Harbin (AsiaNews) – The Apostolic Administrator of Harbin (Heilongjiang), Fr Joseph Zhao Hongchun, released a message for Lent. In it, he calls on Chinese Catholics to live this period in the sign of the Year of Prayer, which Pope Francis announced ahead of the Jubilee 2025.
The clergyman, a point of reference for Harbin’s underground Catholic community, addressed his message to the faithful for the start of the path towards Easter, which this year coincides with the celebration of the Chinese New Year.
For Fr Zhao, “This year's Lent requires constantly drawing inspiration from repentance, prayer, and love in daily life with a new perspective for the future. Pope Francis earnestly hopes believers can fully devote themselves to prayer in 2024 and prepare for the Great Jubilee in 2025.
“For this reason, we will devote ourselves to prayer throughout this year and begin our parish's ‘Year of Prayer’ during this Lent, rediscovering the central position of praying in religious life.” Indeed, “For us, the period waiting for the arrival of the Jubilee is a time of dedication to repentance, redemption, awakening prayers, and witnessing of love.
The apostolic administrator of Harbin notes that Pope Francis urges the faithful to be men and women of prayer every day, nurturing the prayer of the heart, not just parrot the words. “Because of this, we must all start from ourselves and strive to practice, updating our Chinese ‘chanting’ church to a ‘prayer’ church.”
“Externalized ‘chanting’ tends to put us in danger of performing, pretending, and listening only to ourselves, without being able to fully and completely place ourselves before God and surrender ourselves to His gaze. At the same time, such prayers often lead us into the danger of ‘seeking self-interest’, that is, bringing the utilitarianism of the world into the intercourse of heaven and man.”
Prayer, on the other hand, Fr Zhao writes, is Jesus’s invitation “to meet our Father whom He has revealed to us, establish a close relationship, and receive the service of His Son and Holy Spirit. This is communion with God, He is within me, and I am within Him. Prayer is so simple.” And “Of course, simple is not the same as easy.”
The apostolic administrator of Harbin calls on the faithful to pay attention to the abundance of nourishment for the imagination that comes from digital tools today: “mobile phones, the Internet, short videos... It nourishes our imagination, and in prayer, it only accustoms us to the interference of external nothingness and prevents us from living fully in the presence of God.
“Prayer is to let the Holy Spirit lead us: God is present; We are watching Him, and He is also watching us. Without any imagination, simply giving our all, like Jesus, doing total and complete self-giving. In prayer, we will become increasingly purified and sanctified, all existing for love and being captured by God's love, and living out the gaze of this love. This is the silent prayer guided by the Holy Spirit into communion with the Holy Trinity.”
Thus, “Let's focus more on prayer during Lent, allowing simultaneous advances in different aspects of the faith, but always with the deepest purpose of allowing the Holy Spirit to push stronger, deeper, more personal actions within us. The whole of Lent leads to the cross and the mystery of Jesus' resurrection.”
Lastly, “Let us entrust this Lent to the Virgin Mary, asking her to help us overcome the habits and futile efforts that hinder the Holy Spirit, and also asking her to teach us contemplative prayer: keeping everything in our hearts, thinking it over and over, wishing only that the will of God be done.”
