CV NEWS FEED // The Archbishop of Detroit issued a spiritual call to arms for Catholics entering into the season of Lent this year.
In his Ash Wednesday homily at St. Aloysius Parish in downtown Detroit, Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron charged the faithful to “take up battle against spiritual evils,” during Lent, “armed with weapons of self-restraint,” according to a local report.
“Maybe as you were thinking this morning about beginning Lent and taking the ashes of repentance, you didn’t realize you were enlisting in a military campaign,” the Archbishop said. “But that is one way the Church has for us to think about what we are doing over the next 40 days.”
Through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, the Archbishop said, the Church wages “a military campaign that we are enlisting in today by taking up the ashes.”
Vigneron said that whether Catholics have decided what they plan to do for Lent, going up to receive ashes is a gesture that signifies a desire “to be a soldier, a warrior in the great war led by our captain, Jesus Christ.”
Bishop Robert Barron made a similar appeal to the faithful in his Lenten commentary, warning against contemporary tendencies:
The ashes are not meant as a sign of welcome. They are meant to be the starkest possible reminder that we will die and that our bodies, even if they are young and beautiful, will inevitably return to the dirt of the earth and that we are sinners who have rebelled against God and who need to radically turn our lives around.
Continuing, Vigneron reminded the faithful that despite the “great struggle” that Lent brings upon us, Catholics are blessed with the ability to receive the Eucharist, “our ration.”
By adhering to this struggle, and accepting the strength God bestows on us during this time, the Archbishop concluded, the outcome is certain:
I promise you victory. I promise you we have won. That is what Easter means. Yes, we engage in the struggle, but we know how the war ends. It ends in Christ’s victory.
