Archdiocese of Detroit Embarks on Year of Prayer for a New Pentecost

On Ash Wednesday, the Archdiocese of Detroit will embark on a “Year of Prayer for a New Pentecost” which will last through Easter Sunday of 2015.

Parishes in the Archdiocese have been asked to include in their weekly bulletin this weekend a letter from Archbishop Vigneron, explaining the Year of Prayer.  The letter asks Catholics to pray the prayer from 1961, which was included by Pope John XXIII in his announcement of the Second Vatican Council.  The prayer reads:

“Renew your wonders in our time, as though by a new Pentecost and grant that your holy Church, praying perseveringly and insistently with one mind, together with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and guided by St. Peter, may increase the reign of the Divine Savior, the reign of truth and justice, the reign of love and peace, Amen.”

The call to Evangelization, Archbishop Vigneron reminds us, demands a considerable pastoral and spiritual formation.  It will affect how we engage parish life and ministry.  Evangelization is also something that many of us are unfamiliar with, and perhaps even a little fearful of, in that it calls for a reconsideration of who Jesus is in our own lives and a new openness to sharing that experience with others.

As an Archdiocese, Archbishop Vigneron explains, we need some time to learn about Evangelization and to let the Holy Spirit develop in us both the attitude and the means by which we can embrace this call fruitfully.

And here’s the biggesst surprise:  To that end, the archbishop envisions convoking an Archdiocesan Synod on Evangelization, to be held sometime in the fall of 2016.

The full letter appears below.  More information will be forthcoming this weekend, and in the weeks and months to come.