From Archbishop Donoghue

Red Mass
October 19, 1999
Sacred Heart Church
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Dear Friends in Christ,

For centuries now, the Church has celebrated, in all countries and local cultures, the presence among her children of men and women dedicated to the law – to its authoring, its theory, its practice and application. And I am happy to mark one more year, not just of the celebration, which is our gift to God ,and our first reason for being here, but also the continuing presence in the local Catholic community of so many dedicated servants of justice, of fair play, and of the healthy balancing of so many disparate currents and tides in our contemporary society.

It is, as I have mentioned, firstly our celebration which counts – for in making the effort to represent your profession collectively, in setting this time aside for a specific purpose of sanctification, you are truly making a gift for all – a gift which is fitting and welcome before the eyes of God, who sees everything and every age in the light of justice, for in God is found perfect justice, the true wedding of mercy and truth – and there is nothing ambiguous about it for those of the Catholic Faith – for at the end of time, the Church teaches and we believe, that God will send His Son and our Lord Jesus Christ in all glory, to judge the living and the dead, and that when the judgement is done, there will be two groups left, the unforgiven and the forgiven. A little different from the concepts of guilt and innocence, our necessary reductions into workable states of something that transcends our power to comprehend – judgement which lasts for eternity. It is before this immutable but ultimate destiny of all men and women, that we can perceive and feel, if we have spiritual strength and honesty, what the no-nonsense fathers would have called the fear of God. It is to this eternal power that we come in all humility, to offer the good that we do in His Name, and because Jesus Christ ahs taught us to do that good, merit through Him a degree of grace, of forgiveness, and of hope for the ultimate disposition of our souls.

But there is an equally significant, at least from our point of view, reason for what we do here together this day. And that is to reassure ourselves, in strictly human fashion, that we are in the business of justice together – that what we pledge ourselves to accomplish, whether through the courts, or the legislature, or individual business practice, is an equity which has its base in the Gospel of our Lord. Ours is the work, and often performed in the face of the most crass materialism, and the most utterly hopeless cynicism, of laboring to mend and expand the framework of law – the framework of equity, which finds its strength not only on the base upon which it stands, the natural law, but also in the counter-balanced supporting strength of our efforts to build it up – the law of benevolent creative energy. And these efforts we undertake from the time we are students in schools of law, through the years of dedicated professionalism in which most of us are presently engaged, and finally, by teaching, by writing, by handing on in some way, the accumulated wisdom of our quest. By dedicating ourselves thusly, and by ever asking for the protection and inspiration the Holy Spirit provides, we are fulfilling that simple but severe warning given by Jesus Christ in today’s gospel:

Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival… [whether] he should come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants.

Today, for the whole Catholic Church, but especially within my purview as Archbishop of this local community, I offer to God thanks for the servants of the law who serve our people. I ask Him to give you courage not just for the years of your professionalism, but also for all the years you will have, to grow in charity, to influence people to do good, and to have good will for one another, even as God has good will towards His creature man. I do this prompted not by duty alone, or a fitting sense of what is proper to the occasion, but also moved by these other words of Jesus Christ that spring to mind, concerning justice and the will of God:

And as he passed by he saw a man blind from birth.

His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

Jesus answered, "Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.

We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day.

Night is coming when no one can work.”

Dear friends, I pray that God will lead His Church forever in the light of truth – the light of Jesus Christ. But so much in the world corroborates this prophecy, that I am moved, by the office I bear, and by my love for the People of God, to heed these words, and to urge those whom I know to be faithful sons and daughters of the Church, to come together and unite more forcefully than ever before, to keep open the window through which the truth shines, the window of Faith, so often and utterly abandoned in our day and time. Let us keep it open by making all the motives, decisions and actions of our life, personal and professional, conform strictly to the law of Jesus Christ and of His Church. And if the night is coming, let us praise God still, and ask Him to lead us by His light alone, so that His work, His love for mankind in Jesus Christ, may shine on in the darkness, which will overcome it not.

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