Af­ter months of rev­el­ry cul­mi­nat­ing in Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day, Chris­tians now en­ter a sea­son of prayer and fast­ing with the start of Lent.

Vic­ar Gen­er­al of the Ro­man Catholic Church, Fa­ther Mar­tin Sir­ju, says the Lenten pe­ri­od pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the na­tion to re­flect.

He urges cit­i­zens to look deep with­in them­selves for so­lu­tions to the so­ci­etal is­sues fac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“The chal­lenges we face to­day can­not be dealt with by any one de­nom­i­na­tion or one group. We can make the coun­try bet­ter by do­ing it to­geth­er,” Sir­ju said.

Dur­ing Ash Wednes­day Mass at the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion, Rev­erend Roland Joseph en­cour­aged pri­ma­ry school stu­dents to make sac­ri­fices dur­ing Lent.

He sug­gest­ed they give up watch­ing their favourite TV shows or en­gage in acts of char­i­ty. How­ev­er, he al­so gave them a spe­cial task: at­tend Mass more reg­u­lar­ly and en­cour­age their par­ents to do the same.

“Ash­es are a sym­bol of mor­tal­i­ty, our way of en­try in­to this pe­ri­od and a mark of re­pen­tance. So, you need to come to church dur­ing Lent every Sun­day,” Joseph told them.

The 40 days of Lent be­gin to­day and end on April 17, marked by prepa­ra­tion, prayer, fast­ing, and alms­giv­ing.

With the holy month of Ra­madan be­ing ob­served and Hin­dus prepar­ing for Navra­tri lat­er this month, Fa­ther Sir­ju em­pha­sised that so­cial chal­lenges, in­clud­ing crime, can­not be ad­dressed by any one group alone.

He called for a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort be­tween law en­force­ment and peo­ple of all re­li­gious back­grounds.