Powerful Words For The Illness of Our Time
The following is an excerpt from a homily given by Detroit Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron to more than 160 priests and 800 members of the faithful gathered for the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday, April 2, 2015. These words are powerful and this servant of God hits the nail right on the head for one of the major spiritual diseases of our time. And for that I’d like to begin with some phrases from the sequence in Pentecost, when in the liturgy we say to the Holy Spirit, “Heal our wounds, our strength renew; On our dryness, pour your dew. Melt the frozen, warm the chill.” Being dry, being frozen, being chill — that seems to me to be a condition which is very particular to our time. Has there ever been a time like ours when a people who once heard the Gospel, living in a culture that had over time been shaped according to the principals of the Gospel, has so willingly become asleep about the Gospel, and shed the Gospel, and become indifferent to the Gospel? Are we not frozen, chill,