Journeying Together as Companions Lenten Pastoral Letter 2024
【AV version】 Premieres at 9 am on February 24
My dear sisters and brothers in the Lord,
We are once again on the threshold of the Season of Lent, the season of spiritual preparation before entering into the sorrows and joys of our Lord’s paschal mystery. Sorrows for our darkened humanity failing to wholeheartedly embrace God as God truly is. It took our Lord’s passion and death to wake us up to that astonishing love of God. Joys, however, are for God, who has not given up on us. Instead, God over-trumps evil’s trump card, which is death itself, crushing its power and freeing us from its eternal damnation through the resurrection of the Son of God.
When we say the paschal mystery of our Lord is life championing over death, what is equally true is that the mystery itself is merciful love championing over frigid apathy. If we try to scan across our society and its institutions, what might we see? I believe we can see the beauty of humanity and the splendour of God’s Creation. Yet, we can also see the loneliness of individualism as well as the bleeding of our natural environment from our selfish egoism.
As we are developing our Church as a synodal Church, we are called to conversion from individualism and egoism to a synodal reality in which we learn to accompany each other for the mission God has entrusted to us as a community, to discern together the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to fulfill God’s salvific mission in our respective contexts.
Since the Holy Spirit is a unifying Spirit, we can have faith that our missions stemming from God’s mission, though different in approaches, will manifest the same merciful love and unifying desire of our Lord. If, for example, we are moved by the Spirit to adopt different penances during the Lenten Season, how are they beneficial to the community as a whole rather than just our own spiritual gains?
There are five target categories where we can consider accompanying and manifesting God’s merciful love. The how will depend on our circumstances and capacities. We do not have to accompany all five but rather discern and identify one or two, so that we can provide quality accompaniment for the chosen categories. These five categories are those suffering from mental health issues, the youth, displaced persons, people of goodwill, and the created world.
One of the major concerns that is facing Hong Kong now is mental illness. Depression is said to be the most common mental illness in Hong Kong and around the world. Some studies show that there were over 300,000 depressive patients in Hong Kong. Other local studies found that one out of four children and adolescents from age six to 17 in Hong Kong had suffered from at least one mental health issue, and some had two or three mental illnesses simultaneously in 2022. When we walk with them, can we not help them learn to cast their worries upon God and develop trust in God’s care for them? “Cast all your worries upon him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).
As seen in the statistics above, children and young people remain a crucial population crying out for empathic understanding and faithful accompaniment. They are not our problems but our hope and future. However, it is they who should create their future, which will include ours in some way. One of our roles is to accompany them, showing them how to discern and have faith and hope in following God’s guidance. Also, we should remind ourselves that we will need them to accompany us at our own sunset. Therefore, “do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31).
Another voiceless population that requires our walking with them is the group of displaced persons, forced to leave their homes or habitual residences because of hostile or life-threatening external conditions. Some of these displaced persons are refugees or asylum seekers. Hong Kong law prohibits them from seeking employment for remuneration. The application process for resettlement can take over 10 years, if successful. These people suffer from a variety of challenges, such as finance, education of their children, hope for an unknown future, a sense of insecurity and social loneliness, exploitation by criminal syndicates, etc. As pilgrims in this world, we are called to journey together to our new home beyond this life. “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek one that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14).
Thanks be to God that there are people of goodwill who are contributing to a better future for our society. They share our concerns through addressing them with the perspectives and approaches of other faith traditions or the non-faith backgrounds.
As we know well, the power of goodwill is very limited when it works in isolation. However, when people of goodwill come together in collaboration, there can be synergy and their collective voice is more powerful. “Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).
Last but not least, we humankind are not exempted from the plight of the created world. Just recall the worsening summer heat and extreme weather conditions, and the increasing pollution of the food chain. Should we continue to ignore the destruction of nature and not walk with the rest of God’s Creation, we condemn future generations to a life in a hellish world. But if we are willing to embrace “ecological conversion” and give nature a good space to heal, we will be giving future generations a fair chance for a livable life instead. Believe in the creative power of the Spirit of God! (c.f. Psalm 104:30a).
This 2024 being the Year of Prayer for the Jubilee Year in 2025 with the theme, “Pilgrims of Hope,” we are invited by the Holy Father to use the Lord’s Prayer as the focus of the year, as well as our preparation for the year of hope.
We pray for the coming of the Kingdom of God (the Father) through the Lord’s Prayer. It is a Kingdom characterised by “peace, justice, and love.” So, with these qualities of the Kingdom being experienced in our hearts and our world, it will be difficult not to have hope. And when we, as the people of God, walk together with the aforementioned five categories, the Kingdom will take root in our hearts and the world.
Father, may Your Kingdom come. Teach us to walk humbly and faithfully with our sisters and brothers who are suffering from mental illness, who are young, who are displaced, who are people of goodwill, and the created world. Amen.
