CBCP: Do charitable works together with prayers, sacrifices amid COVID pandemic

On Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten season and amid the COVID-19 pandemic Filipino bishops called on the faithful to "exert earnest effort at doing works of charity and solidarity" aside from participating in traditional practices in prayer, fasting, abstinence and attending liturgical rites.

"With our celebration of Ash Wednesday we begin the holy season of Lent. Every year we have this sacred time to prepare our hearts and minds to enter worthily into the annual liturgical recalling of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus our Savior. This is the heart of our salvation history — the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus to gain for us eternal life," said Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) President and Davao Archbishop Romulo Valles.

In a Lenten message posted on the CBCP website, he added that "Thus, my hope and prayer during these very trying times because of the pandemic and its multifaceted negative consequences affecting all of us, is that we come to a deeper appreciation of our being configured to Christ."

Considering that many are affected by the pandemic in many ways including loss of income and especially loss of loved ones to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), Valles says "During Lent we are inspired and reminded to carry our cross with confidence and with hope that we will triumph in the end."

In Catholic tradition, the Lenten Season is spent on meditation on the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus that starts on Ash Wednesday with fasting and the imposition of ash on the forehead. This has been modified, due to the pandemic and to help curb the spread of the disease, to sprinkling of ash on the forehead.

The season lasts for more than a month during which the faithful are encouraged to abstain from eating meat, pray the Stations of the Cross on Fridays, the Pabasa, among others and ends with the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday.

After almost a year since the government has imposed quarantine protocols, the bishops reiterate the significance of performing charitable acts particularly to the vulnerable members of society.

"Together with our prayers, our fasting, and our participation in the solemn liturgical celebrations, we also exert earnest effort at doing works of charity and solidarity with those who are most suffering among us in these difficult days of the pandemic," said Valles.

The prelate continued his message with a quote from the Lenten message of Pope Francis, "In Lent, may we be increasingly concerned with speaking words of comfort, strength, consolation and encouragement, and not words that demean, sadden, anger or show scorn."

"In order to give hope to others, it is sometimes enough simply to be kind, to be “willing to set everything else aside in order to show interest, to give the gift of a smile, to speak a word of encouragement, to listen amid general indifference." -- BAP, GMA News