See, here you have passed by a small child, passed by in anger with a foul word, with a wrathful soul; you perhaps did not notice the child, but he saw you, and your unsightly and impious image has remained in his defenseless heart.  You did not know it, but you may thereby have planted a bad seed in him, and it may grow, and all because you did not restrain yourself before the child, because you did not nurture in yourself a heedful, active love.  Brothers, love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is difficult to acquire, it is dearly bought, by long work over a long time, for one ought to love not for a chance moment, but for all time.  Anyone, even a wicked man, can love by chance.  My young brother asked forgiveness of the birds:  it seems senseless, yet it is right, for all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.  Let it be madness to ask forgiveness of the birds, still it would be easier for the birds, and for a child, and for any animal near you, if you yourself were more gracious than you are now, if only by a drop, still, it would be easier.  All is like an ocean, I say to you.  Tormented by universal love, you, too, would then start praying to the birds, as if in a sort of ecstasy, and entreat them to forgive your sin.  Cherish this ecstasy, however senseless it may seem to people.  The Elder Zosima, as written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

 
My dear brothers and sisters, please forgive me for not loving you, for not learning how to love, and thus polluting the world in which we live with my sins, offenses and transgressions.  A blessed Lent to all who begin this journey today and to those who are walking through life beside me, known or unknown, may God be with you.