With the start of the Lenten season, I would like to encourage more Filipino Catholics to fast during the Lent and take part in the “No Meat Friday National Campaign.”
Catholics are obliged to fast and abstain during Ash Wednesday and Good Friday but are encouraged to do it in all the Fridays of Lent. Catholics are encouraged to observe the penitential abstinence from meat during this time as part of self-denial and mortification in prayerful remembrance of the passion of Jesus Christ.
Everyone are enjoined to examine the prevailing “signs of the times” and to consider offering all Fridays throughout the year to make amends of our personal sins and the sins of mankind, which we are called upon in union with Christ, crucified through our continued abstinence from meat.
The abstinence from meat is a form of penance in honor of Jesus’ death. The act of abstinence also gives us the chance to voluntarily give up something good for our spiritual benefit.
In addition to the spiritual benefit, eating less meat would improve people’s health. It is scientifically proven that the reduction of meat consumption could prolong one’s life by up to 20 percent. That same study from Harvard Medical School also indicates that each serving of red meat increased the risk of death by 13 percent.
Meanwhile, according to a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse- gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent (18 percent) than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation.
Aside from the documented health, social and environmental benefits of abstaining from meat during all Fridays of Lent, this crusade also serves as response to His Holiness Pope Francis’s call to practice mercy through concrete act of charity. I also urge people to do works of charity from whatever resources they are able to attain from the penitential abstinence from meat.
Together with our collective and personal initiatives toward meat-free Fridays, we should, likewise, take this opportunity to do works of charity and exercises of piety from whatever resources we are able to attain from our penitential abstinence from meat. This enables our act of sacrifice to find holism, which disposes us to love God above all creatures, and to love ourselves and our neighbors for the sake of God. This act also supports “Fast2Feed,” a fund-raising campaign for the Church’s Pondo ng Pinoy—Hapag-Asa (literally “table of hope”) feeding program. This campaign advocates eliminating hunger in the country.
In his pastoral letter for Ash Wednesday 2016, Manila Arch. Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, DD, urges the faithful to feed the hungry children as their concrete act of charity in this Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy.
“In this Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, let us heed Pope Francis’s call to practice mercy through concrete act of charity. It only takes P1,200 or P10 per day to bring back a hungry and undernourished child to a healthy state in six months. Let us make a difference in their lives by fasting and donating whatever we save to Hapag-Asa.”
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