Live everyday your name – Christian*

BELIZE

The call to Catholic Christians during the season of Lent is to open their lives to this new experience that Lent has to offer, turn away from sin and be true to the gospel.

“Let us not lie to ourselves! Let us be true to ourselves and accept that we do have lots of room in our heart and in our lives to be a better son, a better daughter of the Lord God. It is lonely living in the darkness of sin…. It is no kind of life living detached from the Vine,” Bishop Lawrence Nicasio of Belize City- Belmopan (IN PHOTO) said in his Lenten message to the diocese. Nicasio’s ‘Lenten Message 2019’ was published in diocesan monthly, The Christian Herald.

On the issue of sin, the Bishop said sin occurs when we think like Adam and Eve: that there must be more somewhere in a spot God has hidden from us. “We get greedy, and so we go searching and chasing after every empty promise the world offers. And hence the many sad faces, faces that are unable or refuse to smile; faces of discontent and unfulfilled dreams.”

Bishop Nicasio affirmed that we are never truly happy except with the Lord.

“We may fool ourselves that the world can truly make us happy. The fake smile the world puts on our face loses its beauty after a while; but the smile and joy that a life in Jesus put on our face can never lose its beauty, its luster or its permanence,” he said.

The Bishop said that the Lenten experience is not just about coming to receive ashes and “be over with it”; but it includes the sacrifice of fasting and praying; the sacrifice of abstaining from eating meat on Fridays of Lent; and praying the Stations of the Cross.

He added, “let me see more of you in Church during this Lenten season…. Do not miss the opportunity to live everyday your name—Christian.”

Bishop Nicasio called on Belizean Catholics to carry their cross each day, not with a sour face, but with a face full of joy because every sacrifice made for Him and for His Church will never go without its reward.