pastoral letter
“100-Day Period of Intense Prayer”
July 01, 1986
To my dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
We, God’s people, who believe
in divine intervention, have been living participants in the miracle that was
our February ’86 People’s Revolution. It was a modern day Exodus that liberated
us and all of our countrymen from our national crisis. An Exodus that was
Mary’s great gift to us after our having celebrated for one whole year her
2,000th birth anniversary.
It marked, however, just a
beginning of the long journey we still must take until we reach that Promised
Land of true freedom, justice, prosperity and peace wherein the love of God and
for one another reigns supreme among our entire people. We, therefore, must
brace ourselves for the difficult days ahead.
No better way of doing this
than for us to have 100-DAY PERIOD OF INTENSE PRAYER AND PENANCE, starting from
August 22nd — feast of Our Lady, Queen of the World — to November 27th, 1986 —
feast of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal. This period, I, therefore, declare
as a period of 100-DAYS OF PRAYER AND PENANCE, during which the following
activities shall be held in every parish of the Archdiocese of Manila:
1) A thrice daily “Call to
Prayer” with Church bells ringing at 6:00 a.m., 12:00 noon and 6:00 p.m. for
reciting the Angelus over a public address system.
2) A daily Mass at a specified
time in each parish church and chapel to be sponsored by Marian and other
parish organizations as well as by other citizens’, private or government
groups.
3) A weekly Fasting and
Almsgiving Day, preferably a Friday, wherein the Church way of fasting is
observed, and the money thus saved is given for the poor and for self-help
projects for them.
4) Daily Rosary in the parish
church for all parishioners at a specified time of each evening, to be recited
with complete faith in Our Lady’s promise: “Whatever you ask through my Rosary,
that you shall obtain.”
5) Such other practices of
prayer and penance as may be commonly agreed upon by the parish priest and the
parishioners.
All the above practices shall
be offered for the following intentions:
a) For the important events
that shall make our nation’s future history: the writing of our new
Constitution and its subsequent ratification. The local and national elections
that follow the enacting of implementation by our government legislations and
our citizenry.
b) For our various churches in
our country and our government that they may work closely together to face up
to the present-day challenges of striking at the moral roots of our nation’s
problems by bringing about the inner spiritual transformation among our entire
citizenry, without which we cannot hope to achieve that Christian social
transformation we all are longing for.
c) For the success of the
International Symposium of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart
of Mary which I initiated and which will take place in Portugal this coming
September.
Let us all joyfully enter into
this 100-day period of Prayer and Penance for our People’s Peaceful and Safe
Journeying to our Promised Land. Let us open our hearts to receive God’s grace
and its intelligent channels for our country’s transformation. Let these 100
days of Prayer and Penance mark our resolve to perpetuate our Marian Year motto
of “Conversion, Offering and Reparation” and, we can be sure Our Lady will be
with us in our journey to achieve our God-given destiny of becoming one day, as
Pope Pius XII once prophesied of our country “the Bethlehem of the Far East.”
Devotedly yours in
Christ,
(SGD.) + Jaime L. Cardinal Sin, D.D.
Archbishop of Manila
July 01, 1986
