2019 LENTEN PASTORAL LETTER FROM THE GHANA CATHOLIC BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE (GCBC)
Theme:
Lent: A Grace-Filled Time to Seek Peace and Reconciliation with God, Neighbour and Creation
Greetings
Our dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, on the occasion of this year’s Lenten Season, we, your Bishops, bring you fraternal greetings of peace and blessing. We wish to invite you, our dear brother Priests, Religious Men and Women, and Lay Faithful, and indeed, all Christians and men and women of good will resident in our country, Ghana, to join us to render thanks to God for His manifold blessings upon us, both as Church and nation.
The Lenten Season this year is one with a special significance because Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the Season of Lent, falls on the 6th day of March, which also marks the celebration of Ghana’s 62nd Independence Anniversary. We believe that this is not just a mere coincidence, but the Lord’s own doing, a Kairos, a true moment of grace for our Church and our nation to pray together in gratitude to God and to seek God’s blessings in the days ahead. To this end, we have decided to set aside March 3 to 10 as the Church’s Lenten Week of Peace and Reconciliation, a period to pray for God’s favour upon our country, just like the people of Nineveh did at the instance of the Prophet Jonah (cf. Jon. 3-4). To all our Catholic faithful and fellow Ghanaians, therefore, we commend our dear country to your assiduous prayers and intercession, privately, individually and collectively, during this period and the days after.
Lent: A Grace-Filled Time of God’s Mercy and Favour
On Ash Wednesday, we will join Catholics and other Christians all over the world to begin the Season of Lent a 40-day pilgrimage of faith to God. When we gather in God’s presence at the beginning of Lent on that day, we will do so to express our need of God’s mercy and forgiveness by participating in a corporate act of penance and reconciliation, beseeching God for the grace to use this favourable time to prepare for the celebration of Easter. The Season of Lent is thus an opportune time, a grace-filled period to prepare our minds and hearts to enter fully into the Paschal Mystery of Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection at Easter.
It provides us a privileged occasion for interior pilgrimage towards God who is the fount of mercy, a pilgrimage in which He himself accompanies us and sustains us on our way towards the intense joy of Easter. Lent then invites each one of us to a change of heart, a change in perspectives and focus and each one of us is called upon to participate fully, actively and consciously in this renewal.
Traditionally, we mark the Lenten Season with religious acts of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. We also undertake other Lenten pious exercises such as weekly Stations of the Cross, daily praying of the Holy Rosary, pilgrimages to various Marian Shrines and Prayer Sanctuaries. We believe that by undertaking these spiritual acts of penance with sincere hearts and contrite spirits, the Lord our God who sees all that is done in secret will look with serene and kindly countenance on us and grant us His mercies and unmerited favour (cf. Matt. 6: 3-4, 6, 17). In the light of this belief, we wish to call on all citizens of Ghana in general, and our Catholic faithful in particular, to intensify their life of prayer, fasting and good works in this season of Lent. We also call on our parishes, outstations and institutions to continue to organize penitential services especially for individual confessions. Through these Lenten spiritual exercises, may we implore the mercy and goodness of God for ourselves and for our nation, Ghana, uniting our hearts and minds together in seeking peace and reconciliation with God, our neighbours and creation.
Lent as a Period of Instruction, Repentance and Renewal
Besides being a season of pious practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, Lent is also a season of instruction. The Lenten readings have been chosen carefully to help us to grow in our journey of faith in God. Indeed, our faith in God will grow if we listen more attentively to God’s word, allowing this Word to make a judgment on our lives, to change our evil ways and reconcile with the Lord. Throughout the season, we call on all our faithful to use the readings to reflect on the themes of faith, conversion, and “metanoia,” turning back to a God who loves us and waits for us.
Moreover, since Lent is also special time of repentance, renewal and recommitment to good neighbourliness and reconciliation with one another, we, your Bishops, invite you, our beloved fellow citizens, all men and women of goodwill in our land, to spend these forty days of Lent in personal and collective reflection, renewal and recommitment, especially commitment to reconciliation, justice and peace.
We believe that it is only by such personal and collective effort, working for the restoration of one’s inner peace through reconciliation with our God and our fellow man and woman, that we can then go on to become ourselves ambassadors of reconciliation and peace-makers, that peace which only Christ Jesus our Lord gives (cf. Jn. 14:27). This is the peace that Ghana needs in this period of grace and hereafter.
Furthermore, Lent invites us to live in harmony with creation. Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, reminds us that human life is shaped by three intertwined relationships, namely, with God, with neighbour and with creation, and that to break any one of these relationships is to sin (Laudato Si 66). Thus, in this season of Lent, we must also examine how we relate with the environment around us and endeavour to practise environmental concern and care and to live in harmony with all creation.
The Season of Lent and Ghana Today: The Imperatives of Peace and Reconciliation
We are grateful to God that by His own special design and providence, this year’s Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of the Lenten Season, has coincided with the celebration of our nation’s 62nd Independence Anniversary. We consider this occurrence not just as a mere coincidence or accident of history, but a special moment of grace intended by God as an occasion for sober reflection on our lives as Christians and our contributions to Ghana as citizens of this dear nation of ours.
As we celebrate our Independence anniversary at the beginning of our Lenten season, we cannot but continue to thank God for the peace and stability we enjoy and the significant gains we are making towards economic development and prosperity. In particular, we wish to thank God for the huge progress made towards the restoration of peace in Dagbon after many years of protracted conflict, praying and hoping that the new-found peace in the area will be sustained to lead to development, while other areas that are currently crying for peace like the Alavanyo-Nkonya enclave, Sankore, Mim, Drobo and Japekrom, among others, will also experience peace soon.
Because peace is paramount for a nation’s well-being and that of its citizens, we are deeply saddened by recent reports of high-profile murders and cases of kidnappings in the country, especially in the Western Region. We are equally concerned about the lawless activities of political vigilante groups that continue to threaten the peace of the nation and the loss of lives.
While praying to God that perpetrators of such heinous crimes will quickly repent of their sins and receive God’s forgiveness, we call on Government to resource the security agencies with the necessary logistics and equipment to help them bring all perpetrators to book, while putting in place the necessary measures to forestall such occurrences in the future to ensure the safety and security of all citizens and residents living on our land.
Once again, we wish to remind all fellow citizens and residents in our land that Ghana is the only country we have, and it is a country that is blessed by God. We all must commit ourselves to building her up as a beacon of hope, peace and progress by living the ideals of patriotism, selflessness, hard work and love towards one another in spite of our ethnic, political and religious differences, while eschewing every act of lawlessness, violence, indifference, apathy, bribery and corruption.
Christ, our Peace and Reconciliation with God, Neighbour and Creation
In conclusion, we believe, as Christians, that Jesus Christ “is our peace and reconciliation” and that he has broken down the walls of discrimination and division among people, and more so, he has reconciled humanity with God our Creator and us with each other (cf. Eph. 2:14-16; 2 Cor. 5:19-21).
We also believe that since Jesus lived in harmony with creation (cf. Matt. 8:7), he has invited us to do the same by not only viewing the world around us with awe and wonder, but most importantly, by taking good care of it.
Our country at this material moment needs her sons and daughters to live in peace and harmony in their homes and families, in their localities, in their places of work, in their social intercourse, in their clans and ethnic groups and in the nation as a whole. We believe that it is time to change our hearts and seek peace and reconciliation with God, neighbour and the world around us, and our prayer is that we will all endeavour to use this year’s Season of Lent to seek peace and reconciliation with God, our neighbours and the creation around us.
May God bless our homeland Ghana and make our nation great and strong. May God grant us His peace and a grace-filled Lenten Season.
SIGNED
MOST REV. PHILIP NAAMEH
METROPOLITAN ARCHBISHOP OF TAMALE &
PRESIDENT, GHANA CATHOLIC BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2019