This year, the celebration of Lent, a time of conversion and reconciliation, takes on a particular character, occurring as it does during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000. The time of Lent is in fact the culminating point of the journey of conversion and reconciliation which the Jubilee, the year of the Lord's favour, offers to all the faithful, so that they can renew their fidelity to Christ and proclaim his mystery of salvation with renewed ardour in the new millennium. This is why the Son of God wished to unite himself to human nature, ransoming it from the slavery of sin and death. Sometimes it shows itself in dramatic and unusual ways, as happened in the course of the great tragedies of the twentieth century, which deeply marked the lives of countless communities and individuals, the victims of cruel violence. In daily life too we see all sorts of forms of fraud, hatred, the destruction of others, and lies of which man is both the victim and source.
Humanity is marked by sin.
This is the paschal mystery in which we are reborn. The Fathers of the Church affirm that in Christ Jesus, the devil attacks the whole of humanity and ensnares it in death, from which however it is freed through the victorious power of the Resurrection. In the Risen Lord death's power is broken and mankind is enabled, through faith, to enter into communion with God. Thus the redemption accomplished on the Cross renews the universe and brings about the reconciliation of God and man, and of people with one another. The Jubilee is the time of grace in which we are invited to open ourselves in a particular way to the mercy of the Father, who in the Son has stooped down to man, and to reconciliation, the great gift of Christ.