The Lenten call to conversion is not an attempt to make people feel bad about themselves but to promote their true good, which is eternal life, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Celebrating Mass March 7 at St. John of the Cross parish in Rome, the pope focused on the day’s Gospel story in which Jesus tells his followers they must convert or they will perish.

Lent is “an invitation to the conversion of our lives and to doing appropriate acts of penitence,” the pope said.

The crowd Jesus was addressing in the day’s Gospel story thought that people who met a sudden and violent death were sinners, while the fact that members of Jesus’ audience were still alive meant they had nothing to worry about, the pope said.

But Jesus warned them that by not recognizing their own sins and not setting out on the path to conversion, they would not be saved, he said.

“During Lent, each one of us is called by God to make a change, thinking and living according to the Gospel, correcting things in our way of praying, acting, working and relating to others,” he said.

“Jesus makes this appeal to us not with an aim of severity, but because he is concerned for our welfare, our happiness and our salvation,” the pope said.

Speaking at a general audience March 3, Pope Benedict praised a 13th-century theologian and saint for emphasizing that the faithful should hold Christ and his teaching of poverty, chastity and obedience as a model for their lives.

St. Bonaventure was exemplary because of the way he managed to use wisdom and moderation to mitigate violent conflicts within the church regarding the mendicant religious orders that were influential at the time, the pope said.

The saint also taught and wrote that all believers should do as St. Francis of Assisi, who strived to imitate Christ in his own life.

St. Bonaventure studied theology at the University of Paris, a city where the validity of the mendicant, or begging, orders was being violently disputed and their right to teach at the university was being contested.

St. Bonaventure wrote a treatise in defense of the orders called “Evangelical Perfection,” in which he said that those who practice poverty, chastity and obedience were only following the Gospel itself.

Later Pope Alexander IV called on Bonaventure to become the master general, or superior, of the Franciscans, a position he held for 17 years.