Cardinal Tobin:
Lent reminds us to deny ourselves and take up the cross of Christ
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Vol. 7. No. 14
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life” (Mt 16:24-26)?
My dear sisters and brothers in Christ,
When I was growing up, the most common sign of Catholic identity was abstaining from meat on Fridays. Now the requirement of Friday abstinence is limited to the six weeks of Lent (with fasting required on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday), but the admonition to deny ourselves comes directly from the Lord, and it is not restricted to any particular day or season.
The Fourth Precept of the Church is to observe the days of fasting and abstinence established by the Church. This represents the minimum, the basic expectation for Catholics in good standing, which is to practice self-denial in the form of ritual observance as the Church requires. But if this is all we do, we can hardly call ourselves faithful disciples. Much more is required of us if we wish to follow Jesus. We must be willing to lose our lives—both literally and figuratively—by taking up the cross of Christ every day of our lives.
Lent is a season of vivid reminders. During this time of preparation for the Lord’s passion, death, and resurrection, we are called to be especially conscious of the importance of self-denial. Through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving (our sacrificial giving of time, talent, and treasure), we are called to “lose ourselves” for the sake of the Gospel. We are challenged to let go of the pursuit of comfort and security in order to follow Jesus through the narrow gate that leads to the joy of his heavenly home.
There is no teaching of Jesus that is more challenging than the one quoted above: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Mt 16:24-26). Everything in our culture tells us to place our own needs and desires above all else. Comfort, security, satisfaction and self-indulgence are not just the sins of the idle rich. They are temptations that confront all of us. If we’re not careful, we can spend all our time, effort, and money pursuing self-serving ways of life. Even our charity can become a way to assuage our guilt rather than a genuine outreach to our sisters and brothers in need.
The Church reminds us constantly, but especially during Lent, to heed the words of Jesus to his all-too-human disciples, “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” Jesus’ way is not the way of comfort and convenience. It is the way of the cross.
In a recent address to the judges of the Roman Rota, which is the highest appellate tribunal of the Catholic Church and handles cases involving Church law as the ordinary court of appeal for the Holy See, Pope Leo XIV reiterated a key theme often highlighted in speeches to the Church’s judiciary by popes from Pius XII to Francis: the close connection between the truth of justice and the virtue of charity. (See selection below.)
“This correlation [between justice and charity] requires constant and careful critical exegesis,” the Holy Father says, “since, in the exercise of judicial activity, a dialectical tension often arises between the demands of objective truth and the concerns of charity.” There is a risk that what Pope Leo calls “misunderstood compassion” can lead to a watering down (relativization) of “the truth proper to the judicial office,” which is necessary if justice is to be served. On the other hand, Pope Leo observes, “there can at times be a cold and detached affirmation of the truth that does not take into account all that love for people requires, omitting those concerns dictated by respect and mercy, which must be present in all stages of a proceeding.”
Justice and charity are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, in continuity with his predecessors, Pope Leo insists that there is an essential interrelationship between the truth of justice and the virtue of charity. “Truth needs to be sought, found, and expressed within the ‘economy’ of charity,” the Holy Father says, “but charity in its turn needs to be understood, confirmed, and practiced in the light of truth.”
These ideas are especially useful as we observe the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The self-denial that is required of us as disciples who seek to take up our crosses and follow Jesus demands that we recognize the truth about our sinfulness. It also demands that we resist being too hard on ourselves, acknowledging that our God is merciful and that he prefers we repent and grow in holiness.
That’s why the penitential practices we observe during Lent are not considered punishments but rather disciplines to help us grow stronger in our ability to follow the Way of Jesus. Lent is a time of preparation for the joy of Easter. It serves as a vivid reminder that for Christians the road to happiness leads invariably through the via crucis, the way of the cross.
Abstaining from meat on Fridays is still a recommended practice for Catholics who wish to remind themselves of the countercultural character of our Catholic identity. Since 1966, the Church has permitted us to substitute other forms of penance or good works for Friday abstinence, but the requirement remains in effect on the Fridays of Lent. Once again, the Church reminds us that we should not be Catholic in name only. There are certain minimum standards that define our Catholic identity, but there is also much more we are called to do beyond these basic requirements.
The Church requires us to fast and abstain, especially during Lent, to remind us of the fundamental call to discipleship we have received from the Lord Jesus Christ. Self-denial is the way of Christ, the Christian way. The season of Lent provides guideposts along this way, which remind us that we are called to let go of our preoccupation with comfort and to embrace a love of God and neighbor that is truly Christ-like.
May the grace of this season of Lent sustain us in our efforts to take up the cross of Christ. May the penitential practices that the Church provides for us during this holy time carry us beyond the pursuit of our own comfort and give us a clear understanding of the truth of justice and the virtue of charity.
Sincerely yours in Christ the Redeemer,
Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R.
Archbishop of Newark
Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us…. If we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar, and his word is not in us (1 Jn 1:8-10).
1. Thus, Sacred Scriptures declare our guilt to be universal; hence the universal obligation to that repentance which Peter, in his sermon on Pentecost, declared necessary for the forgiveness of sin (Acts 2:38). Hence, too, the Church’s constant recognition that all the faithful are required by divine law to do penance. As from the fact of sin we Christians can claim no exception, so from the obligation to penance we can seek no exemption.
2. Forms and seasons of penance vary from time to time and from people to people. But the need for conversion and salvation is unchanging, as is the necessity that, confessing our sinfulness, we perform, personally and in community, acts of penance in pledge of our inward penitence and conversion.
3. For these reasons, Christian peoples, members of a Church that is at once holy, penitent, and always in process of renewal, have from the beginning observed seasons and days of penance. They have done so by community penitential observances as well as by personal acts of self-denial; they have imitated the example of the spotless Son of God Himself, concerning Whom the Sacred Scriptures tell us that He went into the desert to fast and to pray for forty days (Mk 1:13). Thus Christ gave the example to which Paul appealed in teaching us how we, too, must come to the mature measures of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4:13).
4. Of the many penitential seasons which at one time or another have entered the liturgical calendar of Christians (who on this point have preserved the holy tradition of their Hebrew spiritual ancestors), three have particularly survived to our times: Advent, Lent, and the vigils of certain feasts….
10. Lent has had a different history than Advent among us. Beginning with the powerful lesson of Ash Wednesday, it has retained its ancient appeal to the penitential spirit of our people. It has also acquired elements of popular piety which we bishops would wish to encourage.
11. Accordingly, while appealing for greater development of the understanding of the Lenten liturgy, as that of Advent, we hope that the observance of Lent as the principal season of penance in the Christian year will be intensified. This is the more desirable because of new insights into the central place in Christian faith of those Easter mysteries for the understanding and enjoyment of which Lent is the ancient penitential preparation.
12. Wherefore, we ask, urgently and prayerfully, that we, as people of God, make of the entire Lenten Season a period of special penitential observance. Following the instructions of the Holy See, we declare that the obligation both to fast and to abstain from meat, an obligation observed under a more strict formality by our fathers in the faith, still binds on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. No Catholic Christian will lightly excuse himself from so hallowed an obligation on the Wednesday which solemnly opens the Lenten season and on that Friday called “Good” because on that day Christ suffered in the flesh and died for our sins.
13. In keeping with the letter and spirit of Pope Paul’s Constitution Poenitemini, we preserved for our dioceses the tradition of abstinence from meat on each of the Fridays of Lent, confident that no Catholic Christian will lightly hold himself excused from this penitential practice.
14. For all other weekdays of Lent, we strongly recommend participation in daily Mass and a self-imposed observance of fasting. In the light of grave human needs which weigh on the Christian conscience in all seasons, we urge, particularly during Lent, generosity to local, national, and world programs of sharing of all things needed to translate our duty to penance into a means of implementing the right of the poor to their part in our abundance. We also recommend spiritual studies, beginning with the Scriptures as well as the traditional Lenten Devotions (sermons, Stations of the Cross, and the rosary), and all the self-denial summed up in the Christian concept of “mortification.”
15. Let us witness to our love and imitation of Christ, by special solicitude for the sick, the poor, the underprivileged, the imprisoned, the bedridden, the discouraged, the stranger, the lonely, and persons of other color, nationalities, or backgrounds than our own. A catalogue of not merely suggested but required good works under these headings is provided by Our Blessed Lord Himself in His description of the Last Judgment (Mt 25:34-40). This salutary word of the Lord is necessary for all the year but should be heeded with double care during Lent.
A selection from the Statement Issued by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, November 18, 1966.
A Message from Pope Leo XIV:
In the One Christ We are One
On this occasion, I intend to offer you some reflections on the close connection between the truth of justice and the virtue of charity. These are not two opposing principles, nor are they values to be balanced according to purely pragmatic criteria, but two intrinsically united dimensions that find their deepest harmony in the very mystery of God, who is Love and Truth.
This correlation requires constant and careful critical exegesis, since, in the exercise of judicial activity, a dialectical tension often arises between the demands of objective truth and the concerns of charity. Sometimes there is a risk that excessive identification with the oft troubled vicissitudes of the faithful may lead to a dangerous relativization of truth. In fact, misunderstood compassion, even if apparently motivated by pastoral zeal, risks obscuring the necessary dimension of ascertaining the truth proper to the judicial office. This can happen not only in cases of matrimonial nullity – where it could lead to pastoral decisions lacking a solid objective foundation – but also in any type of proceeding, undermining its rigor and fairness.
On the other hand, there can at times be a cold and detached affirmation of the truth that does not take into account all that love for people requires, omitting those concerns dictated by respect and mercy, which must be present in all stages of a proceeding.
In considering the relationship between truth and charity, a clear orientation is given by the teaching of the apostle Paul, who exhorts us: “Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph 4:15). Veritatem facientes in caritate: it is not merely a question of settling for a speculative truth, but of “rendering the truth”, that is, a truth that must enlighten every action. And this must be done “in charity”, which is the great driving force that leads to true justice being done. With another biblical phrase, this time from Saint John, you are called to be “fellow workers in the truth” (3 Jn 8). Benedict XVI, who chose these words as his episcopal motto, highlighted in his Encyclical Caritas in veritate the “need to link charity with truth not only in the sequence, pointed out by Saint Paul, of veritas in caritate (Eph 4:15), but also in the inverse and complementary sequence of caritas in veritate. Truth needs to be sought, found and expressed within the ‘economy’ of charity, but charity in its turn needs to be understood, confirmed and practiced in the light of truth” (no. 2).
A selection from the Address of Pope Leo XIV to the Prelates of the Roman Rota on the occasion of the inauguration of the Judicial Year, January 26, 2026.
My Prayer for You
Please join me in praying these words of Pope Leo XIV
Please join me in offering this Prayer for Charity in Truth:
Father, your truth is made known in your Word.
Guide us to seek the truth of the human person.
Teach us the way to love because you are Love.
Jesus, you embody Love and Truth.
Help us to recognize your face in the poor.
Enable us to live out our vocation to bring love and justice to your people.
Holy Spirit, you inspire us to transform our world.
Empower us to seek the common good for all persons.
Give us a spirit of solidarity and make us one human family.
Amen