Penitents invited to 7-km walk

The Catholic Church is offering devotees another venue for offering prayers and sacrifices on Good Friday: A seven-kilometer penitential walk for the country’s safety from deadly calamities and accidents this year.

Dubbed the “Via Crucis For Good Weather,” the activity will start at 5 a.m. on Friday at San Juan de Dios Hospital in Pasay City. It will end at 10 a.m. at the Manila Cathedral in Intramuros, where Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle will give his reflection and final blessing to participants.

“We want to utilize the rich Filipino religious experience during Holy Week by offering a penitential sacrifice for our country’s deliverance from natural calamities,” said Fr. Paschal Gorgoña, the parish priest of San Roque Church in Pasay City and one of the organizers of the event, at a press conference on Monday.

The event will be spearheaded by Church-run Radio Veritas in partnership with the Manila archdiocese and several parishes under its jurisdiction.

Participants can expect a dramatization of the Way of the Cross, a speech choir (sabayang pagbigkas) and parish priests making their reflections, said Gorgoña.

The organizers of the event said the walk for good weather was timely since the country was battered with back-to-back calamities last year, including the powerful earthquake that jolted Cebu and Bohol and Supertyphoon “Yolanda” which devastated Eastern Visayas.

“What was abnormal before is the new normal and we should expect the unexpected. We should prepare for all of that and one of the great things we can do is pray,” said Novaliches Bishop Emeritus Teodoro Bacani Jr.

Bacani said that while many might look at the event as a “mumbo jumbo,” the power of prayer should never be doubted since it has been tried and tested in the past, especially by the charismatic movement El Shaddai.

“The Lord really listens to prayers. In my experience with El Shaddai, when we pray for the rain to stop, it really stops,” said Bacani, one of the group’s spiritual advisers.

The event would also serve as a reminder to the faithful that prayers should always be accompanied with action for their wishes and hopes to come true. “We are challenging the people to exercise their faith not simply by praying, but doing what they can to achieve what they asked for,” said Bacani.

During the five-hour penitential walk, the Meat-Free Friday Movement will also be launched to raise awareness on three areas: Spiritual purification, physical health and environmental benefits.

“The Church would like to promote spiritual purification through abstaining from eating meat,” said Fr. Anton Pascual, Radio Veritas president.

He pointed out that refraining from eating meat on Fridays would help the faithful develop their self-control, particularly over temptations of the flesh and other worldly things.

Pascual also said that reduced meat consumption has several health benefits such as lowered risk of high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, cancers and other cardiovascular diseases.

He added that Filipinos, many of whom have a healthy appetite for red meat, could also take care of the environment by abstaining from meat.

“The Meat-Free Friday Movement encourages all Catholic faithful to reexamine the prevailing signs of the times and to consider offering all Fridays throughout the year as a time to be mindful of our personal sins … which we are called upon to help make amends in union with the crucified Christ through our continued abstinence from meat,” he said.