MANILA, June 8, 2013— The head of Manila’s Roman Catholic Church has led the faithful in performing a simple act of consecration that comes with a promise: the conversion of the Philippines.
Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle asked the people to help transform the country by fighting corruption as an act of consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
“Let’s promise that we will clean the heart of our country from corruption. Corruption has no role in a country consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary,” Tagle said.
The Manila archbishop made the statement in his homily during a Mass at the San Fernando de Dilao Parish Church in Paco, Manila for the National Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
“Discrimination has no place in a country that is said to be consecrated to heart of Mary which is full of memories about Jesus,” he said.
“Callousness, greed, deceitful to oppress and destroy others has no place in a country or in a heart that says Mary, our heart is for your heart,” added Tagle.
To achieve this, the cardinal said it means asking God to give then the grace to have a pure heart like Mary.
“On this day, when we commonly consecrate our nation, our families, ourselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary…we ask the Lord for the grace that filled Mary so like her, we could respond with equal consecration in our lives,” Tagle said.
“We ask that our hearts may also be pure not because its empty but it’s is filled with love, filled with Jesus and when filled with Jesus, it’s a heart that reaches out to others and a heart that will lead others closer to God,” he said.
Church leaders held the National Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in cathedrals, shrines and chapels in all archdioceses and dioceses across the country on Saturday.
It was last January 28 when the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines declared “the holding of a simultaneous National Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on June 8, 2013, feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma, CBCP president, said the event is part of the celebrations marking the Year of Faith and the nine-year preparation for the fifth centenary of the coming of Christianity in the Philippines in 2021.
Palma said the celebration would help reaffirm the Filipino’s love for the Blessed Mother. (Roy Lagarde)
