Cardinal Jose Advincula urged Catholics on Ash Wednesday to confront personal and collective responsibility, saying that repentance must include acknowledging complicity in corruption and injustice.
The Manila archbishop, who served as bishop of the Diocese of San Carlos in Negros from 2001 to 2011, pointed to the beginning of Lent as a call to moral honesty beyond ritual observance.
“We confess that we are sinners, not only as individuals, but also as a people,” Advincula told the faithful gathered for the liturgy.
He said believers must recognize the broader social realities affecting the nation, including corruption, injustice and moral compromises embedded in everyday life.
“We dare to face the corruption, injustice, and compromises that afflict our nation and become aware of our own participation in them, whether by action, silence, or indifference,” the cardinal was quoted as saying in the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) report Feb. 18.
He warned that moral failure is not limited to overt wrongdoings but also includes passive participation in systems that perpetuate suffering and inequality.
Bacolod Bishop Patricio Buzon, who presided over the Ash Wednesday mass at the San Sebastian Cathedral yesterday morning, stressed that the “only solution to the world’s problems is to return to the presence of God.”
During his homily, Buzon also shared an insight from Pope Benedict XVI, who identified the world’s primary crisis as the “absence of God” in our daily lives. “As we begin these 40 days, we are reminded that Lent is a sacred call to repentance and conversion, achieved through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.”
The CBCP also earlier urged Catholics to go beyond fasting from food by also abstaining from social media and other digital distractions.
In a Feb. 13 pastoral letter, the bishops warned that social media and online entertainment have become significant sources of distraction that “weakens our interior life.”
“True fasting, as Jesus teaches, is not an external performance but an interior conversion,” the bishops said. “Digital media fasting, therefore, invites a rediscovery of silence, prayer, contemplation, and authentic relationships. It is not meant to punish the body but to free the heart.”
Church rules require Catholics aged 18 to 59 to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, while Catholics 14 and older must abstain from meat. ||
