Archbishop of the Military Services Conducts Ash Wednesday Mass at WRNMMC

Photo By Bernard Little | Archbishop of the Military Services USA Timothy Broglio places ashes on the head of a parishioner during Ash Wednesday Mass at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center March 2.  

UNITED STATES

03.07.2022

Story by Bernard Little 

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center

For more than a decade the Archbishop of the Military Services USA has conducted Ash Wednesday Catholic Mass at Walter Reed National Military Medical, and the tradition continued this year as he placed ashes on the heads of patients, staff and family members March 2.
After being welcomed to the medical center and Naval Support Activity Bethesda by its leadership team, Archbishop Timothy Broglio led the Ash Wednesday Catholic mass in the Clark Auditorium.
The archbishop said he comes to WRNMMC this year as people battle one another in “a senseless war. We see an attempt to occupy a free nation. We see death and destruction. The innocent suffer, and we wonder, ‘How long, Oh Lord?’
“The cry for peace and justice is urgent, and we long to see it realized. We pledge that our renewal will be heartfelt, and we recommit ourselves once again to the service of our neighbors,” Broglio said. “We would like to think peace, and not war, is the normal condition of the human person.”
He added the WRNMMC community is no stranger to the effects of combat. “You know what the real cost is. You strive to restore men and women to that fullness that they knew before their experience of war. You repair limbs, heal wounds, and try to return men and women to some semblance of normal in their altered lives.”
The archbishop said in addition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the world. In addition to praying for those in the Ukraine, he said “we will also pray for a definitive end to the pandemic.”
He thanked the WRNMMC community for its service to humanity. “For your ministry to the sick and broken…for your great and selfless service to others. I am grateful for all you do,” he said.
He also reinforced that Lent is indeed a pilgrimage that reminds us life has a purpose. It leads to eternal life. “We are headed in that direction, and we want to draw others to walk with us. Lent provides us with the opportune time to practice charity towards those who are less fortunate. If we fall, let us stretch our hands to the [one] who always lifts us up. If we are lost and misled by the enticements of the evil one, let us not hesitate to return to God, for he is generous and forgiving,” he said.
“In this season of conversion, sustained by God’s grace…and the church, we do not grow tired of doing good. The soil is prepared by fasting, watered by prayer, and enriched by charity. Despite a new war, and the vestiges of the pandemic, we are always a people of hope, and we recommit ourselves to return to the Lord who calls us to perfection and the service of those who are lost.”
Broglio and priests then placed ashes on the heads of those in attendance.





Ash Wednesday is the Christian holy day of prayer and repentance marking the first day of Lent, the six weeks of penitence before Easter. Ashes from the palms of the previous year’s Palm Sunday observances are placed on the heads of people in the shape of the cross to symbolize the dust of their genesis, that dust to which they will return, resurrection and eternal life.
Broglio was named the fourth Archbishop of the Military Services, USA, on Nov. 19, 2007, and installed on Jan. 25, 2008, the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. That same year, he began observing Ash Wednesday at WRNMMC, missing only one, which he observed at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

• Date Taken: 03.07.2022
• Date Posted: 03.07.2022 12:09
• Story ID: 415931
• Location: US