Arua Diocese

"Without the spirit of lowering oneself, Christ would have not redeemed us." Rt. Rev.Sabino Ocan Odoki.

Faithful of Arua waving palms thronged Ediofe Catholic Cathedral to join Christians around the world in commemorating the start of the Holy week.

Rt.Rev.Sabino Ocan Odoki, who was the main celebrant of the Eucharistic celebration called the faithful to a life of humility, sincere self evaluation, gratitude to God and above all, the love of God and one another.

He urged the Christians to respect the way God created mankind, and also to pray and counsel those facing the spirit of same sex attraction.

"We must learn from Christ to lower ourselves so that we can help others. We can only be useful to one another when we can lower ourselves, when we can humble ourselves, when we can empty ourselves. Without the spirit of lowering oneself, Christ would have not redeemed us." Bishop.

"We humans must be grateful to God who through Christ has come to us, who are we? We are mere human beings, we are sinners; so let no one deceive you no matter what position you are, humble yourselves and do what is needed of you. This is what we learn from Jesus , this is what we learn from the Holy people, they all humbled themselves, before God and before fellow human beings." Bishop.

"The passion of Christ read to us today speaks a lot about fulfillments to what God had promised through the Prophets, God promised to send us a Messiah. A savior, and this is in the person of Jesus Christ. In the passage that we read, we see the Messiah accomplishing our redemption, and ours is to respond to that work of redemption, ours is to make it our own by being in communion with Jesus, ours is to convert, to repent then all the blessings shall be upon us." Bishop.

"From the passion of Christ, we see different personalities, you can do your own home work, find out which personality you are. Are you like Jesus, who is there doing the work of salvation, suffering for the redemption of mankind? Are you like Pilate who knew the truth but could not speak it? He pretended and abandoned Jesus. Today there are many people like that .They cannot face the truth. So we need to find who we are by looking at the different characters. Are you the Judas who betrayed Jesus and even sold him? He sold Jesus for thirty silver pieces. Are you Peter who can show strong faith and at one moment, falls down and comes back to Jesus? Both Peter and Judas denied Jesus, both betrayed Jesus. I always say the difference between Peter and Judas is that today Peter is remembered as the Vicar of Christ even after he denied Jesus three times. Peter did not despair, he trusted in God and repented.Judas instead hanged himself." Bishop.

"Let us open our hearts and pray that the savior may enter in our hearts. Let us open our minds to understand what the Lord is teaching us and open our souls so that our Lord the savior may enter in and take possession of us all."

"Our nation today has many challenges and Christianity has to come up strongly to bear witness to Christ. Many times I get asked, what do you have to say about Homosexuality? Is there anyone who does not know that homosexuality is not the natural way of life? The natural way of family is marriage between male and female. Some of these issues are exaggerated. If someone has a challenge of that kind it should not become a rule.We should pray for such a person. We should pray for them , talk to them , and counsel them. Let us thank the Lord who has created us and let us live in accordance with the way he has created us to live and to respect the way God wants us to be and to respect one another." Bishop.