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3 Pastoral Letter – 1891

HOW TO SANCTIFY LENT

GIUSEPPE MARELLO
Bishop of Acqui

To the Venerable Clergy
and Beloved People of the City and Diocese
GREETINGS AND BLESSINGS IN THE LORD

Venerable Brothers and Beloved Children in Christ,
The time of Lent is drawing near, a time acceptable to God,
a time of reconciliation and salvation. To us, the Pastor of your
souls, falls the duty not only to announce it to you solemnly, but
also to exhort you with the greatest effusion of which our heart
is capable, to sanctify it with worthy fruits of penance.
The obligation to do penance, enjoined by God on our first
Parents after the great fall, and through them on all their
descendants, is repeated in almost every page of the Holy
Scriptures, which stipulate clearly that whoever does not satisfy
such a strict debt will not be granted eternal salvation. "Do
penance. If you do not do penance, you will all perish in the
same way". Agite poenitentiam (Ezec. 18:30). Nisi poenitentiam
egeritis, omnes similiter peribitis (Lk. 13:5).
If we enter into ourselves a little and take a look at our
conscience, we will find innumerable faults that render us
answerable to the Divine Justice, and that the flesh with its
suggestions, the world with its attractions, and the Devil with his
temptations create for us continuous dangers of falling again,
such that there is no sinner, in those moments when he enters
into himself, who does not feel the need to do penance before he
appears before the Divine Judge, and who does not tremble at

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