Let’s Begin Lent with “spirit of intimacy with the Lord”: Catholic Bishop in South Sudan

He went on to understand the need to practice prayer, fasting, and charity as the three pillars of the Lenten Season, adding that their practice will have a positive impact on the spiritual growth of the people of God. 

Credit: Fr. Luka Dor/Rumbek Diocese

Focusing on prayer, the Catholic Church leader cautioned against limiting prayer life to the Season of Lent, and advocated for a prayerful lifestyle. 

“It is not enough to pray only during Lent; we have to pray every day of our life,” he said, and added, “But maybe during this time of Lent we can give special value to a time that we can allocate within our day for God.”

Credit: Fr. Luka Dor/Rumbek Diocese

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Bishop Carlassare urged the people of God to understand prayer as “a work that puts us in contact with Him, that restores our friendship with Him, that allows us to return to Him from the many things we do during the day and sometime we may also forget that it is there that we are living in Him, that He is the one that give us strength.”

Prayer also “restores our intimacy with God; it opens ourselves to what is above us,” he added.

Credit: Fr. Luka Dor/Rumbek Diocese

The Catholic Church leader, who started his Priestly Ministry in South Sudan in the country’s Catholic Diocese of Malakal in 2005 went on to reflect on fasting, noting that “it is something that we have difficulty to understand, especially the value of fasting in a country in which we are all fasting every day in a way; not only fasting from food, but maybe also fasting for all those goods or resources that feel like we will need and we don't have.”

Christians can train themselves in fasting because “it is not just taking away superfluous things or bad things from us, but it is really entering in contact deeply with ourselves and being more in intimacy with ourselves.”

Credit: Fr. Luka Dor/Rumbek Diocese

“Fasting makes us understand what we really need. What is really essential for our life is not to attach ourselves to things that we think would give us life,”  Bishop Carlassare said.

In his February 14 homily, the Local Ordinary of Rumbek Diocese since his Episcopal Consecration on 25 March 2022 described charity and almsgiving as the pillar that “will not keep us always looking at God only, or at ourselves only, but puts us looking at others in the community.”

Credit: Fr. Luka Dor/Rumbek Diocese

“Charity in that sense means we are not islands; we cannot reach holiness or goodness by ourselves. But we can do it as a community, as the people of Israel, in the desert,” Bishop Carlassare said at Holy Family Cathedral of his Episcopal See on Ash Wednesday.

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Jude Atemanke is a Cameroonian journalist with a passion for Catholic Church communication. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Buea in Cameroon. Currently, Jude serves as a journalist for ACI Africa.