Spend Holy Week with charitable worksInstead of just the usual Visita Iglesia, one can spend Holy Week visiting the sick in hospitals, or doing other charitable work, a Catholic bishop suggested.
Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said such activities can reinforce the traditional activities like the Visita Iglesia and Stations of the Cross.
“As we keep our pious practices like the Stations of the Cross, confessions, Visita Iglesia and penitensiya, let us also consider making acts of charity to the poor as the way to share in the spirit of the Lenten season," Villegas said in an article posted on the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines news site.
He said doing acts of charity can be an alternative way of spending the Holy Week meaningfully.
The prelate said one may “consider visiting 14 patients in our government hospitals and meditate, as you visit them, on the sufferings of Christ."
Near them, one can see “how the sufferings of Christ continue in the midst of us," he said.
"Prayers can be inspiring and penances can be admirable but only love can redeem. Only love saves. Love alone sanctifies us," he added.
Villegas also recommended jail visitation as another way to share God’s love and mercy to those behind bars.
“We can bring them our prayers and greetings and volunteer to be couriers of their letters that they want to send to their loved ones who are unable to visit them," he said.
Villegas said one can also bring food and clothes to the poor in honor of Jesus’ humiliation at Calvary.
He recalled the late Pope John Paul II’s visit to the Philippines in 1981, when lepers from Tala Leprosarium were brought to him so he could bless them.
Yet, the Pope knelt before a leper and kissed his leprous hands and exclaimed, “My Lord!"
“Give love this Lenten season. Pour love into your prayers. Let your penance overflow into charity," Villegas stressed. — LBG, GMA News
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