Cardinal Giacomo Biffi encouraged Pope Benedict XVI and the leaders of the Roman Curia to meditate on death during their annual Lenten Retreat.The former Archbishop of Bologna, who is leading the week-long spiritual exercises for the Vatican leadership, remarking in a meditation that contemporary society has a contradictory attitude toward death.
On the one hand there is an obsession with physical health and a refusal to acknowledge mortality; on the other hand there is active promotion of death in the forms of euthanasia and abortion.
The net result, Cardinal Biffi said, is a very unhealthy attitude, which denies all hope of a life after death. Christians must actively combat that attitude, he said. “Death is a fact,” he observed; “but it does not have the last word.”
As he led the Pope and the Roman Curia in their retreat at the start of Lent, the Italian cardinal said that the key word expressing the purpose of the season is “repent.”
During Lent, he explained, the faithful are called “with particular urgency” to conversion-- to change the direction of their lives and orient themselves toward Christ.
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