love and to concretely help their neighbors in need so they can live in the joy of grace and not face eternal death," the pope said.

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