METHODISTS BEGIN 40-DAY FAST WITH ASH WEDNESDAY SERVICE

Story: Abigail Ghartey & Emmanuel Ashong, Accra

Methodists in Ghana joined the global Christian community on Wednesday, February 22, 2023, to commence 40 days of prayer and fasting.

The period, which is popularly known in Christian parlance as Lent, is a season when adherents of the faith set themselves apart to remember 40 days leading to Easter. It is a time for penance for all Christians. Although calculated differently among the various Christian denominations, for the people called Methodists, the Lenten period starts from Ash Wednesday through to Holy Saturday, excluding Sundays.

Members of the Church are expected to fast, pray, and give alms to the needy during the period. Daily devotionals are held over the period.

This year's Lent commenced on Wednesday, February 22, 2023, with various Church Services in Methodist Chapels across the Connexion. Dubbed Ash Wednesday, the Service features the traditional imposition of ashes on the foreheads to worshippers – a practice the Rt Rev Prof Joseph M. Y. Edusa-Eyison, the Methodist Bishop of Northern Accra Diocese explains “is a powerful non-verbal experience which confronts us with our mortality.”

Delivering a message at a Service held on February 22, 2023 at the Asbury Dunwell Chapel, Conference Office, Accra, the Methodist Bishop told congregants, who were mostly made up of staff of the Conference Office and workers of other organisations in the vicinity, that Lent is “a period that we all yearn to have a closer relationship with God.

At the Wesley Cathedral in Accra, the Methodist Bishop of Accra Diocese, the Rt Rev Emmanuel Borlabi Bortey urged Christians to draw closer to God during the period and eschew evil doing.

“It is our prayer that this season of Lent, our God will grant us grace to resist every form of evil in our lives and to turn to true faith in God which liberates us unto the path of holy living to the glory of God”, he prayed.

Bishop Borlabi Bortey who was delivering the address on behalf of the Presiding Bishop of The Methodist Church Ghana, the Most Rev Dr Paul Kwabena Boafo, launched a daily devotional Lent booklet themed "Living the Transformed Life in Jesus Christ through Lent" to guide members during the Lenten period.