Al Alcazar: The 20 Percent

Al Alcazar, Ph.D., Director of the Twomey Center at Loyola University in New Orleans, offered the Lenten Reflection for Saturday, March 11, 2017. The reflection is part of Loyola's, Lenten Retreat in Daily Life.

In Pope Francis’ Lenten message for 2017, he reminds us that Lent is a season that calls us to conversion, and to a deepening of our spiritual lives. This deepening praxis is often an inconvenient--even difficult—task. It asks us to see and do below and beyond the superficial level of things. The Bishops of New Zealand, for instance, asked “what the commandment ‘thou shall not kill’ means when 20 percent of the world’s population consumes resources at a rate that robs the poor nations and future generations of what they need to survive.”

As part of the 20 percent, what inconvenient word and action am I willing to say and do to keep the poor, future generations, and the rest of God’s creation alive?