LENT
“Trust to live 40 days in a different way”: that’s the name of the Lenten project of the diocesan radio station of Cologne, Dom Radio. Each day of Lent, from the website www.domradio.de, either as podcast or with the system “Video on demand”, it is possible to download a video message from the Capuchin friar Paulus Terwitte lasting a few minutes, with ideas and reflections for the period of preparation for Easter. “We are conscious of the fact that we face difficult tasks. But their solution may lead to the most important step to save us from the danger of our frenetic daily life”, declared Terwitte on 20 February, during a presentation of the project. The Lenten calendar, the result of collaboration between the friar and the teacher of religion in Kassel Marcus C. Leitschuh, is now in its third year. It asks Catholics to “do things they have always wanted but have never had the courage, or never had enough time, to do”. The proposals are various: “visit the poor quarter of the city and spend some time there, or call your bank and ask how sustainable is the investment it has made with your money”. From the diocese of Bamberg an appeal for peace has been made. It is launched, in his Lenten pastoral letter, by the bishop, Ludwig Schick who recalls that “the fundamental task of Christians and of the Church is to practice reconciliation and peace in their lives and to bring them to everyone in the world”. “We live in times in which violence, civil wars and terrorism are expanding in a dreadful fashion – says Schick – but in Germany too violence is growing in an alarming way in families, among youth, against women, against defenceless children and the elderly, in football stadiums, in schools and on the street. But life is not possible without peace, since it forms the basis for any future”
