Manila (AsiaNews) - Practicing self discipline "as Christ taught us" and helping one's neighbour.  These are the "assignments" that the archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, has given to the faithful in the capital for the Lenten period, which begins today. 

In his Lenten message, read in all of the parishes during the Mass for Ash Wednesday, the cardinal writes: "The 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 Jesus who underwent the passion, death and resurrection process in giving us all redemption from sin and evil". In addition to the ceremonies and liturgy, Cardinal Rosales continues, "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". Therefore, he concludes, "let us celebrate Lent with these as our guiding spirit, and we will not be far from the peace that the resurrection brings".

At the end of January, the bishops' conference of the Philippines sent to the faithful a message entitled "Lent as the time to journey together toward transformation". In the text, the bishops emphasize that the period of preparation for Easter should be "the appropriate beginning for profound reform and conversion. It is the time for a spiritual combat against the enemy within, our pride and greed, our lust for power and wealth".

In order to do this, the message concludes, we must ask  "what we can offer . . . for the common effort towards the correction of our social ills. These would be evangelization of the most authentic kind. For it means a real acceptance of the Lord’s mandate to us as Christians to be concerned about one another, to go beyond ourselves and reach out to others. This attitude in the pattern of Christ himself is at the heart of Christian identity".