St. Thomas More Chicago

Father Robert Behnke

At the conclusion of Mass today you are invited to come forward for the prayerful blessing of throats through the intercession of St. Blase, whose feast day was Thursday, the day before yesterday.  You may remember that two days ago the talk of the town was not the mayoral election, nor the events in Egypt, but the weather.  There was actually a handful of people here at Masses on Wednesday – the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple, also known as Candlemas, the day on which candles are traditionally blessed – candles which are symbols of Jesus, the Light of the world – candles to be used in church during the coming year as well as in your home when a priest or deacon brings the Blessed Sacrament to the sick – and then a few more people managed to come on the following day, Thursday, the Feast of St. Blase.  For the blessing, two blessed candles in a kind of cross-shape are placed around the recipient’s neck; the priest prays Through the intercession of St. Blase, bishop and martyr, may God deliver you from every disease of the throat and from every other illness…and then concludes by making the Sign of the Cross.  Candles, those blessed for use in church and in homes, are for us symbols of our Christian vocation given at our baptism.  At baptism, the newly baptized is given a candle and told Receive the light of Christ.  Parents and godparents of infants and small children are told …this light is entrusted to you, to be kept always burning brightly….  This powerful symbol of light is mentioned often in Scripture, in both the Old and the New testaments; in Isaiah: the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in a land of gloom, a light has shone…; we hear this read on Christmas at midnight.  Today we hear from Isaiah that…light shall rise for you in the darkness…; the responsorial psalm repeats the refrain…The just man is a light in darkness to the upright.  When Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple on the 40th day after His birth, the prophet Simeon hails Him as...a light to reveal you to the nations….  And Our Lord Himself tells His disciples both …I am the light of the world….and in today’s Gospel…you are the light of the world….
Is this mere poetry, or just use of what is sometimes called a primordial symbol – a symbol easily understood by people of every time and place and culture – in this case, light and darkness; who, after all, does not recognize the meaning of darkness and light?  Or is the revealed word of God telling us something more: more important, more about God, more about those who want to follow God, possess God, be possessed by God?  If you had been able to attend Mass on Thursday, you would have seen that the Mass vestments were red, a symbol of shedding one’s blood for Christ; the ribbon joining the candles today for the blessing of throats is red for the same reason, as well as the stole around the neck of the priest.  St. Blase was a martyr – that was his witness; that was how he, by the grace of God, joined together those two truths taught by Our Lord: …I am the light of the world….and…you are the light of the world….  His light was no mere empty symbol; St. Blase shed his blood in imitation of Our Lord Who shed His blood for us.  St. Blase configured his life to the life of Our Lord; he could truly say, with St. Paul…I live now, not I, but Christ lives within me….
I hope you will give attention, in today’s bulletin, that Father Campbell, once-a-week for four weeks on the next four Mondays, will offer a course Introduction to the Social Teaching of the Church, a course which I am confident will be most interesting and so well worth your time and effort.  Reading materials for the course include Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus, written to honor the 100th anniversary of the encyclical Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII.  Leo XIII is best known for this 1891 encyclical, which was the Catholic Church’s response to industrialization, class conflict, and the growth of capitalism.  Famously, Pope Leo defended both private property and the right of the workers, while critiquing both Marxism and unbridled capitalism.  Major social encyclicals which followed - Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno and also John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus - honor Rerum Novarum not only by commemorating its fortieth and hundredth anniversaries but also by reinforcing and developing its most important teachings.
But Rerum Novarum was not Pope Leo’s first or his only social encyclical.  In fact, from the first year of his papacy, 1878, until his last encyclical in 1902, Pope Leo devoted much of his magisterium to social issues.  While Rerum Novarum continues to be celebrated today because its wisdom has been proven and its advice put into practice, another social encyclical, Sapientiae Christianae, which Pope Leo issued one year before Rerum Novarum, has largely been ignored, with devastating consequences for the Church and the world.
In Sapientiae Christianae, Pope Leo defines the duties of Catholics in civil society that are more basic and thus even more important than those described in his more famous encyclical.  What Pope Leo does is explain how Catholics are to understand what Our Lord, the Light of the world, means – what Christ wants of us, what He wants us to do as Catholics when the Faith is challenged, or denigrated, or ridiculed, or ignored even by some Catholics as often happens today – what Our Lord means when He tells us today …you are the light of the world….  121 years ago, Pope Leo clearly foresees the difficulties of being a faithful Catholic in modern civil society.  He emphasizes that Catholics need to obey God, even if that brings them into conflict with civil authority.  Here, 121 years ago, is what Leo XIII wrote if civil law clearly contradicts divine law: …then, truly, to resist becomes a positive duty; to obey, a crime….  Unfortunately, Pope Leo finds, already 121 years ago, societies are more and more frequently instituting exactly the sort of legislation that contradicts divine law.  To be able to discern which laws must be resisted, Leo says that Catholics must …make a deep study of Catholic doctrine.  Once imbued with this doctrine, it is their duty to defend the truth, publicly….
How can Catholics be …the light of the world….in imitation of The Light of the world if they are ignorant of the teachings of The Light of the world?  Both commands – to learn doctrine, and to proclaim it – have too often been ignored by Catholics, especially in the last fifty years.  At the very time when the Second Vatican Council provided a detailed blueprint for the Church, many Catholics lost any distinctive sense of Catholic identity; then, in the 1990s, when the Catechism of the Catholic Church provided a detailed and accessible compendium of all that Catholics must believe, many Catholics stopped teaching and learning doctrine.  That is precisely why opportunities such as Father Campbell’s once-a-week-for-four-weeks course are so very important.  How can we proclaim, and how can we defend, what we don’t know?  If you have ever had a Jehovah’s witness come to your door, ask yourself if you felt competent to debate with him the meaning, and to correct his misunderstanding, of what is taught by the Catholic Church.
This might not have been the tragedy that it has been if the past fifty years had been an age of strength of faith and practice of tradition, but clearly it was the very opposite: an era of change and deep challenges to the most basic Catholic moral teaching.  We have a Catholic governor applauding civil unions and claiming that, in this, his faith motivates him and supports his action; we have several Catholic candidates for mayor who support laws permitting abortions and same sex marriage; do they not know their Catholic Faith, or do they not care what it clearly teaches?  In the face of the sexual revolution and the rise of no-fault divorce, abortion, contraception, and overt homosexuality, indifference and retreat have been the comfort-zone responses of most Catholics who cite “prudence” and “diversity,” masking a desire not to lose credibility with the world around them.
Pope Leo XIII, however, had no patience with silence, with this sort of comfort-zone: again, he writes…To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe…. 121 years ago, this pope proclaimed that the only ones who win when Christians stay quiet are the enemies of truth.  The silence of Catholics is particularly disturbing, the pope says, because frequently a few bold words would have vanquished the false ideas.
And these words of Pope Leo, written 121 years ago, could have been written this very afternoon, so apt they are in describing what it means today to be …the light of the world….: these words: …Christians are born for combat….It is part of their nature to follow Christ by espousing unpopular ideas and by defending the truth at great cost to themselves….One of the main duties of Christians is …professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine…; a second is…propagating it to the utmost of their power….  In these dangerous times, it is not enough to preach the Catholic Faith only through personal example.  Pope Leo insists that Catholics must preach the Faith…by open and constant profession of the obligations it imposes….A negative reaction from the public, far from being a sign of mistaken ideas, can serve as evidence of exactly the opposite fact….Jesus Christ…, the pope says,…has clearly intimated that the hatred and hostility of men, which He first and foremost experienced, would be shown in like degree toward the work founded by Him….
In short, it is not enough, in being…the light of the world…to be merely what society calls “a good person,” or merely to give good example.  Many of the social problems in the West today would not exist if Catholics had taken this encyclical seriously over the past 121 years.  But it is not too late.  It is never too late, because Jesus, The Light of the world, has guaranteed that He is with us until the end of time.  So when you come forward today, to have your throat blessed, or infinitely more importantly, when you come forward in adoration to receive in Holy Communion the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Him Who is The Light of the world, keep in mind that that Light, the Light of the world, bled for you; that St. Blase shed his blood in total and complete witness to The Light of the world; and that, indeed, as Pope Leo also wrote 121 years ago, Satan still …prowls about the world, seeking someone to devour….and so we too have been, in Pope Leo’s own prophetic words, …born for combat.