Father Prentice Tipton Jr. of Saginaw, Michigan, delivers the homily at the racism prayer service at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul Dec. 2. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Opening a prayer service held in penance for the sin of racism and to promote racial justice, Archbishop Bernard Hebda said the faithful lament together the stark reality of racism in the world.

“We hope to recognize in our prayer tonight at least some of the many ways, intentionally and unintentionally, that our words and our silence, our actions and our inaction, contribute to racial division,” the archbishop said Dec. 2 at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul.

“We also hope to recognize what is needed to heal what divides us,” said the archbishop, who was joined at the prayer service by Bishop Andrew Cozzens. “Through our prayer of confession and for transformation, may the Holy Spirit inspire us.”

The prayer service was part of a day of prayer and fasting in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis against the sin of racism, which began with a 7:30 a.m. Mass at the Cathedral. Father Michael Joncas, a priest of the archdiocese and artist-in-residence and research fellow in Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, proposed the idea after the May 25 police-involved death of George Floyd, an African American in Minneapolis, led to protests, rioting and soul-searching locally and across the country.

Registration to attend, social distancing and facial coverings were encouraged to help prevent spread of the novel coronavirus, and the prayer service was livestreamed from the Cathedral’s Facebook page.

From left, Lance, Anders, Helena, Gretchen and Denise Holland of Nativity of Mary in Bloomington bow in prayer during the racism prayer service at the Cathedral. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Father Prentice Tipton Jr., an African American, delivered the homily. He is rector at the Cathedral of Mary of the Assumption, and pastor of Holy Family, both in Saginaw, Michigan. An alumnus of The St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul, he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Saginaw.

Father Tipton described what he calls “penitential moments,” with one recounted in the evening’s Gospel reading, about the crowd that had assembled for “the spectacle of the crucifixion,” seeing Jesus die, then walking home beating their breasts, a gesture of grief, the mourning of disappointment. “A penitential moment is what is recounted in tonight’s Gospel, in the face of how the world can trample upon the humanity of the only truly innocent one to ever walk the face of the earth,” Father Tipton said.

He called a penitential moment a time for rendering an account to God for what people have done, for what people have failed to do and for what the nation has allowed.

Father Tipton quoted from a pastoral letter from the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, saying that the evil of racism festers, in part, because as a nation, there’s been very little formal acknowledgment of the harm done to so many. To confront the persistence of racism, he said, “we have to recognize we’re dealing with a spiritual problem, not simply a political or economic or social problem.”

Christians’ goal is not tolerance, Father Tipton said, but reconciliation: “reconciliation with God first,” he said, “because the race problem is a sin problem and it is the cross of Jesus Christ that breaks the dominion of sin over our lives and over our community.”

Father Tipton said he “deeply believes” that God’s intention is to bring together in the Church “that face of Jesus that’s black and that face of Jesus that is white — so that these two faces of Jesus Christ might become his one face in the Church.”

This is part of what it means for the Church to be a “new creation,” he said, a venue where “that adversarial dynamic between black and white in the world comes to an end, along with all the mistrust and the baggage that that implies.”

Lynette Graham of St. Peter Claver in St. Paul listens to Archbishop Bernard Hebda during the racism prayer service. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Father Tipton said he believes God wants “to do a new thing” between the races in America. “And I believe the Church is the venue where the new thing is meant to begin,” he said. “And I say to you that if the Church were to get this right, all of America, and I believe the whole world, will come to her knees because the Church has found an answer, a remedy to the sin that has grieved a great nation for many, many centuries.”

Deacon Ramon Garcia Degollado, who serves Holy Rosary in Minneapolis, proclaimed the Gospel in Spanish. Transitional deacon Zephirino Tumwejunise, in formation for the Diocese of Kabale, Uganda, at The St. Paul Seminary, read seven petitions related to confessing sins, many related to racism. One pertained to sins of personal racial prejudice and another to sins of racial prejudice within the Church. Archbishop Hebda followed each petition with prayer. After each of the seven, Deacon Garcia Degollado lit a candle.

Denise Holland said she went to the cathedral with her husband, Lance, and their three college, high school and middle school-aged children, to discuss the issues and place them in the context of Catholic faith and spirituality.

Members of Nativity of Mary in Bloomington, the family visited the George Floyd memorial at the site of his death on a south Minneapolis street this past summer and heard a “powerful sermon” given in a nearby parking lot by a pastor at a local church.

“He shared his personal story of injustice,” Denise said, and how he moved through his anger and hatred by turning to God. “The only way forward in seeking racial justice as a community is through God,” she said.

“What I appreciate about the Catholic faith is … the richness and tradition, and strong Catholic teachings that sometimes we don’t know as well as we should,” Holland said. “I thought this was an important opportunity to come together as a community, as an extended family, almost to do a collective examination of conscience.”

Comments posted on the Cathedral’s Facebook page during the Mass included Stanley E. Williams writing, “MOST BEAUTIFUL! THANK YOU ALL. Parish of Peter Claver.” Margene Vessel wrote, “Thank you! What a witness. Fr. Tipton was spot on.” Rhonda Miska wrote, “Thank you to all who made this evening of prayer possible.”

Earlier in the day, Bishop Cozzens concelebrated 7:30 a.m. Mass at the Cathedral with its rector, Father John Ubel. A stated intention for the Mass was to observe the day of penance and reparation.

In his homily, Bishop Cozzens said racism is a grievous sin because it attacks the human family.

“It’s this denial of the fact that we have the same Father, and that we all belong to him, and that each of us is created in his image,” he said. “That is, we all have the same dignity and we all have the same eternal destiny.”

Bishop Cozzens said that, fundamentally, racism is a spiritual problem, not just a political problem. “Fundamentally, if racism exists in the world, it exists in people’s hearts, hearts which are distorted by sin, and so therefore the healing that we hope will bring about greater union in our society, less division, greater harmony, more charity — the healing comes from the healing of human hearts.”

People need human justice, Bishop Cozzens said, but it won’t solve the problem. The only thing, he said, that will root out racism is the thing that will root out all the other sins from people’s lives, which is the union of hearts with Jesus.