Conscience best place to visit during Lent–Bishop Villegas

Bishop Soc Villegas: The best place to make a pilgrimage is your conscience and allow the voice of right and wrong to prevail.

MANILA, Philippines—Looking for the best place to go this Holy Week? It’s not the beach or even the church. It’s your conscience.

Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas says many people today are no longer in touch with their conscience so this Holy Week, they must make time to be alone and listen to their inner feelings.

“The best place to make a pilgrimage is not even a church. The best place to go is your conscience and allow the voice of right and wrong to prevail,” Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said in a recent interview with reporters.

The conscience is not at the end of a long road trip with a road map as guide, Villegas said. One can reach one’s conscience by being alone and communicating with God, he said.

Ideal discipleship

“The way to your conscience is by solitude… and then asking yourself, ‘How does God [see] me?’ How God [sees] you is [what] you really are, because what you do when no one sees you is [what] you really are.”

Villegas also reminded the faithful that making sacrifices and doing charity work should not stop when Lent ends at Easter, which celebrates Jesus Christ’s resurrection.

“The Christian life is always [about] prayer, sacrifice and charity before Lent, after Lent and during Lent. This is 365 days,” Villegas said.

“Lent just highlights it, so to speak. Lent just [puts] the spotlight on these three … But outside Lent—during Easter, during Christmas—we should still be praying, sacrificing and doing charity for others. That’s the real discipleship of Christ,” he said.

Sing ‘Pasyon’ right

As for those who will sing the Passion of Jesus Christ, or “Pasyon,” this Holy Week, they should stick to the traditional way of singing it and not render it to the tune of modern songs, said Fr. Conegundo Garganta, executive secretary of the CBCP’s Episcopal Commission on Youth.

Garganta said it was not every day that people sing or listen to the Pasyon, unlike popular songs, which they hear every day.

“These modern songs are just there every day, so the Pasyon should be different, at least during this period when we should be in solemn prayer,” he said.

Garganta said the traditional way of singing the Pasyon helped people to reflect and pray.

The Pasyon is a uniquely Filipino tradition where people sing the story of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus from Holy Monday to Good Friday.

Many of those who take part in the marathon, mostly adults, do it as penance.

But in recent years, the Pasyon has been treated with irreverence, singing the lyrics to pop, rock or hip-hop tunes to attract young people to the tradition.

While the Church does not frown on the innovation, it reminds the faithful not to lose sight of the deeper meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Originally posted: 9:37 pm | Monday, April 14th, 2014

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