He said Lent is an opportunity for God to grant the forgiveness of sins, urging inmates to repent of their transgressions.
“God forgives your sins. God erases your sins. After all, that is precisely what Jubilee means—to forgive sins, to set captives and prisoners free, to give hope to those who live in sorrow, and you here, in this place, live in sorrow,” the Angolan member of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) said in reference to the ongoing Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year.
He added, “God does not care how great your sins, mistakes, and miseries have been. He does not look at the size of our errors, but through His infinite mercy, He takes pity on each of you and on each of us.”
In the Catholic Archdiocese of Lubango, Archbishop Gabriel Mbilingi exhorted the faithful to authenticity in their Lenten actions and sacrifices, warning that these must not be mere displays of religiosity.
“The forty days should be an opportunity to return to the Lord, to allow ourselves to be reconciled, to put order in our hearts, to let the Lord remove what weighs us down, to let Him break the chains that bind and imprison us,” Archbishop Mbilingi said during the March 5 Eucharistic celebration at the Chapel of the Bishops' Conference of Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe (CEAST) in Luanda.
He underscored the importance of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as acts of genuine faith rather than means of seeking approval.
“These practices must come from the heart. Jesus invites us to pray in secret, to fast with discretion, and to give alms without seeking recognition. The true reward is not human praise but God’s response, which He gives in secret,” the Angolan-born member of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (CSSp./Holy Ghost Fathers/Spiritans) said.
He explained, “When we pray, Jesus invites us to enter our room, away from curious eyes. When we fast, we should not appear as people who are afflicted or suffering. Instead, we should live fasting with discretion and serenity. The same applies to almsgiving.”
The Spiritan Archbishop, who started his Episcopal Ministry in January 2000 as Coadjutor Bishop of Angola’s Lwena Catholic Diocese said, “We should not give alms to receive applause, but rather as a sign of our concrete love for our neighbor, for those in difficulty, for those in need—who need our love that shares, our love that has compassion, making our brother’s suffering felt as our own suffering.”
He said, “Lent is the time when we are called to be present, to enter our hearts, and to look within ourselves without seeking visibility.”
