On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the head of Manila’s Roman Catholic Church has warned against the risks of coveting power and possessions.

Cardinal Jose Advincula of Manila said that people who prefer to accumulate only the “created graces are not really full of grace”.

“They are actually just full of themselves,” Advincula asserted in his homily. “They fill their lives with fleeting matters and so their lives become empty and meaningless.”

Mary, the cardinal stressed, is full of grace not because she has accumulated for herself all possessions, power and privileges but because only God occupies her whole being.

“Like Mary, let us allow God to take over our lives so that the kingdom of heaven may be fully revealed in this world and his graciousness will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” he added.

Advincula then went on to encourage the faithful to share the graces they received from God to others, saying that “all graces come with mission”.

“We are all gifted to give and blessed to bless,” he said. “The graces that fill our lives are meant to also fill the lives of others. otherwise they cease to be gifts.”

More than a thousand people filled the cathedral during the Mass with Archbishop Charles Brown, Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines, as concelebrant.

The cardinal and the papal nuncio also led the faithful in praying the Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Conception just before the end of the liturgy.

The Immaculate Conception is considered as the principal patroness of the Philippines.

December 8 is also a special non-working holiday in the country.