Jeffrey Bond on Lenten ashes...

Tammy Ziegler makes the point that:

"You never know who might be touched by your quiet witness of ashes on Ash Wednesday. Last year, I really wasn’t that busy but I convinced myself I didn’t have time to go to Church in the morning. At work, I passed a surgeon in the hall who had ashes. Knowing his schedule was more hectic than mine, I reluctantly admitted to myself my problem wasn’t my schedule, my problem was laziness. He will never know he inspired my eagerness to be at morning Mass on Ash Wednesday.

The Eucharistic Minister who gave me ashes got me good; my forehead had a big cross and loose flakes of ash landed on my cheeks and nose. Before I cleaned the lower part of my face, I snapped a selfie for social media. The photo sparked conversations about the experiences we have in our secular world and sparked my own memories of past experiences on Ash Wednesday."

Imagine my surprise and disappointment when a Facebook friend, who is supposed to be Catholic, posted this:

Supercilious?  Really?

"su·per·cil·i·ous
ˌso͞opərˈsilēəs/
adjective
Behaving or looking as though one thinks one is superior to others."

A witness to faith is viewed by this sad individual as "arrogance" or "elitism."

Our sad, broken world is in dire need of more such witness.  Not less.

Pope Saint John Paul II:

“Today the Church lays great stress on this truth, confirmed by the history of every man. Remember that 'to dust you shall return'. Remember that your life on earth has a limit!… Therefore the message of Ash Wednesday is expressed with the words of St. Paul: 'We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God' (2 Cor 5:20-21). Collaborate with him!”

We are called by the Lord Jesus to be His ambassadors.  We are called to give witness.  If we are ashamed of Him, we have been warned:

"For he that shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him the Son of man shall be ashamed, when he shall come in his majesty, and that of his Father, and of the holy angels." Luke 9:26, Douay-Rheims.

Witness is not elitism or arrogance.  It is fidelity.

It was in Argentina that the Masonic Pope was prepared in reaction to the prophetic witness of the Argentinean Hierarchy

It should come as no surprise that Argentinean freemasonry has praise for Francis.  See here.  For more than half a century, the forces of ecclesiastical masonry have been conspiring to place a Masonic Pope on the Seat of Peter to preside over a New Luciferic Church which will embrace the man-god see here.

The Masonic pope with a troubled past (see here), was prepared by Masonic forces within the Catholic Church in Argentina who were, no doubt, enraged by the forceful and prophetic witness of the Argentinean hierarchy against Freemasonry.

On February 20, 1959, the Bishops of Argentina published a collective statement on Freemasonry in which they said, "In the course of its plenary reunion, the Argentinian Hierarchy, confronted by various articles published in the Press by Freemasonry, felt obliged to make a public declaration to the faithful, following the recommendation of Leo XIII to 'first of all,' tear away the mask from Freemasonry and let it be seen as it really is...

The Popes, the supreme and infallible mentors of civilization, realizing what a danger the sects represent to the world, have from the very first pointed it out, and unreservedly denounced this satanic conspiracy against humanity..."

These Bishops of happy memory went on to remind the faithful that, "Those who join the Masonic sect or any other similar association...incur excommunication."

In Argentina, the Luciferians, known as Freemasons, planned the final assault against the Church: a Masonic Pope to destroy the Church from within and to set the stage for the Devil's counterfeit Church, the Dark Church foretold by Venerable Ann Catherine Emmerich.