By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami

Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily during the 50th annual Red Mass of the Holy Spirit to ask for the guidance of the Holy Spirit for all those leading state government at the Co-Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Tallahassee on March 19, 2025. All the bishops of Florida concelebrated the Mass. The Red Mass coincides with Catholic Days at the Capitol, during which Florida's Catholics, under the guidance of the Florida Catholic Conference, speak to their legislators about issues of concern to the Catholic Church.

We invoke the guidance of the Holy Spirit on those who serve us in the three branches of our government. The Red Mass unites us to a long and noble tradition that recognizes the sovereignty of God over all human claims to sovereignty. Our own experiment in constitutional democracy embraced this tradition since its very beginnings.

Today, the 19th of March is also the feast of St. Joseph, the husband of Mary. (In my home, growing up, as in other Polish and certainly in Italian households, St. Joseph’s Day was way bigger than St. Patrick’s Day.)

Scriptures do not speak much of Joseph except to say that he was an upright, righteous man.  He was a just man. But what does this mean? Often, justice is taken to be something cold and calculating. When we think about the “justice system”, it   implies a certain impersonal objectivity.

But justice is first and foremost a virtue.  The catechism describes the virtue of justice as “the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor (CCC 1807).  In other words, justice is the virtue by which we turn outward toward to God and other people, to affirm their fundamental dignity, and we strive to act in accord with their true good.  To be a just man – or woman – is to be a person who turns outward to other people seeing them as God sees them, which is of course with perfect and unwavering charity.

Jesus criticizes the scribes and Pharisees for the legalism by which they tithe mint and dill and cumin but neglect the more important matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith. “These you ought to have done”, Jesus tells them, “Without neglecting the others” (Matthew 23: 23)

Joseph in the midst of crises acted justly, trusting God to make a way forward. Joseph served not on the mountaintops -for glory came later for him, as it will, hopefully, for us. No, he served God’s will in the valleys:  taking Mary into his home when she was already with child; seeking shelter in the cave of Bethlehem and refuge in Egypt, working in the obscurity and the poverty of Nazareth.

We also gather this evening in this co-cathedral dedicated to St. Thomas More who also like Joseph was a just man.

In the year 2000, Pope St. John Paul II declared St. Thomas More the patron saint of politicians. The Holy Father believed that political life can be -- and should be -- a legitimate vocation; that is, a path to holiness. And your service as officers of the court and/or as elected officials is likewise a path to holiness, a true vocation in which you are called to live out the implications of your baptism by working for justice. Our United States Constitution says that the principal purpose of government is to establish justice – to ensure a “rule of law” that is fair and equitable, protecting the rights of the individual and holding wrong doers accountable.

We vote for our public officials because we believe them when they tell us - when you tell us - that you want to make a difference, that you want to do good, and not merely do well for yourselves or some special interests. You were inspired by love for your country, your state and for your fellow citizens. Today, our state, and our nation, face many great challenges. And “politics” or perhaps more correctly “the political process”, while not a sufficient in and of itself, is an important way to address these challenges.

It was once commonly recognized that the essential American legal principles of equality, rights, and government by consent, were derived from the laws of God, articulated in the Declaration of Independence under the general appellation of the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” and incorporated into the various state constitutions and the federal Constitution.

Today, against the spirit of our times, we are challenged to bear witness to our belief in the objectivity and universality of moral norms. As men and women of faith, living and working in an increasing hostile environment, we must argue that natural law, objective truth, and universal moral norms do offer the best framework for recognizing the inherent dignity and worth of every individual and of the construction of a just society and political order.

The virtue of justice means that we recognize that we are brothers and sisters; that we are our brother’s keeper., that God’s love for all his creatures must be mirrored in the way we care for one another. We can only practice the virtue of justice, giving our neighbor his due when we recognize that every human life is sacred and that all humanity forms one family.

This is the core of what has come to be called Catholic social teaching. While the arguments of this teaching can seem to be quite complex, I believe that it can be summarized in one simple phrase: no man is a problem. No human being, no matter how poor or how weak, can be reduced to being just a problem. Whether we are talking about the homeless, the mentally ill, the addict or the unwed mother, the troubled child in one of our failing schools, to view any human being as merely a problem is to fail to be just and in doing so, we offend his or her dignity. And, when we indulge in such reductive thinking, we give ourselves permission to look for expedient but not just solutions.

The successive holocaust of the last century shows what happens when we fail to act justly.

For this reason, there is no such thing as a “problem pregnancy”, only a child who is to be welcome in life and protected by law. Migrants, even ones without legal papers, are not problems. The migrant may perhaps be a stranger but one who is to be embraced as a brother. Even those incarcerated in our prisons, for all the horror of their crimes, do not lose their God-given dignity as human beings. They too must be treated with respect even in their punishment. This is why Catholic social teaching condemns torture and advocates for the abolition of the death penalty.

How important, then, that that same Holy Spirit which guided Joseph and Thomas More, guide us today when our contemporaries and we ourselves are often tempted to consider deceit, selfishness and subordination of the common good as legitimate means for winning political office or professional advancement.

If any of us in leadership seeks to rise to the challenges, we have assumed in accepting these roles, we must seek to grow always in that virtue of justice which defined the lives of Joseph and Thomas More. The virtue of justice by which you give both God and neighbor their due seeing other people as God sees them with perfect and unwavering charity. In the words of the prophet Micah: He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God… (Michah 6:8)

May the Holy Spirit give you the aid of his seven-fold gifts (wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord).  St. Joseph, pray for us!