“Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel!”

“Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel!”
(cf. Mark 1:15)
by Bp. Gerardo A. Alminaza, D.D.

This is the formula used with the giving of ashes at the start of the Lenten Season, another alternative to “Remember you are dust and to dust you will return!” (cf. Genesis 3:19).

“Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel!” This could be a powerful program for our Lenten discipline as well as for our efforts in building and strengthening our BEC’s. It has two movements: away from and moving towards. During these 40 days of Lent, we can ask ourselves in prayer: “From what or even whom am I being asked by the Lord to turn away from?” and “How can I be more faithful to the Gospel?” Reflecting on my life, the journey of our community, and the circumstances of our world today, “Where am I most challenged to grow to become a more loving person as God is to us?” “How can I be an instrument of communion?”

In his Lenten Message this year, the Holy Father Benedict XVI focuses on the value and meaning of fasting, which is an important means together with prayer and almsgiving, to make our Lenten spiritual exercises fruitful. Among other things, he says, “Denying material food, which nourishes our body, nurtures an interior disposition to listen to Christ and be fed by His saving word. Through fasting and praying, we allow Him to come and satisfy the deepest hunger that we experience in the depths of our being: the hunger and thirst for God. At the same time, fasting is an aid to open our eyes to the situation in which so many of our brothers and sisters live.”

He quoted Saint Peter Chrysologus who writes: “Fasting is the soul of prayer; mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others, you open God’s ear to yourself” (Sermo 43: PL 52, 320. 322).

And then the Holy Father goes on to say, “It is precisely to keep alive this welcoming and attentive attitude towards our brothers and sisters that I encourage the parishes and every other community to intensify in Lent the custom of private and communal fasts, joined to the reading of the Word of God, prayer and almsgiving. From the beginning, this has been the hallmark of the Christian community, in which special collections were taken up (cf. 2 Cor 8-9; Rm 15, 25-27), the faithful being invited to give to the poor what had been set aside from their fast (Didascalia Ap., V, 20,18). This practice needs to be rediscovered and encouraged again in our day, especially during the liturgical season of Lent.”

This is especially relevant with the recent experience of fire that burned around 40 houses in our community in Zone 2 Brgy. Bakhaw and led to the untimely and painful death of an elderly couple Romeo and Filomena Hisog. This also acquires more meaning as we pay attention to the plight of all Filipino migrant workers and their families during this first Sunday of Lent, contemplating Jesus being led by the Spirit into the desert, where He remained for 40 days and being tempted by Satan. As we observe fasting and abstinence and other works of mercy, let these words of Jesus be our inspiration: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to finish his work.” (John 4:34)

I join the Holy Father in prayer and hope that every family and Christian community may use well this time of Lent in order to cast aside all that distracts the spirit and grow in whatever nourishes the soul, moving it to love of God and neighbor.

“Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel!”