By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily during the annual Red Mass for legal professionals hosted by the Miami Catholic Lawyers Guild, and celebrated Dec. 11, 2024 at Gesu Church in Miami.
"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened". These words of Jesus "arc" wide enough to cover every form of human sin and sorrow. Much of our culture in America today is deeply wounded by individualism, relativism, by narcissism; it is wounded by materialism that denies the transcendence of the human person. It is confused by false ideologies about what it means to be male or female. Men and women of faith are increasingly “burdened” facing rejection, ostracism and exclusion from this ascendent secularism that has confused people about what is real, what is good, and true. Many today have been bewitched with a false sense of human autonomy that even justifies the killing of a baby in her mother’s womb. (This is the faulty reasoning behind those who supported Amendment 4.)
The pedagogical result of Roe v. Wade, a bad Supreme Court ruling a half century ago, has darkened our national conscience. Generations of Americans were “catechized” in the belief that abortion is a right and that unborn babies have no rights and that we have no duties to the unborn. Dobbs made an important effort to repair this damage to our constitutional order. But it doesn’t – couldn’t -erase 50 years of political and social corruption.
To quote Ryan Anderson in an essay he wrote recently in First Things, “For nearly fifty years, the American people have built their lives around the ready availability of abortion. Even when they know that abortion stops a beating heart, they don’t always care, or when they do care, they aren’t always willing to make the personal sacrifices that follow. In April, Bill Maher said the quiet part out loud to a stunned audience. ‘They think it’s murder. And it kind of is. I’m just okay with that.’ There is a great deal of motivated reasoning – rationalization – in the abortion debate, because deep down people know the law written on the heart. They just aren’t willing to make sacrifices in order to live in accordance with that law.”
That natural law, written on the human heart, simply means that we cannot not know that lying is wrong, that stealing is wrong, that murder is wrong. But our darkened consciences rationalize that some lying, some stealing, some murdering are not really lying, stealing, or murder.
Catholic teaching proclaims the dignity of every human being, but it also acknowledges the reality of sin. Our police forces, our social service agencies, our schools, our courtrooms deal with the consequences of sin every day. James Monroe, one of the principal authors of our Constitution, and the fourth President of the United States, is famously quoted as having said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary”.
So, our founders also recognized human sinfulness, which is why they gave us a divided government based on checks and balances. All Constitution’s checks and balances serve to preserve liberty by ensuring justice. Justice is the purpose of government; it is the purpose or end of civil society. Their vision of freedom was one of ordered liberties, a vision remarkably congruent with Catholic social thought.
As members of the bar and as members of the Body of Christ, your contribution and commitment to both Catholic Social Teaching and our founders’ vision of freedom as “ordered liberties,” can protect our system of justice from devolving into a type of judicial positivism based simply on a common agreement to set aside truth claims about the good – “We hold these truths...” – and to adopt a relativism which would make the practice of law the province of irrational tastes and arbitrary subjective judgments.
"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened". Jesus issues an invitation to discipleship – but in doing so, he's not about imposing some impossible moral code; rather this invitation to discipleship is an invitation to "rest" – to "rest" with Him, to "rest" in Him. In other words, as Pope Benedict has said – and Pope Francis has repeated - Christianity is not an ideology, it is not merely a moral system; it is above all a relationship with a person, Jesus Christ. "To be a Christian is not a burden but a gift; to have encountered the Lord is the best thing that has ever happened to us, and to share him with others is our joy". (Aparecida)
Jesus says: "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, and you will find rest...My yoke is easy and my burden light". The Scripture commentators remind us that those who listened to Jesus understood the image here. Farmers would yoke together a stronger, more experienced ox with a younger and inexperienced one - so that the stronger would teach the weaker. Jesus invites us to "yoke" ourselves to him. His yoke is lighter - not because he demands less of us but because he bears more of the load for us.
Following the example of St. Thomas More, who certainly knew to “yoke” himself to the Lord, may you be, in Thomas’ words, “for the greater glory and honor of God and in pursuit of His justice... able in argument, accurate in analysis, strict in study, correct in conclusion, candid with clients, honest with adversaries, and faithful in all details of the faith.”
The example of this martyr and confessor of the faith should inspire your imitation, even as you seek his intercession before God, as you live out your commitments to the Bar and to your Baptism.
