www.chiesa skriver at fastebrevet fra pave Benedikt ligner mye mer pa et kjarlighetsbrev enn fastebrevene har gjort de siste arene: As has been done for more than thirty years, at the beginning of this Lent as well the pope has addressed a message to the faithful, in order to direct their preparation for Easter. Until now, the messages for the beginning of Lent – including last year’s – have usually concerned the duty of charity, of aid for the various forms of human suffering: poverty, hunger, sickness, persecution, exile.
But this year Benedict XVI has broken with this tradition, and in the message for the beginning of Lent he has invited the faithful above all to contemplate Jesus on the cross.
He explains the reason for this himself: because it is only Jesus on the cross who fully reveals the love of God to men.
This is a love that is both agape and eros together. In a few extremely intense passages, Benedict XVI expresses once again that astonishing “essence of Christianity” that he had already placed at the center of his encyclical “Deus Caritas Est.”