DETROIT — Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron told a cathedral packed full of students from the archdiocese’s Catholic schools Jan. 24 that their attendance at the annual Catholic Schools Week Mass meant much more than they thought it did.

Speaking on the theme of sacrifice and the first reading from Hebrews, the archbishop told the students that while many of them came to the Mass for various reasons, “whenever God brings us together in His Church to offer the sacrifice of the Mass, He has a way of thinking about it. It has a meaning for Him. And he tells us what it means through the Sacred Scriptures.”

Archbishop Vigneron began speaking to the students — many of whom had been bused in from schools as far away as Lapeer and St. Clair counties to Detroit’s Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament — about the priesthood, noting that various cultures throughout history have had priests.

“What is the most important thing that all these kinds of priests did or do?” he paused, waiting for a volunteer. “Any takers?”

To laughter, he “picked on” a student from Novi Detroit Catholic Central High School sitting near the front, who stood and answered.

“What priests do is they offer sacrifice,” Archbishop Vigneron concurred, adding that Jesus, as the high priest of the Christian Church, offers the “best” sacrifice — that of himself. “That’s what we sang about in that song, ‘Here I am, Lord, I come to do your will.’ Doing the will of God is our way of being part of the sacrifice of Jesus,” he said.

“How does this have anything to do with schools?” the archbishop asked. “It helps you understand why we have our own schools as Catholics. Because like all the other schools in the world, all of our schools are about helping you … to live happy lives, productive lives. But — and this is the particular thing — our schools are also about helping you to make a sacrifice of your lives to the Father.

“Whatever vocation you have in life — some of you have vocations to be a husband, a father, a mother, a wife, have kids of your own — you need to know your math, your science, how to read, how to write and express yourself if you’re going to be able to do that,” adding that even priests and deacons need those types of skills.

“But what we know is that our doing this and your being prepared to do this in our schools is for the sake of you making a sacrifice of yourself along with Jesus to the Father,” he said.

“The point of sacrifice is to take the world and bring it back to God.”