Patriarch Sako: We need final week of Lent to clear our minds and hearts

By Christopher Wells

In a message to the faithful for Holy Week, Chaldean Patriarch Cardinal Louis Raphaël I Sako says: “We need this last week of Lent to clear our minds and hearts and return to the authenticity of our faith, by drawing with passion this spirit of faith and light. of the living source that is Jesus in our lives.

The Patriarch recalled that Jesus, knowing what awaited him in Jerusalem, consciously began to intensify his teachings and prepare for the final phase of his mission, which will ultimately extend to the whole world.

We too, Cardinal Sako said, must be aware of what Christ's mission means for us, aware that “the Kingdom of God demands our acceptance (faith) and absolute abandonment with courage, honesty and total trust.” Each of us, he continues, “must strive to enter the Kingdom of Jesus through repentance, which must become true 'reform' through conversion, change and integration to keep Jesus alive and influential in We.

Cardinal Sako invites the faithful of the Chaldean Catholic Church, who experience this Holy Week as a true “station of the cross”, to reflect on the meaning of the main stages of the Passion of Jesus, from Palm Sunday to the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus.

And he encourages them “to adhere to their identity and to their Church, their “house of love”, and not to allow anyone to divide them, but on the contrary to be a bridge of fraternity, unity and peace” .

Concluding his message, Cardinal Sako writes: “Jesus is always with us, even in the challenges and difficulties that hurt us.” And he reminds the faithful to remember Jesus’ promise to be with us always “until the end of the age.”