MESSAGE FOR LENT 2008

The Christian Lenten Season is a sacred forty days of prayers, abstinence and fasting that gives the individual Christian the occasion to live in his or her life the holy disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ who underwent the Passion, Death and Resurrection process in giving us all redemption from sin and evil.

Beyond the rites and liturgies of Blessed Ashes and the disciplines of the fast and religious practices, what the Lord wishes is the discipline and prayer that reach out to the good of others. This is the fasting that pleases me: free those unjustly bound, setting the oppressed free…sharing the bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless, clothing the naked and not turning one’s back on one’s own (Isaiah 58:6-7).

Let us celebrate Lent with these as our guiding spirit, and we will not be far from the Peace that the Resurrection brings.

+GAUDENCIO B. CARDINAL ROSALES
Archbishop of Manila

Ash Wednesday
6 February 2008