2026 LENTEN PASTORAL LETTER
OF THE GHANA CATHOLIC BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE (GCBC)
Theme: “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled with God” (2 Cor 5:20)
1.0 Introduction
Dearly beloved in Christ,
As shepherds of God’s people in Ghana, we welcome you once again into the sacred and demanding beauty of the Lenten season. Lent, which stretches from Ash Wednesday to the joy of Easter, is not a liturgical pause but a spiritual intensification. It is the Church’s most precious season for moral clarity, interior purification and renewed fidelity to the Gospel.
As the Church journeys toward the definitive Easter, when she shall meet her Spouse face to face, she intensifies her prayer, charity and discipline so as to draw more abundantly from the Mystery of Redemption the new life given in Christ. Lent is therefore not an exercise in religious nostalgia, but a decisive school of conversion, where the Christian learns again how to live.
This year’s theme, “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled with God”, confronts us with urgency and tenderness. It calls individuals, families, communities and our nation to a renewed alignment with God, with one another and with creation. In a Ghana strained by economic anxiety, political distrust, environmental degradation and social fragmentation, Lent becomes a divine summons to heal what we have normalised as broken.
2.0 The Paschal Mystery as the Basis of Conversion
At the heart of Lent stands the Paschal Mystery. Our faith is not anchored in ideas but in an event: Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. Through Baptism, we were already plunged into this mystery. We became sharers in Christ’s death and resurrection, recipients of divine life freely given, not earned. Baptism was not the end of our conversion, but its beginning.
Lent is therefore inseparably bound to Baptism. It is the privileged time when the grace of our Baptism is rekindled, purified and matured. The Church, in her wisdom, presents Lent as a kind of annual catechumenate, a return to the font, where we rediscover who we are and to whom we belong.
Conversion, however, is never abstract. It demands concrete renunciation. The Lenten fast, obligatory for Catholics between the ages of 18 and 60, trains us in freedom. We fast not only from food and drink but from sin, corrosive habits, unchecked appetites, violence of speech, corruption of conscience and lifestyles that injure the poor and the earth. In a society where excess and scarcity exist side by side, fasting restores moral proportion. It teaches us that a hungry neighbour is a theological question.
To be reconciled with God is to allow Christ to become the compass of our lives, even when the road of reconciliation is steep, humbling and socially inconvenient.
3.0 Lent: A Favourable Time for Reconciliation
Lent reminds us that we stand before God together, equally in need of mercy. Sin fractures communion. It separates us from God, from one another and from ourselves. Our age often trivialises this rupture, preferring the language of “mistakes” to the truth of sin. Yet what is unnamed cannot be healed.
The Sacrament of Penance is therefore central to the Lenten journey. In confession, we do not meet a judge eager to condemn but a Father eager to restore. Like the prodigal son, we learn again to say, “I have sinned”, and in that honesty we are embraced, not imprisoned.
Reconciliation is never merely private. In Ghana today, where mistrust has seeped into public life, where corruption corrodes institutions and where violence increasingly replaces dialogue, the call to reconciliation acquires national resonance. Christians are called to be sacraments of unity. We are urged to heal divisions in families, ethnic communities, workplaces, political discourse and our relationship with the environment, which groans under illegal mining and reckless exploitation.
God waits for us in the confessional, but also in the wounded face of our neighbour. Mercy received must become mercy given.
4.0 The Urgency of Reconciliation
“Be reconciled with God” is not a gentle suggestion. It is an apostolic imperative. Time is not infinite. Human life is fragile. Lent confronts us with our finitude, not to terrify us, but to awaken us. Today is the favourable time. Tomorrow is never guaranteed.
Ashes on our foreheads are not decorative symbols. They are theological truths. They remind us that dust without grace is despair, but dust touched by mercy becomes hope. In a culture tempted to postpone conversion and baptise delay, Lent insists on immediacy. Now is the moment to return. Now is the day of salvation.
No social reform, political programme or economic recovery can substitute for reconciled hearts. Without God, even prosperity becomes hollow. With God, even scarcity can become fertile ground for solidarity and renewal.
5.0 Lent: A Continuous Itinerary of Reformation
Saint Benedict famously taught that the life of the Christian ought to be a continuous Lent. The forty days are not an end but a training ground. A Lent that leaves us unchanged is a spiritual fraud.
True conversion bears fruit beyond the season. Violence must give way to patience. Corruption to integrity. Greed to generosity. Sloth to responsibility. Infidelity to fidelity. In this sense, Lent is profoundly political, economic and social, not partisan, but prophetic.
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We therefore appeal to all Christians and all people of goodwill in Ghana: allow this season to wash away the negligence of other times. Let reconciliation shape how we vote, how we speak, how we do business, how we treat the poor, how we protect our land and rivers, and how we educate the young.
Grace does not abolish effort, but it makes transformation possible.
6.0 Conclusion
Dear brothers and sisters, Lent is God’s audacious belief in our capacity to begin again. Through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, through the Word of God and the Sacrament of Penance, we are invited to rediscover our Baptism and to live it with adult conviction.
May this Lent be for each of us not a ritual obligation but a decisive encounter with Love Himself. Entrusting our journey to the maternal intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we pray that Ghana may be reconciled with God, with one another and with the truth that sets us free.
We invoke upon you God’s blessing and assure you of our pastoral closeness and prayers.
Amen.
MOST REV. MATTHEW KWASI GYAMFI BISHOP OF SUNYANI AND PRESIDENT,
GHANA CATHOLIC BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2026
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