The Red Mass is a centuries-old tradition, invoking God’s blessings and
guidance in the administration of justice under the power of the Holy
Spirit. In Washington, the Red Mass is held on the Sunday before the start
of the Supreme Court session each year.
This year's attendees included President George W. and Laura Bush, the new
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John G. Roberts, other members of the
Administration and Supreme Court, as well as members of the federal, state
and local judiciaries.
To preach this morning in the
presence of the President of the United States, our new Chief Justice and
many members of the Supreme Court, the other federal, state and local courts
and the distinguished members of the Bench and the Bar is a very humbling
thing for me and gives me an opportunity both to thank you all for your
presence and so much more for your faithfulness to your awesome
responsibilities, as well as to assure you on behalf of the Catholic people
in this archdiocese of our fervent prayers for you as you help to guide our
beloved nation in a challenging period of its history.
Our Gospel today is a very beautiful one. We are presented with Matthew’s
narrative of one of the great parables of Jesus. It is the parable of the
vineyard and of vine growers who forgot that they were not the lords of the
vineyard, but only the workers there. What an awesome lesson for all of us.
We all need to learn that we are just workers in God’s world who must be
always conscious of His loving Presence as He guides and sustains every
moment of our lives.
The parable of the vineyard has many meanings. This was probably clear to
those who heard it and maybe not as clear to us. It speaks of the Father’s
goodness, of His gift of this great vineyard and His entrusting it to the
workers. The vineyard must yield good wine for the health and comfort of
many people and the vineyard’s workers are given the chance to be part of
this great accomplishment. It is a lesson not just to the people of Israel
to whom the Lord spoke, but to all of us, as well. The parable also speaks
of the rejection of the prophets, this sad history of God’s chosen people,
for so much of their history. It speaks also ultimately of rejecting Jesus
Himself, the Son, the Heir who comes to call the people back to faithfulness
to the Father and is driven out of the vineyard and put to death. All of us
share their guilt because ultimately we are all workers in the vineyard of
the Lord. God has graced each one of us with a special role to play so that
we may produce good things for Him and for our neighbor and that we might
promote the Kingdom where He is Lord forever and ever.
Our Gospel has its roots in another parable, that of the prophet Isaiah who
lived so many years before. This was the parable described in the first
reading of the Mass. Isaiah describes another vineyard, a vineyard that God
cared for so well and hoped it would bring forth a great crop to provide
good wine for the tables of life. Yet this vineyard fails for other reasons,
both man-made and reasons of nature. Isaiah makes it clear, and Jesus
follows, that the vineyard is the house of Israel and, indeed, the vineyard
is all of us.
It is sometimes difficult to have a great vineyard. It depends on so many
things. Some of them are climactic and depend on the soil and the water and
the sun. Others are man-made for they depend on the good care and loving
concern of the vine keepers themselves. For a vineyard, there are good times
and bad. There are times of plenty and times of challenge.
Life is like that, too. Isaiah preaches that message, also. The vineyard is
the vineyard of the Lord. The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.
The vineyard of the Lord is all of us. In a deeper sense, the vineyard is
this world in which we live in our own country, among our own people, in our
own land.
For our vineyard, too, there are good times and bad. There are days of
plenty and days of challenge. In this particular moment of the history of
our lives, we walk our days in a time of great challenge. Let us count the
ways:
· We are at war with international terrorism.
· We are facing a difficult conflict in Iraq; thank God, less so in
Afghanistan.
· We are so clearly living in a world of conflicts, as in Darfur in the
Sudan, in parts of Asia and Africa, in the Holy Land.
· We worry about AIDS in Africa and here in our own neighborhoods and
poverty and hunger among so many people of our world.
· We worry about the poor at home, especially those who have lost so much in
the wake of the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
These are the times of challenge when the vine growers need to work together
and be more aware of the responsibility they hold to bring the wine of
sweetness and the wine of strength to ourselves and to all our people.
All of these troubles weigh heavily upon us. How could it be otherwise? We
tend to blame each other, and the level of our discourse can sometimes
become shrill and caustic and uneven. What happens in the vineyard can
happen to us in our public life. We must be careful that we do not condemn
the vineyard and harm to the vine growers. And yet, thanks be to God, in the
last few days, we have witnessed a period of greater civility in the
selection of our Chief Justice. I pray that that civility will continue
because it is so important not just for good government, but for the good
care of our people who look here to all of you and your colleagues for the
kind of leadership that is not destructive or not too intensely partisan.
We know that we must become friends again, not agreeing on everything, of
course, but striving to dialogue more gently, more positively; more careful
to set the conversation within a forum of mutual respect by being willing to
listen for the good points that are usually present in every reasonable
discourse and so will help us learn again to build and not to tear down.
During the past few weeks, many of us, myself included, have spoken about
civility and the need for it in every part of our civil life, in every part
of our society – and not excluding the Church itself.
You are perhaps aware of the initiative that some of our senior statesmen
have proposed in what is called the National Committee to Unite a Divided
America. They have presented a declaration that is a call to civility in
government. I find it to be of special value today. The declaration begins
with the words, I quote, “The coming years will demand greatness from our
leaders and our citizens as we navigate through a time of domestic and
international opportunities as well as challenges that threaten our security
and long term prosperity. The difficulty of this task is magnified by our
country’s political divisions, for today we are too much a house divided.
Yet if we continue to achieve our common goals we will surely write a great
chapter in America’s history.”
I find those words to be optimistic, challenging and comforting, and I hope
we all do. The document continues to say that, “Civility does not require
citizens to give up cherished beliefs or water down their convictions.
Rather it requires respect, listening and dialogue when interacting with
those who hold different points of view.” Indeed, there is no doubt that
some of the great moments in our history have occurred when people of
different points of view have agreed to differ in a respectful manner and
try to work together to find a place where there will be sufficient accord
to build a better world.
This is my prayer this day in a very special way as we celebrate the Red
Mass here at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. I take heart, as well, from the second
reading in today’s Mass. It comes from the Letter of Saint Paul to the
Philippians. It begins by encouraging us to dismiss all anxiety from our
minds and to present our needs to God in every form of prayer and petition.
The most striking of Paul’s admonitions in this reading is his good counsel
that our thoughts – and our words – should be wholly directed to all that is
true, all that deserves respect, all that is honest, pure, decent, virtuous
or worthy of praise. Paul assures us as an apostle of the Lord that if we do
this, if we speak and work in this way, the God of Peace will be with us.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful for our country, for each one of us, if our
discourse could mirror that of the apostle and help change this vineyard of
ours, so filled as it always is with promise and potential, into even more a
place where good works can grow like precious grapes in the sunshine of a
well-watered garden in the shade of a flourishing life. When all is said and
done, we need to reflect on our own lives, our own mission and our own
ministry, each one of us being called in a special way to exercise the
talents which he and she has been given. The 80th Psalm, which we sang
together this morning, proclaims this message as it sings of the vineyard of
the Lord, “Give us new life and we will call upon your name. O Lord of hosts
restore us. If you shine your face upon us, then we shall be saved!”
As we sang this great Psalm this morning, listening hopefully, each one with
care to the challenge the psalmist gives us in the name of God Most High.
You and I and all of us here who have our own responsibility in this
vineyard are called to come together, each in his or her own way, to put our
hands to that task so that the Lord of the vineyard might be pleased with
our service and He might bless it with peace and plenty for ourselves and
our neighbor and for all this beloved land of ours. Amen.