Red Mass, Archdiocese of St Louis, Oct 1, 2017
John 14: 15-16, 23-26:
Jesus said to his disciples: "If you love me, you will keep my
commandments.
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another
Advocate to be with you always. [...]”
“Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love
him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the
word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.
"I have told you this while I am with you. The
Advocate, the holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name - he will teach
you everything and remind you of all that I told you."
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I am grateful to the
Archbishop for the invitation to preach this year's Red Mass in the Archdiocese
of St Louis. I am from the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas, at the border with
Mexico, where the Rio Grande River pours its life into the Gulf of Mexico. As I
am sure they are here, our people are generous and kind. Most everyone in my
Diocese, to one degree or another, speaks or understands both English and
Spanish.
It is good to be here,
because it witnesses to the fact that every place is different yet not so much
as we might think. And though we might speak different languages at times, we
rejoice to be able to pursue a common language of justice.
The human drama of a
people who desire what is just and right for our children and for those who
come after us is lived with great intensity in my diocese, as I am sure it is
here.
And as believers we pray
for our judges and lawyers and all who work in our justice system, that they be
given light and good judgment. The Red Mass here, as in Brownsville, is an expression
of that prayer. To pray for the judiciary is to pray for the good of the nation
and a renewal of justice.
1. The question of Justice does not arise in the
abstract. One probably first thinks of it after an experience of having been
wronged.
Long before Plato, in
the Odyssey, Homer described Odysseus faced with the injustice of Penelope's
suitors. He built his epic narrative around restoring the right order of the
human relation in that place. We cannot really speak of Justice without
speaking of relation and right order.
Often the sense of
injustice is pre-reflective, that is to say. It strikes the gut before the mind
has time to think about why. But sooner or later a judgment is needed, an act
of the mind that reflects on the "Justice of the matter". Because
experience shows that our gut is not infallible, and in many instances must
itself be judged and purified by reason.
From Aristotle to
Shakespeare, the humane tradition has seen the intimate relation between how we
judge the things outside ourselves and the relational order inside ourselves:
passion and reason, will and intellect, appetite and right judgment. Odysseus
had to in some sense be just in order to judge justly.
For a Christian
believer, relation and right order are not only things to be observed outside
ourselves but are also realities within ourselves. And so the first reason that brings us
together this morning: a believer prays for an interior rectitude, a good
ordering of mind and heart. And a believer involved with the legal profession,
with argument and judgment, prays with particular fervor, knowing that his or
her judgments can affect for good or ill the lives of many.
2. The ancients knew
there are a couple of major problems afflicting human judgment: First,
ignorance of the human good and secondly, self interest.
Odysseus' family life
and possessions were threatened by the unruly suitors, and thus a human good
was at stake. Homer and history seem to judge that Odysseus had reason on his
side. There is self-interest in protecting one's own human good, ultimately
related to the principle of self-preservation. For preservation of family and
property are understandable goods only in relation self-preservation, the first
principle of the natural law.
A 16 year old who flees
drug gangs in Honduras knows this principle of the natural law, as does a
premature child struggling to breathe. Both witness to us that it is good to
live; we know this even before we know how to articulate it as a principle.
But the self-interest of
the suitors shows a side of self-interest that is at times unbridled. They knew
what they wanted, and they wanted it intensely. Homer and the philosophers
after him saw this as a great threat to justice. For not everything that a man
says he needs or deserves can stand as an absolute. Circumstances must be
weighed in the light of principles in relation.
And thus the arduous
task of those who serve the court system. You must use your wits, as St Thomas
More described, to weigh principles and pursue just human relations. You must
be passionate about justice even as you use your mind and will to help enact
it.
3. The short answer to
the question "why have the Red Mass?" is that we still struggle to
discern rightly the true human good, and we still need to be on guard against
the corrupting influence of unbridled self-interest.
We can be sure that many
people wonder nowadays why lawyers and judges and indeed so many public
servants come to Mass on a given day to pray for a good judicial Year. Some may
shy away from such a gathering, thinking this a medieval trapping that the
Church unfairly and surreptitiously uses to influence civil servants, who after
all, should not let personal religious views interfere with justice and
judgment.
Maybe some are afraid that
if given the opportunity, the Church would put Crucifixes in all the court
rooms and impose dogmatic teaching on litigants. Such fears have a long history
here and elsewhere, and this pulpit is not the place to argue a case for
Catholic participation in public life.
But what if a judge or
lawyer has a crucifix in their office? Or around their neck? Is this not also a
sign that religion is trying to creep into civil matters by a back window?
Well, the question itself is a sign of our times.
In an age that seeks to
privatize religion, the more pressing concern is that believers themselves
doubt the place of their faith in their lives as public servants. The greatest
danger in disputes about the place of religion in public life results when we
as practicing Christians and Catholics are confused about how our faith
appropriately impacts our life of public service.
4. What if every human
being were viewed in the courts as worthy of a hearing and worthy of as good a
judgment as is humanly possible? A judgment that respects their voice and their
concerns? One that hears the opposing argument as an appeal to reason and not
as a reflection of the status of the side arguing? No one would object to that.
But what if every judge
and lawyer had uppermost in their mind the truth that he or she too will be
judged on the fairness of their judgments? That the eternal God is both the
source of goodness and justice and expects us to see beyond today into eternal
consequences. Does this hinder the civil proceeding? In no way. On the
contrary, it would seem to put it on a more solid ground, and in the believer,
at least, provide a good incentive to frequent examination of conscience.
The Red Mass is so named
because of the Red Vestment that is used in Masses of the Holy Spirit. And
today Jesus calls him by the name Advocate, one who pleads in favor of another.
We ask him to advocate for us, for we are all too aware of our weakness. We do
not see the human good as clearly as we ought, nor are we always conscious of
how our likes and dislikes can camouflage as right reason.
5. And what if every
judge and lawyer thought that in the most powerless, voiceless individual that
seeks a hearing, one perhaps marred with spit and blood, we have before us one
with whom God in the WORD made flesh consciously and personally identified?
Would Justice be disturbed? In no way, rather it would give judgment a guide
against the prejudice of the powerful and would give to the poor and
voiceless reason to hope: "What you do to the least of mine you do to
me."
The Advocate's mission
is to remind us of all Jesus told us. His telling is more than his words, it
encompasses also, as St Thomas Aquinas teaches, the whole mystery of who he is
and why he came, what he did and what he suffered.
It is this reminding
that we need also from the Advocate. There are many in this world who are
invisible, powerless, and subject to manipulation. With just such as these the
Lord identified, for he was judged in a foreign court by an administrator who
could barely hide his disdain.
Some of our people do
not even have standing in our courts: The comatose, the elderly, the homeless,
the multitudes whose documentary status is as complex as the laws we have
written to describe them, and the little ones, minutes before or minutes after
birth.
We need to be reminded
that the Advocate pleads on their behalf, and face the sobering truth that
these will be the ones who judge us on judgment day.
6. None of these things
I mention cause injury to the pursuit of justice. They do call us to keep good
custody of ourselves and our consciences. Our nation is better for it if we
heed the truths that put our interior life in good order.
You must work to
interpret and apply the law, and we pray for you. But as citizens we must all
try to make the laws we write more just.
There is a potential
conflict, however, in that the Gospel account of the human good, elaborated by
2000 years of Christian preaching, living and teaching, is at times at severe
variance with what the popular will or what the legislated order of law currently
commands.
We cannot ignore this,
for the variance will intensify in our foreseeable future. Most of you will not
be called upon by providence to judge cases that place your conscience in dire
dilemma. But some of you might, if not now, in some future.
There is a reason St
Thomas More, family man, advisor to the king, jurist, and ultimately martyr, is
the patron of the legal professions. A good conscience that knows it will be
judged by a just God cannot lightly acquiesce to what expediency dictates. Fidelity
may require a sacrifice.
May God spare you an
hour of trial as severe as Thomas More faced, but if He does not, may He grant
you the grace to bear faithful witness to the truth that the justice of God is
no threat to men, and the suffering of Christ is at work in the world even now.
7. And so we offer the
Mass to ask for the grace of the Advocate, the Spirit that makes us more humane
in our judgments, "For the law was made for man, not man for the
law."
To be a Catholic of good
conscience does not separate us from those who seek justice in our court
system, it draws us closer to them. It does not prejudice our judgment it frees
it to serve. "You shall know the truth and it will set you free."
May the Father who
judges hearts keep you mindful of eternity as cases come before you.
 |
The Derision of Christ
Jan Gossaert, 1527
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May the Son who took our
humanity in its most wretched state remind you of the dignity of every one who
comes before you
And may the Spirit
enlighten your mind and strengthen your soul to give faithful witness to the
truth that the justice of God is not our enemy but rather, most assuredly, our
best Advocate.
Amen.
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