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 Raphael I Sako says, “We need his last week of Lent to clear our minds and hearts and return to the authenticity of our faith, passionately drawing this spirit of faith and light from the living wellspring 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 reach out to the whole world.

We too, Cardinal Sako said, should be aware of what Christ’s mission means for us, realizing that the “Kingdom of God requires our acceptance (faith) and absolute self-surrender with courage, honesty and complete trust.” Each one of us, he continues, “must strive to enter Jesus’s Kingdom through repentance, that should become real ‘reform’ through conversion, change, and integration to keep Jesus alive and influential within us.

Cardinal Sako invites the faithful of the Chaldean Catholic Church, who are experiencing this Holy Week as a true “Way of the Cross,” to ponder the meaning of the main stages of Jesus Passion, beginning with Palm Sunday and leading to the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection of Jesus.

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

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