Bishop reflects on the Red Mass
BishopLucia official photo 3-2024
Editor’s note: This is the Bishop’s homily shared at the annual Red Mass held this year on Monday, September 30. Dating back to 13th Century France, the Red Mass is celebrated before the beginning of a new judicial term. In the United States, that is traditionally the first Monday in October.
The Source of Law and its Practice at this noon hour, it is again a privilege for me to welcome members of the judiciary, the legal profession, the courts system and civic government to this house of worship as we gather for this time of prayer inaugurating the judicial year. We do so on the Memorial of St. Jerome who is characterized in one book on the lives of the saints as “[a] strong, outspoken man. He had the virtues and the unpleasant fruits of being a fearless critic and all the usual moral problems of a man. He was, as someone has said, no admirer of moderation whether in virtue or against evil. He was swift to anger, but also swift to feel remorse, even more severe on his own shortcomings than on those of others. A pope is said to have remarked, on seeing a picture of Jerome striking his breast with a stone, ‘You do well to carry that stone, for without it the Church would never have canonized you.’”
Such a candid evaluation of Jerome’s character is sobering, but I imagine for some of us also consoling. One may also wonder what tempered Jerome, so to speak, and one could say it was his return to the sources — the Scriptures that Jerome translated for greater understanding among the common folk. For your next Jeopardy match or Trivia Pursuit game — his translation is referred to as the Vulgate — coming from the Latin word, “vulgar” — actually meaning, language of the people. Yet, his own pursuit of the Word of God would impact his life.
This is also what St. Paul was addressing in the Second Letter of Timothy. He is reminding Timothy to, “Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it and that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ” (2 Tm 3:14-15). It leads me to two questions that have been percolating in my mind throughout the homily preparations for this occasion: “What informs your interpretation of law?” and “How does the Word of God effect your conduct?”
As Fr. Dexter Brewer, the then judicial vicar for the Diocese of Nashville, stated in his address to the St. Thomas More Society in 2001: “In the world in which we live, our legal system reflects the character of the lawyers and judges who participate in that system. It is important, therefore, that we are faith-filled people-from different faiths and traditions to be sure, but faith-filled all the same. Our faith in God came long before our admission to the bar, making us believers first. And it is this character — the character of the Lord as compassionate lawgiver, the Lord as the anointed one sent to bring glad tidings to those who suffer, the Lord as herald of liberty for captives and prisoners — that we must reflect by our presence, by our words and by our actions in the bars of our respective states” (The Catholic Lawyer, St. John’s University School of Law, Volume 41, Spring 2002, Number 4).
Appropriately, the Gospel of Matthew reminds you and me that in the Kingdom of God things need to be sorted out. This is why the Catholic Bishops of the United States consider it such an important need for “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.” At the heart of this effort is the notion that, “As Catholics, we bring the richness of our faith to the public square. We draw from both faith and reason as we seek to affirm the dignity of the human person and the common good of all … For all Catholics, including those seeking public office, our participation in political parties or other groups to which we may belong should be influenced by our faith, not the other way around” (Introduction).
This is the message of the Word of God to us at this noon hour. Jesus is addressing his disciples on being instructed in the Kingdom of heaven so that as he says, we can be like the head of a household who brings from the storeroom both the new and the old. Two further details about St. Jerome provide us with further food for thought as we are sent forth from this liturgy: First, it is said that Jerome was from a rich pagan family, but that he misspent his youth — I am sure that many of us can see this characterization speaking to aspects of the present day. Secondly, Jerome wrote these words in his commentary on Isaiah: “For if, as Paul says, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, and if the man who does not know Scripture does not know the power and wisdom, then ignorance of Scripture is ignorance.”
Brothers and sisters, let us pray that the source of law and its practice in our lives will be the Word become flesh in us! St. Jerome, pray for us and all our colleagues! Amen.
