The Twenty-third
Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
Dear
brothers and sisters,
Living
as I now do on the near outskirts of civilization, I take great pleasure in
watching the sunset from within the back yard of the rectory. I have only been
with you just a few weeks, but already there is a great difference in the time
the sun passes below the horizon. Whereas once the daylight began to fade after
8:30 p.m., now it begins to fade before 7:30 p.m., making it sometimes
difficult for me to be home in time to see the glowing orb descend. As I look
at the appearance of the sky, I know the great white death of winter will soon
be upon us and my heart grows a little sad; as you see the appearance of the sky,
you likely know the harvest will soon be upon us and your hearts probably grow
a little happy.
The
ancient Anglo-Saxons also knew something about the appearance of the sky and of
the natural world. While we say the autumn season will not be upon us for a
couple of weeks yet, they said autumn began on the seventh of August because it
coincided with their harvest; the Anglo-Saxon word for autumn is haerfest, from which we have our word
harvest, a season “bright, laden with fruits.”[1] The harvest, said the
Anglo-Saxons, “is a joy to men, when God, holy king of the heavens, causes the
earth to give bright fruits for nobles and the needy.”[2] All of this we know simply
by looking around us.
Jesus
once rebuked the Pharisees and the Sadducees who “asked him to show them a sign
from heaven” to prove his identity (Matthew 16:1). He said in answer, “In the
evening you say, ‘Tomorrow will be stormy, for the sky is red and threatening.’
You know how to judge the appearance of the sky, but you cannot judge the signs
of the times” (Matthew 16:2-3). Though nearly two thousand years have passed
since he spoke those words, the truth of his words has not passed and we have sadly
not grown wiser. If you do not think a persecution of faithful Christians is
slowly building within these United States of America, you simply are not
reading the signs of times.
As
a priest of Jesus Christ, I have been appointed a watchman and I must warn you
of a coming danger (cf. Ezekiel 33:7). The Senate Judiciary Committee sat this
past Wednesday to consider the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett - a distinguished
lawyer and professor, and faithful Catholic - to the 7th Circuit
Court of Appeals. During her confirmation hearing, a sitting U.S. senator said
to her:
Why is it that so
many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that—you know,
dogma and law are two different things. And I think whatever a religion is, it
has its own dogma. The law is totally different. And I think in your case,
professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the
dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big
issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.[3]
Yes,
a nominee for a federal court was told by a sitting U.S. Senator that her
deeply held Catholic faith are troubling. She would never have dared to speak
such words to a Muslim, a Jew, or a Quaker, but Catholics are fair game.
The
Senator went on to say, “You’re controversial
because many of us that have lived our lives as women really recognize the
value of finally being able to control our reproductive systems. And Roe
entered into that, obviously.”[4] She said this
despite the judicial nominee’s insistence that “It’s never appropriate for a
judge to impose that judge’s personal convictions, whether they derive from
faith or anywhere else, on the law.”[5] She said this, moreover,
because she is reading the signs of the times. She knows that each year the
March for Life grows both longer and younger. She knows Catholics are and have
been at the forefront of the growing movement to protect human life at every
stage. The senator knows the generations after her will seek to undo the evil
she supports and she and her colleagues will not let this happen quietly.
Another senator went so far as to ask the nominee pointedly,
“Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?”[6]
He asked her this question despite Article VI of the Constitution of the United
States, which declares:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned,
and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and
judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall
be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious
Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust
under the United States.
Ask
yourself this question: If the role of a judge is to apply the law of the land
to cases heard before him or her, why is her faith being questioned at all? The
question should instead be whether a nominee will apply the law as it is
written and nothing more.
That
is not what happened this past week in Washington, D.C. The implication behind
the two senators’ lines of questioning is that a faithful Catholic is unfit to
interpret American law. And if a faithful Catholic is unfit for such a high
office, for what else is a faithful Catholic unfit in this country? Anyone who
knows the history of this nation knows that Catholics were publicly persecuted
for more than a century because it was believed that faithful Catholics could
not also be good Americans. We fought long and hard to be accepted in this
country and those days of persecution and discrimination may soon be upon us
again because we remain unflinching in our recognition of the great dignity of
all human life. Therefore, each of us must ask ourselves, “Does the dogma live
loudly within me?”
Before
we can answer this question, we must know what a dogma is. To put it simply, a
dogma is “an article of faith proclaimed by a Council or the Pope as divine
revelation contained in Scripture and Tradition.”[7] The dogmas of the Church
are contained in the Creed, which we recite every Sunday and holy day. They are
statements of faith that must be believed in order to be a Christian. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains,
the dogmas “are lights along the path of faith; they
illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our life is upright, our
intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of
faith” (89).
The dogmas of the Church should live loudly within each one of us
because they each contain a different aspect of the life of Christ Jesus and of
our salvation from sin and death. If the dogmas do not live loudly within us,
we can be certain something is not as it should be, that we have hardened our
hearts and have not bowed down in true worship or humbly knelt “before the Lord who made us” (cf. Psalm 95:8; 6). To
accept the dogmas of the Church, to embrace the truth of the aspects of the
life of Jesus and of his Church they enunciate and reveal, is to live the life
of a disciple. This is why the dogmas must live loudly within each one of us.
Jesus himself, “What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you
hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops” (Matthew 10:27). The Christian faith
is not meant to be kept quiet and so the senator’s attempted insult was
paradoxically a mark of high praise.
If someone tells us the dogma lives loudly within us, we should
“sing joyfully to the Lord, and
acclaim the rock of our salvation” (Psalm 95:1). If someone tells us the dogma
does not live loudly within us, we should be concerned because it would mean we
have not yet begun to reflect the love of Jesus in our words and deeds. This is
why Saint Paul tells us today to “owe nothing to anyone, except to love one
another” and for which reason he reminds us that “love does no evil to the
neighbor” (Romans 13:8, 10). The dogma will be known to live loudly within us
if we listen to Saint Augustine, who said:
The
rule of love is that one should wish his friend to have all the good things he
wants to have himself and should not wish the evils to befall his friend which
he wishes to avoid himself. He shows this benevolence to all men. No evil must
be done to any. Love of one’s neighbor works no evil. Let us then love even our
enemies as we are commanded, if we wish to be truly unconquered.[8]
Let each of us, then, not harden our hearts to the Lord, but allow
them instead to melt before his the gaze of his mercy and be set aflame with
the fire of his love. May all who see us or hear of us know us to be men,
women, and children who love Jesus. May they know us to be people within whom the
dogma lives loudly! Amen.
[1] Menalogium, in Eleanor Parker, “‘On haerfest ham gelædeđ’: Anglo-Saxon Harvests,” A Clerk of Oxford, 7
August 2016.
[2] Old English Rune Poem, in ibid.
[3] Senator Dianne Feinstein, in
“Democrats and ‘Dogma’: Are you now or have you ever been an ‘orthodox Catholic’?”, The Wall Street Journal,
7 September 2017.
[4] Ibid., in Matt Hadro, “Concerns of ‘Anti-Catholic bigotry’ as judicial nominee questioned about faith,” Catholic
News Agency, 7 September 2017.
[5] Amy Coney Barrett, in ibid.
[6] Senator Richard Durbin, in ibid.
[7] YouCat: Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church, trans. Michael J.
Miller, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 90.
[8] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Of True Religion, 87. In Thomas C. Oden,
et al, eds., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament Vol. VI:
Romans (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 1998), 320.
