Bishop Mulvey places ashes on Orlando Zepeda at Ash Wednesday services in the Corpus Christi Cathedral. Mary Cottingham, South Texas Catholic

On Wednesday, Feb. 13, Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey celebrated Ash Wednesday Mass at Corpus Christi Cathedral and urged the faithful not to let Lent end at the end of the Mass or the end of the day, but to live it for 40 days in the desert in silence, listening and making a decision to follow Jesus Christ.

“The fundamental decision of our lives is to follow Jesus Christ,” he said. “We must live as a disciple of Jesus Christ, that is what Lent is all about.”

In making a decision to follow Christ, Bishop Mulvey pointed to Pope Benedict XVI as an example of how people should make decisions. In his Wednesday General Audience at the Vatican, the Holy Father said he had spent much time in prayer and in clear conscience in front of God to make his decision to renounce the papacy.

A “clear conscience,” Bishop Mulvey said is crucial in decision-making. Too many people, he said, live life with a “clouded conscience” under peer pressure, trying to please others, “trying to conform our will to the society of today.”

People use their intelligence to rationalize even simple things, to do things “contrary to the natural law,” he said. “Because our consciences are clouded our wills are weak and we think its okay.”

In the silence of the desert we must recognize the temptations that plague us, Bishop Mulvey said. But we must listen to the Scriptures, to the Church and to God and not to those who tempt us.

“The question to ask ourselves is ‘can people see in me what they want to see in Jesus Christ’,” he said.

In the closing of his homily, Bishop Mulvey returned to the pope as a “gentle example of an extremely intelligent man, and at the same time an extremely humble human being,” making a decision in prayer before God.