[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Dear Fathers / Brothers / Sisters and my dear people,
We have a special month ahead of us: this year being a Leap Year, the month of February has an additional day on the 29th. Time is God’s gift to us and He gives us an extra length of time to enable us to do an extra dosage of good to others.
The Catholic Church celebrates the World Day of Consecrated Life every year on 2nd February, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, also known as Candlemas or the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As a local Church, we greet all the men and the women religious ministering in our diocese. In his message for this year’s 28th World Day of Consecrated Life, the Holy Father says that the mission of consecrated men and women is enriched by the unique charisms of their communities, in addition to the fundamental gift they have each received.
This year we are going to have an early Easter which means we are to start the Lenten season soon in the middle of this month. Lent can be seen and observed as a repeated annual observance by the Christians. But we need to go beyond this approach of welcoming Lent as any other annual festival celebration. It is the celebration of our Christian faith in its essential radicality. ‘Radical’ means rootedness. The Cross and the death of Jesus become our focus during Lent so that the Resurrection of Christ becomes the inevitable focus during the season of Easter that follows the Lenten season.
The forty days program of Lent should help us to discover the factors that need to be nailed to the cross and put to death. This list will include personal sinful habits like idleness, impatience, anger, unforgiveness, immoral and immodest dispositions, undue adherence to media gadgets, insincerity in any form and so on, along with the so-called social sins such as dowry, caste discrimination, domination, theft, causing division and dissention etc. This dying process during Lent will pave the way for the rising to newness of life with the Risen Lord at Easter.
May God bless you all!
Yours in Christ,
+ Most Rev. Dr. A. Neethinathan
Bishop of Chingleput[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]