Special Ash Wednesday for Cebuano Catholics

CEBU, Philippines — Cebu's observance of Ash Wednesday is special this year with the anticipated visit of the incorrupt heart relic of St. Camillus de Lellis from Rome.

The local Catholic Church community observes Ash Wednesday today, which also happens to be the scheduled visit of the religious relic to the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral.

The relic is believed to be miraculous and has granted favors from petitioners.

From Calbayog City, Samar, the relic arrived in Cebu on Tuesday morning in a delegation led by Camillian priest Dan Cancino, Jr., the executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines’ Commission on Health Care.

A group of religious and the laity welcomed the delegation and joined the motorcade in bringing the heart relic to the Novitiate House of the religious congregation Daughters of St. Camillus. It was placed at the chapel of the home for the aged managed by the religious sisters in Barangay Talamban, Cebu City where it stayed for an overnight vigil and veneration.

Today at 10 a.m., the heart relic will be transferred to the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral.

The relic will be welcomed by a Holy Mass at noon and at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. where Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma and Cebu Auxiliary Bishop Oscar Jaime Florencio are set to officiate.

By March 7, a Pontifical or High Mass will be celebrated at 10:30 a.m. and a farewell Mass at 7 p.m.      

Regular Mass schedules at the Cathedral are modified to adjust to the Eucharistic celebrations set for the visit of the heart relic.

From arrival at the Cathedral to its send off, the relic will be exposed to veneration and will be placed at the left side of the church.

The delegation for the heart relic has journeyed different towns and cities across the Philippines.

Msgr. Joseph Tan, Cebu archdiocese spokesperson, said the visit of the relic on an Ash Wednesday is good timing since Ash Wednesday is the holiest feast in the church calendar.

Ash Wednesday signals the beginning of the Lenten season or the 40-day preparation of Catholics for Easter Sunday, one of the most important feasts in the church.

With the visit of the heart relic, the faithful will have an opportunity to pray for the sick.  

St. Camillus is the patron saint of the sick, nurses, physicians and hospitals.           

He was a Catholic priest from Italy who founded a religious order named Camillians or Ministers to the Sick (M.I.) dedicated to the care of the sick; its incorrupt heart relic is enshrined at the Church of Santa Maria Maddalena in Rome.

Tan said the term “ash” refers to the religious practice among Catholics wherein the priest or the celebrant uses ashes in marking a cross on the forehead of the attendees of a Mass.

The ash mark reminds the faithful that "you are dust, and to dust you shall return," that when a body decays, it does not only mean the end of the earthly life but it opens a prospect of an everlasting life.

Tan said Ash Wednesday is a holy day of prayer, fasting, and abstinence.

Fasting means one can only eat one of the three meals – either breakfast, lunch, or dinner with no snacks in between.

Abstinence, meanwhile, means that the person is prohibited from consuming meat products such as chicken, pork or beef, and can eat vegetables, fish or sea foods, during meals.

Tan said it is wrong to say that Catholics without the mark are exempt from the practices of the Catholic Church.

He said it is obligatory upon Catholics to observe fasting and abstinence whether they participate in the Mass or not. —  JMO (FREEMAN)