ARE YOU weary, confused, maybe even depressed? It may be time to go on a spiritual retreat, to return to the merciful, tender love that has always been waiting for you – and there find solace.

With Christendom preparing for Lent, Pope Francis in his Angelus address at St. Peter’s Square at noon last Sunday invited the prodigals among us to a return to the Father.

The Zenit news service, in a report by Deborah Castellano Lubov, summarized the call of the Pope: “Even if we were naive enough to think we could do without God and create distance, His love awaits us for when we return.”

Reflecting on the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke’s Gospel, Pope Francis stressed that the father figure in the parable reveals the heart of God:

“He is the Merciful Father who, in Jesus, loves us beyond all measure, always awaits our conversion every time we wrong… He awaits our return when we turn away from him thinking we can do without Him.

“No matter what has happened, He is always willing to open His arms. God continues to wait for us His children, especially when we are lost, and comes to us with tenderness when we return to Him.”

However serious are our errors, the Pope reminded us, “in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we can always start out afresh… He welcomes us, gives us the dignity of being His children and tells us: ‘Be at peace! Get up, go ahead!’

■ Straying far makes returning harder

FROM personal experience I can say that the farther we drift away from the sacraments and the more frequent we skip Sunday mass, the more it seems difficult to return, probably because we have deprived ourselves the grace to come back.

The obvious quick solution to this drifting away is to leap back into the arms of the Father, into the comfort of the Church, without thinking of how remiss or sinful we have been.

Just do it – walk back in faith, in prayer — and the rest of the homecoming will be easy.

The less we think that we are too dirty to deserve His embrace, the easier will be our return to the ever-forgiving Father.

In his Angelus address, Pope Francis himself said that in these days of Lent before Easter, “we are called to intensify the inner journey of conversion, and let the lessons of the parable take on meaning in our lives.”

After the Angelus, Pope Francis prayed for Mother Teresa to accompany in Heaven the four Missionaries of Charity murdered last Friday in Yemen. (Blessed Teresa will be canonized saint this September.)

He said, “I express my closeness to the Missionaries of Charity for the great loss that has affected them two days ago with the killing of four sisters in Aden, Yemen, where they were assisting the elderly.”

Four of Mother Teresa’s nuns were killed by gunmen in a raid on a home for the aged. Two of the nuns were Rwandan, one was Indian and the fourth was Kenyan. A dozen other people were killed, including a driver and at least two community helpers.

The Pope called the nuns modern-day martyrs, stressing how they “gave their blood for the Church” and were victims not only of their killers, but also of “indifference.”

■ Indecision stalls Clark airport upgrade

WITH the United States military set to resume operations in its former air base in Pampanga under its Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the Philippines, how can Clark International Airport operate optimally as a full-blown primary international gateway?

Clark is among approved locations that the two countries had listed as staging areas for EDCA operations. Subic Bay Freeport, built around the former US naval base in Bataan, is also on the list.

The constitutionality of EDCA, deemed by the Supreme Court as an executive agreement, is still under question. The challenge and the failure of the Aquino administration to make up its mind about which development direction to take have delayed the upgrading of Clark.

The Department of Transportation and Communications under Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya wants to decongest Ninoy Aquino International Airport by developing nearby Sangley Point in his Cavite bailiwick.

On the other hand, President-CEO Emigdio Tanjuatco III of the Clark International Airport Corp. also talks of a P15-billion “mixed use” passenger terminal in Pampanga by 2017. The airport design made for free by the Aeroporte de Paris had been junked and the contract for it will be bid out.

The final decision on Clark’s development has not been made despite the reported approval by the National Economic and Development Authority of P1.2 billion for 2015 and P2 billion for 2016 for upgrading its capacity to 8-16 million passengers per year from the current four million.

That capacity was an improvement from the May level, when the annual passenger capacity was raised from 2.5 million after the completion of the P417-million improvement of the passenger terminal whose floor area was increased to 19,799 square meters from 11,439 sqm.

The number of check-in counters was also increased to 34 from 13, with the addition of 12 departure and five arrival counters. The terminal now has eight entry points and three customs stations to serve more international flights such as those of Qatar Airways and Emirates.