Reflection for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

"Christ has not resigned himself to the tombs that we have created with our choices of evil and death, with our mistakes, with our sins. He does not resign himself to this! He invites us, he almost commands us, to come out of the tombs in which our sins have buried us. He insistently calls us out of the darkness of the prison in which we have shut ourselves, contenting ourselves with a false, egoistic and mediocre life. 'Come out!' he tells us, 'Come out!' It is a beautiful invitation to true freedom, to let ourselves be seized by these words of Jesus that he repeats to each one of us today. It is an invitation to remove the 'burial shroud,' the burial shroud of pride. Pride makes us slaves, slaves to ourselves, slaves of many idols, of many things. Our resurrection begins here: when we decide to obey this command of Jesus, going out into the light, into life; when the masks fall from our face – often we are masked by sin, the masks must fall! – and we rediscover the courage of our true face, created in the image and likeness of God.

"Jesus’ gesture, which raises Lazarus, shows how far the power of God’s grace can go and how far our conversion can go, our change. But listen well: there is no limit to divine mercy offered to all! There is no limit to divine mercy offered to all! Remember this well. And we can say it all together: 'There is no limit to divine mercy offered to all!' Let us say it together: 'There is no limit to divine mercy offered to all!' The Lord is always ready to remove the stone from the tomb of our sins, which separate us from him, from the light of the living."

--Pope Francis, Angelus Address, April 6, 2014