My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

The season of Lent is a time for us to accept that we are weak and sinful people born into a beautiful but broken world and then to renew our faith joyfully in the meaning of our baptism. For it was through our baptism that we entered into the mystery of Christ as redeemer.

It will help us to be authentic followers of Jesus of Nazareth if first we acknowledge the power of evil in our world and in our lives. Then we can renew our faith in the power of the one who overcame evil and pray that he will free us from temptation and deliver us from evil.

We do not need to look very hard or very far to see evil in the world around us. Just last month, commenting on the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Egypt by terrorists of the Islamic State, Pope Francis said, "Their only words were: 'Jesus, help me!' They were killed simply because they were Christians. The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a witness that cries out to be heard."

In order to overcome evil, it is necessary to recognize it, name it, and resolve to defeat it. Unfortunately, that is not the approach being taken by our Commander-in-Chief and his administration. Last month at the State Department in Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama convened a "Summit on Countering Violent Extremism." In his remarks, the president said that when "people — especially young people — feel entirely trapped in impoverished communities, where there is no order and no path for advancement, where there are no educational opportunities, where there are no ways to support families, and no escape from injustice and the humiliations of corruption — that feeds instability and disorder, and makes those communities ripe for extremist recruitment. … So if we're serious about countering violent extremism, we have to get serious about confronting these economic grievances."

Reflecting the administration's approach to this issue, State Department spokesman Marie Harf talked on MSNBC of the "root causes" that drive jihadists, such as "lack of opportunity for jobs." She later went on CNN to explain: "Where there's a lack of governance, you've had young men attracted to this terrorist cause where there aren't other opportunities."

What the administration fails to recognize and acknowledge is the motivation of the Islamic State is not economic, but religious. Terrorists of the Islamic State are beheading, burning, torturing and killing people who do not subscribe to their narrow view of Islam, including Christians, Jews and fellow Muslims. In fact, most of the victims killed by the Islamic State are Muslims.

In an article in this month's Atlantic magazine entitled, "What ISIS Really Wants," contributing editor Graeme Wood writes, "Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending it isn't actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it."

This misunderstanding is further compounded by the president's attempts to explain the terrorism of the Islamic extremists by comparing them to the Crusaders, as he did at the National Prayer Breakfast last month when he said, "Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ."

This popular view of the Crusades as a war of Christian aggression against Muslims is totally inaccurate. The most distinguished historian of the Crusades, Cambridge University scholar Jonathan Riley-Smith, explains in his book, The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam, that it is generally thought that Christians attacked Muslims without provocation to seize their lands and forcibly convert them. Historians of the Crusades have long known that this view is wrong, but they find it extraordinarily difficult to be heard across a chasm of entrenched preconceptions.

Professor Thomas Madden, chairman of the department of history at Saint Louis University, points out: "All the Crusades met the criteria of just wars. They came about in reaction to attacks against Christians or their Church. ... In each case, the faithful went to war to defend Christians, to punish the attackers, and to right terrible wrongs."

During these 40 days of Lent, let us pray that we as individuals and as a nation may acknowledge, name and resolve to defeat the evils that confront us. May we all enter deeply into the Passion of our Lord so as to celebrate with abundant joy the great glory of his Resurrection when Easter arrives.

May God give us this grace. Amen.