....-----,-------_......--------------------------------.
t eanc 0 .
VOL. 42, NO.8. Friday, February 20, 1998
FALL RIVER, MASS.
FALL RIVER DIOCESAN NEWSPAPER FOR SOUTHEAST MASSACHUSEITS CAPE COD & THE ISLANDS Southeastern Massachusetts' Largest Weekly
•
$14 Per Year
Bishop offers Lenten reflections to diocese FALL RIVER-Bishop Sean P. O'Malley, OFM Cap., has issued a Lenten message to Catholics throughout the Fall River Diocese. It reads:
groceries, visit a shut-in and try to look outfor the elderly in the neighborhood. What might be classified by some as a natural disaster is also an event that allows people Dearly beloved in Christ, to experience life in a new way, Most of us have experienced to be present to one another, to at some point in our lives a share, to be a community, to talk snowstorm that has paralyzed with one another. Lent can be that kind of an our town, closing schools and workplaces and reducing all experience, when we step back modes of transportation to its a little from the routine andfree most basic two-hoofed variety. ourselves to have a little more On such occasions, the most time for God and for one antraveled streets become huge other. The ashes on our foremalls with people strolling head are an invitation to go back along, greeting neighbors whom to basics, to put things in perthey would never see during nor- spective. The ashes remind us mal times. Deadlines, exams, not only ofour mortality but also meetings fade into the back- ofour eternal life. ground. A new liberating dyLent is, as always, a baptisnamic takes over. People share· mal retreat when the whole
Church prepares to receive new Catholics into the Community of Faith on Holy Saturday. On that occasion, we will all renew our baptismal promises, having lived together these 40 days of spiritual preparation. Some of you have not attended the Easter Vigil before. You might want to mark Holy Saturday evening, April I Ith, on your calendar now so that you can be a part of the most important liturgical event in the Church's calendar. Our Lent this year is in the context of our second year of preparation for the Jubilee Celebration ofthe 2000th Birthday of Christ. The Jubilee, or holy year concept, goes back to Old Testament times when Israel celebrated every 7 times 7 years Turn
10
page 2 - Bishop
Lent: Honing our spirituality By JAMES N. DUNBAR POPE BAPTIZES-Pope Paul II baptizes an infant during a recent service inside the Sistine Chapel. The Church teaches that Lent is first, last and foremost about baptism. Baptism is going down with Christ unto death and being raised up with him to glory. (CNS photo from Reuters)
Pope's Lenten ntessage urges love for poor •
Pontiff stresses worldwide 11ragedy" of imbalance between rich and needy. By JOHN THAVIS CATHOLIC NEWS SE,RVICE
VATICAN CITY - In a Lenten message dedicated to the poor, Pope John Paul II called on all Christians to offer the needy a "concrete sign of love" in the weeks leading up to Easter this year. The pope said special efforts were necessary to overcome new "forms of distancing" and the resulting suffering of refugees, targets of racial hatred and vast numbers of unemployed. His message was released at the Vatican in mid-February. Echoing his statements over the last several years, the pope strongly condemned the modern imbalance between rich and poor. He said too
many lack the necessary means of survival, adequate health care, a home and ajob. Others suffer from war, receive unequal salaries or are separated from their families. "This poverty, which for many of our brothers crosses the line to misery, is a scandal," he said. "The individual is humiliated by the lack of these necessities of life. It is a tragedy before which those who have the possibility to intervene cannot, in conscience, remain indifferent," he said. The pope said an equally serious form of poverty -:-Iack of spiritual nourishment - tr¢ubles many men and women today and can bring on grave suffering, too. "The consequence$ of this are right before our eyes and are often very sad, a life void of meaning. This kind of misery is mostly found in environments where people live in comfort, materially satisfied but without a spiritual orientation," he Turn to page 2 - Message
FALL RIVER-Catholics in this diocese, like millions throughout the world, will step forward next Wednesday to receive the imprint of ashes on their foreheads as Lent begins. Those who at morning Mass receive the reminder "You are dust and into dust you shall return" or "Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel," will spend the rest of the day living their faith for all to see. And then, suddenly, Lent becomes an almost secret time to hone one's spirituality by traditional methods such as prayer, fasting and almsgiving. In the earliest days of the Church for those who were baptized, those three disciplines - and receiving the Eucharist - were the principal means of making reparation for sin. Why ashes? The custom of placing ashes on the heads of people and, originally, the wearing of sackcloth, is an ancient penitential practice common among the Hebrew
people (see Jonas 3:5-9, Jeremiah 6:26, Matthew II :21). In the early centuries in the Church it was part of public penance for sin. By the Middle Ages, emphasis was placed on personal rather than public sin. In recent years an alternative formula for the imposition of ashes emphasizes a more positive aspect
of Lent: "Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospe1." In St. Matthew's Gospel, we read that Christ urges us to pray, fast and give to the poor, "in secret" (Matt. 6:1, 16-18). If we make a "show" of being hungry, or striking a pose of constant prayer or of making a generous donation, the Gospel warning is that we have already received our reward, albeit an earthly, not a heavenly one. Some of us pre-Vatican II kids used to make it clear that we couldn't join our friends at the movies or eat candy or ice cream "because we gave them up for Lent." Our moods seemed to match the dull time of year as winter held fast and spring was reluctant to claim its due. Lent is closely associated with the transition from winter to spring. The word "Lent," for example, comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word for springtime, "lencten." It describes the gradual lengthening of daylight after the winter solstice. Turn to page JJ - Lent
Iraqi,patriarch urges U.S. not to a~tack By JOHN THAVIS CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
VATICAN CITY - The leader of Iraq's Chaldean-rite Catholics, Patriarch Raphael I Bidawid of Baghdad, has appealed to the United States not to attack Iraq, saying new military action would only hurt the people of his country.
Instead, he urged a lifting of the economic embargo which he said has left I million babies dead from lack of food and medicine since it was imposed in 1990. Patriarch Bidawid made the comments in an interview published Feb. 16 by Fides, a news service of the Vatican's Congregation
for the Evangelization of Peoples. Appealing to the U.S. people, he said: "Bring pressure on your government so that it does not attack my people. An attack would do no honor to a great nation like the United States of America." The patriarch, a strong critic of Turn to page 3 -Iraq