Monthly Newspaper • DIOCESE OF BRIDGEPORT

BRIDGEPORT—“Much of what the world considers to be glory will end up in ashes,” Bishop Frank J. Caggiano said in his Ash Wednesday homily today at St. Augustine Cathedral.

Hundreds filled the Cathedral for the noontime Mass and distribution of ashes, which mark the formal beginning of the Lenten observance.

On Ash Wednesday, the ashes, made from palm branches blessed the previous year on Palm Sunday, are placed on the heads of the faithful, along with a short Scriptural exhortation, either “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19), or “Repent, and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15).

“We’ve come here in the beginning of this time of penance to be reminded of the same thing. We enter into the desert for forty days and forty nights so that we may come to the cross of Jesus Christ renewed with our minds and hearts clear that we do not place our trust in the glory of mundi but in the glory of Christi and that our dreams, our hopes, our desires and our longings will find their answer in Christ—the one who freely gave his life so that you and I might have eternal life,” said the bishop.

The bishop told the gathering that during Lent, it is important find the time in our busy lives “to do less talking and more listening, to allow Jesus to speak to us, to caress us, to love us and to forgive us. It is to do fasting and abstinence, so that we may go hungry, not for the things of the world but the gifts only Christ.”

“We begin Lent mindful that we have all at times chosen the glory of this world over the will of God. Let us be resolved to end Lent not being afraid of the words sic transit Gloria mundi, because we will have already left the glories of the world behind to embrace the one who is our glory, our hope and our salvation,” he said.

(Click to read Bishop Frank J. Caggiano’s homily from Mass on Ash Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at St. Augustine Cathedral in Bridgeport.)

Photos by Amy Mortensen