CEBU CITY—On the fifth day of the ongoing Provincial Chapter, Fray Amado Emmanuel Bolilia, OAR, presided the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.
In commemoration of the heroic martyrdom of St. Magdalena of Nagasaki and the Japanese Martyrs, Fray Bolilia shared his reflection on the season of Lent as a moment of giving up.
Lent, the forty-day pilgrimage towards the mountain of Easter, is a season of prayer, charity, sacrifice, suffering, discipline, mortification, and reconciliation. Fray Bolilia said that one of the disciplines of Lent is fasting which we practice not as deprivation of the senses, but as means of sanctifying oneself through sacrifice and perfect charity. Through fasting, we reflect on the things that we need to give up.
Fray Bolilia also gave emphasis on the need to give up the things that hinder us to move forward in our journey toward Easter. “We give up addictions, attachments, evil inclinations, and many disordered desires so that we can be in solidarity with others,” Fray Bolilia shared.
He then continued by sharing a litany of advices: “If we give up our personal interests, we give value to fraternal life in common; give up one’s talkativeness to listen and pray more; let go of our biases to trust better; leave our timidity or fear, and be open for dialogue; give up our being unpredictable to become approachable.”
Fray Emmanuel Bolilia ended his homily with a prayer of thanks to God for giving the Order the holy martyrs of Japan: St. Magdalena of Nagasaki, Blessed Vicente de San Antonio and Francisco de Jesus, Japanese Brothers Lorenzo Kaida Hachizo, Mancio Yukimoto Ichizaemon, and Pedro Zawaguchi Kuhioe. Through their martyrdom, they showed us the way on how to give up oneself for God’s glory and sanctification of the Province, the Order, and the Church.