HAPPY FEAST OF LOVE AND HAPPY ASH WEDNESDAY TO YOU ALL
HAPPY FEAST OF LOVE AND HAPPY ASH WEDNESDAY TO YOU ALL
Message for Valentine's Day to all by Barani Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Tombura-Yambio
February 14th, 2024
“Once again, it’s Valentine's celebration, the Feast of Love, the Feast of Lovers. Valentine's Day is a day for all of us, it’s for everybody. For family, for husbands and wives, for friends, and siblings, for young lovers, for old lovers, for every human being that is mad in the image and likeness of God. Because St. Valentine, with whom this Feast is associated, lived for selfless love, love that heals, that helps other people, authentic love like his is so much needed in our world today where there is so much hatred, so much killing, so much bloodshed, so many conflicts all around us, we need authentic love and we need agents of authentic love.
This year 2024, February 14th has turned Valentine's Day, the Mother's Day of Love celebrations into Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday is the initial of 46 days of love in true practice.
We should not let this joyful day go to waste or negatively celebrate falsely Santo Valentine's Day. Please bless others. This day is purely focused on mercy and not sinfulness. It teaches us how to care for others and not to care.
Even in the darkest moments in life, there are usually some moments of joy and happiness. So, Ash Wednesday is the time to reflect on our lives, share our thanks, and show love to others for it is the time to remember the greatest sacrifice of LOVE made for us by Jesus Christ.
Have faith, you will soon be where God wants you to be. It is time to come before your creator in Humility. Pray and fast so that you might not enter into temptation. Happy Ash Wednesday! Indeed, it’s a day to contemplate our mortality. Say a prayer of thanks and appreciate life in every way.
Most merciful God we come unto you this Ash Wednesday. Thank you for loving us so much.
St. Valentine's Day is that day of true Love. Oh, how I wish all of us would become agents of authentic love. Authentic agents of selfless love. That’s when Valentine's will truly serve as a Feast of love and lovers. I have yet to find a better description of love than what St. Paul wrote in his First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, from verse 4 to verse 8, St Paul says love is patient, love is kind, love is never jealous, love never wants anything for itself, love is always forgiving, love is always hoping, love is always trusting, he concludes by saying love conquers all and that love never ends.
If that is so, don’t you think all of us need that kind of love? Everybody needs it, children need it, young people need it, older people need it, bishops need it, nuns need it, priests need it, politicians, traders, all of us children of God, we need authentic love to make sense of the life which we live every day. And if that kind of love will be generated by us, then, that kind of love should be found everywhere.
Take a look at our nation the Republic of South Sudan today, we need love on our streets, we need authentic love in our offices, schools, churches or places of worship, kitchens, homes, and banking halls, so that people might be treated as human beings with more humanity, with more humaneness. We need authentic love on our roads, in our marketplaces; Oh, we need authentic love in our classrooms, we need authentic love in social media forums, we need it in our Mosques, we need it everywhere there are human beings, where children of God gather together. That’s when Valentine will be truly, truly served.
And by the way, Valentine is all around us, we need Valentine not only on one day on February 14th, we need Valentine every day of the year.
Oh, we need Valentine whenever you see a mother taking care of her child without thinking of herself alone but of that child too, then, Valentine is celebrated. When you see husbands and wives showing loyalty to one another, showing love to one another, making life easier for one another, for each other to bear, to live, then Valentine's is celebrated.
Oh, Valentine is celebrated when you see young people who truly and authentically love one another, and who are looking for the good of one another, the progress of one another, there, Valentine is celebrated.
When you see those who care for children, who hold them tenderly and guide them tenderly, and teach them about what they need to live a good life, there, Valentine is celebrated. When the priest, the policeman, and the politician, when all do their jobs for the benefit of the society whom they serve, there, Valentine is celebrated.
Oh, the day we see politicians who will pay attention and do something to relieve the burden of the poor or the downtrodden or the weakest of the society, there, love, Valentine is celebrated.
Oh, the day we see all engaging in peace-building activities and in all we do, when we talk peace, when we are just in doing justice, when we forgive and forget, when we reconcile and heal each other, Valentine is truly celebrated.
Don’t forget that St Paul also said that without love, I am nothing. That’s true, not only of St Paul but of all of us. If we don’t have love, what can we achieve? Nothing at all. Because love is the cement, it’s the glue that holds our relationship together and if our relationship doesn’t hold together, how can we have community, how can we have family, how can we have a nation? So, we need Valentine's to be celebrated every day. We need it to be celebrated in our hearts, in our homes, wherever we are.
I pray that all of us feel a true sense of Valentine in our hearts. God has made you different from the other person so that you can make a difference for the other person. Let Valentine inspire a new feeling among us, let it inspire a new sensation of togetherness among us, let Valentine that you celebrate this year 2024 exactly on ASH WEDNESDAY help somebody else to be a little bit more cheerful, a little bit more joyful, a little bit more hopeful, yes, love is in the air, celebrate a good valentine but make that Valentine to count.
God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him. Love conquers all. When love is authentic, it can conquer the greed that is destroying us, it can conquer the discrimination that is separating us, when love is authentic, it can conquer the wickedness that is destroying our beautiful country.
Have a happy Valentine's ASH WEDNESDAY celebration. May the love that is in you flow out to another, and may the love that is in you, turn the world around you into a better world.”
HAPPY ASH WEDNESDAY IN SANTO VALENTINO DAY my beloved,
Barani Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala
Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Tombura-Yambio
Yambio, February 14, 2024
