RICHMOND — No members of the General Assembly attended Virginia
Vespers at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, but as Bishop Michael F. Burbidge
told more than 200 people who attended, “They are where they’re supposed to be,
and we are where we’re supposed to be — praying for them.”
The legislators were in session that evening “and would probably
go late into the morning,” said Jeff Caruso, executive director of the Virginia
Catholic Conference, sponsor of the March 5 event.
Bishop Burbidge presided and led prayers and Bishop Barry C.
Knestout of Richmond was homilist for the service. Bishop Knestout spoke about
the third chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, in which the apostle
instructs followers of Christ to put on “heartfelt compassion, kindness,
humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one
another.”
“These are clearly not the virtues of the political or partisan
world, where adversarial views are in conflict and unresolved unless one party
neutralizes the power of the other,” he said.
While political life can sometimes be “adversarial and
antagonistic,” Bishop Knestout said Christians must take another approach.
“Our Christian faith is meant to shape the political environment
in such a way that it can lead to peace and justice,” he said. “Peace is a fruit of justice, which itself is
a cardinal virtue, along with temperance, prudence, and fortitude that spring
forth, as all virtues do, from charity.”
Bishop Knestout said that while Americans value “constitutional
rights of free speech and liberty,” there has been a “disruption to the context
for the exercise of these rights.”
He said media, the internet, self-publishing and blogs have
turned the environment into “a Wild West of no-holds-barred rhetoric and ad
hominem attacks on anyone seen as holding different political, cultural,
economic, religious or moral views from the writers themselves.”
Bishop Knestout said Lent provides an opportunity to examine “our
failures, weaknesses and vices.”
“This evening we gather and pray together, even with differing
political views, all with the hope that by this Lenten practice of prayer, we
might put on the virtues that express the ‘bond of perfection’ (Col 3:14), the
communion born of holiness.”
Olszewski is editor of the Catholic Virginian, newspaper of the Diocese of Richmond.