Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion Vic­ar Gen­er­al, Fa­ther Mar­tin Sir­ju, says events held on Ash Wednes­day should not be la­belled as “cooldowns.”

In an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Fa­ther Sir­ju said some days are piv­otal in so­ci­ety and should not be triv­i­alised.

“I think to re­fer to it (Ash Wednes­day) as a cooldown would sound just as bad as if you were to hear an Eid cooldown, or Di­vali cooldown,” he said.

He al­so point­ed out that al­though the Lenten sea­son starts hours af­ter Car­ni­val Tues­day, Ro­man Catholics have noth­ing to wor­ry about if they cel­e­brate cor­rect­ly.

“I was in a band and I quite en­joyed my­self. We cel­e­brat­ed Lord Kitch­en­er,” he said.

Fa­ther Sir­ju ex­plained that the church em­braces a cer­tain amount of ex­cess, and it’s good for peo­ple to en­joy what is good about the fes­tiv­i­ties and con­duct them­selves ac­cord­ing­ly. He said Lent is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for Catholics to prac­tice the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of de­tach­ment, which is dif­fi­cult for many.

“Peo­ple are to ask them­selves, ‘How am I to con­duct my­self over these next two days?’ and many peo­ple do so ad­mirably and many don’t,” he said.

March marks a pe­ri­od of fast­ing for at least three re­li­gions in this coun­try - Chris­tians, Mus­lims and Hin­dus. Sir­ju said Lent, Ra­madan and Chaitra Navra­tri falling in the same month sig­ni­fies that no one de­nom­i­na­tion can solve the chal­lenges of to­day.

“It can­not be dealt with by Catholics alone,” he said, adding that curb­ing the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion needs every­one to come to­geth­er and with a com­mon voice, call out what’s wrong and chal­lenge peo­ple to do bet­ter. First in their in heart but then it must open out like a tree like Je­sus said in the gospel,” he ex­plained.

Mean­while, Nel­son Street Girls’ and Boys’ stu­dents yes­ter­day filled the pews of the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion for the Ash Wednes­day ser­vice, where Dea­con Rev­erend Roland Joseph told them to re­pent for their sins and asked them to con­sid­er what they could sac­ri­fice dur­ing the 40 days of Lent. He told the stu­dents their par­ents can help with their sac­ri­fices but they need to at­tend church.

“You need to talk to dad­dy and mom­my and tell them that we are in a time of lent and need to come to church,” he said.

Lent ends on April 17.