During Lent, the Church asks us to surrender ourselves to prayer and to the reading of Scripture, to fasting and to giving alms. Prayer is the sacred experience and encounter with God, a moment of intentional intimacy with God. Fasting disciplines the body, killing the attractions of the human flesh and makes the human being more attentive and spiritually alert to God. Almsgiving reminds us that we cannot love God without loving the neighbor, and that for the Christian, the way to God always passes through the way to the neighbor, for God is love (1 John 4:8). The Holy Season of Lent is a reminder of God's unconditional love, the measure of God's love which is to love without measure. That is the story of Lent, namely, God's gift of his Son, for the salvation of the world.