Reported by DaliusLL
Sandakan: The Star of Yahweh Covenant Community (SYCC) in collaboration with the Parish Pastoral Councils (PPC) of St. Mary’s Cathedral organised a Parish Lenten Recollection on 14– 16 March 2025. Around 40 parishioners attended the two and a half day recollection at St. Joseph Catechetical Hall.
In his welcoming address, the Elder member of the SYCC, Philip Mosinoh hopes that during this Lenten season, the recollection will benefit everyone spiritually and in our deeper relationship with God during this Lenten season. The focus of this recollection will be on the theme, “Rend your Heart not your Garment” taken from Joel 2:13.
The first day began with a film showing of The Passion of the Christ, a timeless popular film of the Lenten season, which shows the final 12 hours of the suffering and death of Jesus. The show will become a focal point for the reflection talks of the next two days.
The recollection session started with a catechesis on “Understanding the Heart of Jesus”, delivered by the St. Mary Cathedral Parish Priest, Rev. Fr. Simon Kontou. He opened his talk by asking the attendees to reflect on their spirituality, whether it was based on the head or the heart.To distinguish between the two aspects, Fr. Simon had instructed everyone to look at the aspect of understanding the heart of Jesus, the spirituality of love. To understand the depth of Jesus’ heart, Fr. Simon set out several stories in the Bible through the acts of healing and consolation of the outcasts, the despised and condemned. He concluded his talk by asking the participants to reflect on this Lenten season on how we experience the heart of Jesus and who we want to reach out to, as suggested by the theme, ‘Rend Your Heart. With an inspiring talk by Fr. Simon set the tone for the rest of the recollection day.
The organizer this year is lucky to have a guest speaker Anthony Lim, Chairman of Charismatic Malaysia, a gifted and humble Catholic speaker. He has given talks and seminars around Malaysia as well as internationally in the UK, USA, Australia, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea, etc. The organiser was so concerned about the turnout for such a high-profile speaker, but Anthony, in his jovial mood, assured them that there would be fewer people when we reached the cross, quoting the climax of the film Passion of the Christ, which elicited laughter from the audience.
Anthony emphasizes the importance of what Fr. Simon in his catechism ‘the spirituality of the heart’ which brings us to the communion of God. To be able to grasp the understanding and meaning of this Heart, Anthony uses the Lens of the movie The Passion of The Christ to heighten one’s spirituality of the Heart. On this second day, he invites the participants to reflect on the four aspects of his talks, Living the Mission with Passion, The Path of Conversion and Discipleship, Revealing the Nature of Sins and Evil and The Passion of God’s Saving Love. With these four reflections, he hopes to bring the participants to see the divine love revealed through the passion of Christ. Therefore, as Catholics who have experienced the love of God, we should take seriously the Eucharist as the source and summit of our Christian life. In the evening, all the participants attended sunset mass in St Mary’s Cathedral and afterwards adjourned to a fellowship dinner at the church canteen.At 8.30pm, all participants returned to the cathedral for an hour of silence with the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for a personal encounter with Jesus.
On the third and final day of the recollection, for the fifth reflection, the speaker asks everyone to reflect on the last seven words of Jesus on the cross. He explained thoroughly the significant of these the seven words, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do”, “Today you will be with me in Paradise”, “Woman behold your Son…Behold your Mother”, “I Thirst”, “My God, My God Why have You forsaken Me” and “It is Accomplished”. The final sixth reflection based on Joel 2:12-13 highlighted the key theme with God’s word, “Return to Me with all your Heart”. The speaker called upon everyone to reflect on the question of What Am I offering to God for Lent. He concluded the Lenten recollection with Pope Francis’ statement, Lent is a journey to return to God.