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The Archbishop of Singapore is calling on his faithful to repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation with God, saying this is the path to happiness and peace.  In a traditional Lenten pastoral letter, Arch.  William Goh of Singapore explains that the sense of loss felt in life is due to the "bad habits" that destroy “not just our health, but” also take away “our peace, joy and freedom."  By way of examples of bad habits he points to cheating, fighting, negative attitude towards people, anger, envy, sloth, greed and lust.  He says Lent “is the best time to return to God and find joy again” since “All of us, as His children, are called to be the goodness of God.”  "The consequence of contrition of heart and repentance is the reward of joy and peace” that manifests itself in the rediscovery a life of prayer and the joy of faith in God.  The beauty of Lent lies in walking together as brothers and sisters in our journey of faith.”

According to Arch. Goh, “The three pillars of the Lenten program consist of prayer, almsgiving and penance.”  Prayer, he explained, is a necessary tool for conversion. Penance protects us from the slavery of sin.  Almsgiving teaches us “to open our hearts to the sufferings of others and in the process, encounter the joy of mercy that God wants to give us.”  “The poor often reveal to us the face of God and give us the joy that money cannot buy,” Arch. Goh added. (Source: AsiaNews)

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Christians in different parts of India, especially in Kandhamal district of the eastern state of Odisha, need constant prayer and support from everyone, especially during Lent", according to Archbishop John Barwa of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar.   Speaking to the Vatican’s Fides news agency in Odisha’s capital, Bhubaneshwar he noted that the spiritual renewal during the Lenten season through fasting, repentance, moderation, spiritual discipline in preparation for the resurrection of Christ is something very dear to the Christians of Odisha who have faced untold atrocities for their faith during the terrible 2008 anti-Christian violence in the state, especially in Kandhamal.  "The agony, the suffering, the pain and the psychological traumas still affect the Christian people in Kandhamal district, 9 years after violence was committed against Christians,” said the Divine Word Archbishop, whose jurisdiction includes Kandhamal.  The violence caused a hundred dead and more than 50 thousand people were displaced.   Arch. Barwa said Christians in Odisha were joining Pope Francis in March in praying for Christians who suffer, "so that they are always supported by the prayers and material help of the whole Church".

Kanaka Rekha Nayak a Christian widow whose saw her husband being burned alive at the time of the violence told Fides, "Constant prayer can give me great strength to move forward in my life."

 "May Lent be for every Christian a renewed experience of God given to us in Christ, a love that each day we are called, in turn to give to our neighbor, especially to those who suffer most and are in need. Only then we can fully participate in the joy of Easter", Arch. Barwa added.  (Source: Fides)

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Vatican City, Mar 4, 2017 / 06:35 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As Pope Francis leaves Sunday to begin his annual Lenten retreat, Fr. Giulio Michelini, the priest leading this year’s spiritual exercises, said he hopes Christians around the world will be inspired to join in.

“I will be grateful to all those that are listening to us, that these exercises will be shared by all who believe in Jesus Christ,” Fr. Michelini told CNA. “We can do them together.”

“I know that people will go to work, will go to school, will be busy during these days,” he said, but “we can read the Passion according to Matthew's Gospel, and that can be a way to pray to the Holy Spirit so that the Church will be more united.”

Pope Francis and members of the Roman Curia will make their annual five-day spiritual exercises retreat at the Casa Divin Maestro in Ariccia, a city located some 16 miles outside of Rome. Located on Lake Albano, it is just a short way from the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.

This year's retreat, which runs March 5-10, will be led by Fr. Giulio Michelini, a Franciscan of the Seraphic Province of the Friars Minor of Umbria.

He said that his preaching for the week will be an in-depth examination and reflection on the Gospel of Matthew, starting with the Last Supper and moving through the Passion to the Resurrection.

“I will try to go deep into the Jesus that the disciples saw and followed,” he said. “So there will be a reflection on the humanity of Jesus,” as well as a meditation on relationships.

Most importantly, the retreat “will be a time of restoration,” Fr. Michelini said. “We will quit working, talking, doing the usual things that the Pope, Bishops and Cardinals, and households do.”

They will pray, and there will be time to walk around the beautiful grounds and lake outside the retreat house, he said, “a time to quit, to stop and to reflect.”

This is the fourth consecutive year the Pope and Curial members have held their Lenten retreat at the house in Ariccia.

While the practice of the pontiff going on retreat with the heads of Vatican dicasteries each Lent began some 80 years ago under the pontificate of Paul XI, it was customary for them to follow the spiritual exercises on Vatican ground. Beginning in Lent 2014, Pope Francis chose to hold the retreat outside of Rome, true to his background as a Jesuit.

This time of Lent, Fr. Michelini said, is a good period to slow down and to reflect on our spiritual lives and how they may be in need of enrichment. “It is helpful to remember that we are only human,” he said. “We need to eat, we need people to help us too.”

“And so the 40 days are a way for us to reflect not only on the poor, but also how we are poor, in a different sense.”

Especially in wealthy Western countries, where we have enough food and money, we don’t necessarily know what it is like to experience need, he said.

“Fasting and praying is not only a way for those who believe to be more in touch with God, and to have the same experience that Jesus did in the desert, but it's also a way to be more human. Because we normally have everything.”

 

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Vatican City, Mar 4, 2017 / 09:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Saturday that while liturgical music has often struggled to live up to the quality and beauty the mystery of the Eucharist requires, we can promote its renewal by investing in a solid musical education for clergy and laity.    
 
“Certainly the encounter with modernity and the introduction of the languages spoken in the Liturgy stirred up many problems, of languages, forms, and genres” he said March 4. “Sometimes a certain mediocrity, superficiality and banality prevailed, to the detriment of the beauty and intensity of the liturgical celebrations.”
 
“For this the various actors in this field, musicians and composers, conductors and singers of choirs, liturgical animators, can make a major contribution to the renewal, especially quality, of sacred music and liturgical chant.”
 
The Pope spoke to participants at the end of an international conference on Sacred Music held March 2-4, titled “Music and the Church: worship and culture 50 years after Musicam sacram.”
 
Organized by the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Congregation for Catholic Education in collaboration with the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music and the Pontifical Atheneum of St. Anselm, it looked at sacred music 50 years after the Second Vatican Council.
 
“Half a century after the Instruction of Musicam sacrum, the conference wanted to elaborate, in an interdisciplinary and ecumenical perspective, the current relationship between sacred music and contemporary culture,” Francis noted.  
 
“Of great importance, it was also a reflection on the aesthetic and musical education of both the clergy and religious and the laity engaged in the pastoral life, and more directly in the choirs.”
 
The Church has a great responsibility toward liturgical music, the Pope continued, because it deals with the sacred mystery of the Eucharist, and that sacred music, to that order, must balance the past and present in a way that invites full participation and lifts the congregation’s hearts to God.
 
The “dual mission” of the Church, Francis said, “is, on the one hand, to safeguard and promote the rich and varied heritage inherited from the past, using it with balance in mind and avoiding the risk of a nostalgic vision” that becomes a sort of “archaeology.”
 
On the other hand, we have to also ensure that sacred music and liturgical chant don’t ignore “the artistic and musical languages of modernity.”
 
All those responsible for liturgical music, on whatever level, “must know how,” he said, “to embody and translate the Word of God into songs, sounds, harmonies that make the hearts of our peers vibrate, creating even an appropriate emotional climate, that puts in order the faith and raises reception and full participation in the mystery that it celebrates.”
 
“Active and conscious participation” in the liturgy constitutes being able to “enter deeply” into the mystery of God made present in the Eucharist: “thanks in particular to the religious silence and ‘musicality of language with which the Lord speaks to us,’” he quoted his homily at Casa Santa Marta Dec. 12, 2013.
 
Quoting from the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Pope Francis said that “Liturgical action is given a more noble form when it is celebrated in song…and with the participation of the people.”
 
He highlighted the document’s emphasis on the importance of “active, conscious, full” participation by the entire faithful, quoting that the “true solemnity of liturgical action does not depend so much from a more ornate form of singing and a more magnificent ceremony than on its worthy and religious celebration.”
 
To promote this requires “a proper musical education…in dialogue with the musical trends of our time, with the demands of the different cultural areas,” he said.
 
Concluding, he thanked all of those who participated in the conference for their commitment to sacred music, and asked for the blessing of the Virgin Mary, “who in the Magnificat sang the merciful holiness of God.”
 
“I encourage you to not lose sight of this important goal: to help the liturgical assembly and the people of God to perceive and participate, with all the senses, physical and spiritual, in the mystery of God.”

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