Dear Friends,
The Thanksgiving holiday prompts me to write a word of thanks to you for
all you do to make our parish the wonderful community of prayer and
service it is. I thank God for you every day in my prayer, but it
probably doesn’t hurt for me to tell you that once in a while. And what
better time than our national day of Thanksgiving!
Mention of our nation should make us grateful. We are blessed beyond
measure in this land we call home. Every year at our annual Thanksgiving
Day Mass I get to remind you of this and it’s something I always look
forward to doing. This year, however, because I am going to join my
nephews and nieces and their families for Thanksgiving, I can’t be here
for the Thanksgiving Day Mass. My family has decided this year that
Nashville is a good gathering place for our family, now scattered across
the country from west to east, so Nashville is where I’ll be. Country
music has never quite been my thing but, who knows, maybe I’m not too
old to learn a new trick or two…!
If I were here for the Thanksgiving Day Mass, I would say something to
you about the state of our nation, but I’ll have to settle for doing it
this way. We are all aware of what a difficult and even dark time this
is in our nation’s history. It seems that so many of the things we hold
dear—our sense of being one nation under God, our seeking of the Common
Good together, our sense of common purpose, our commitment to common
decency, the value we put on truth over falsehood, love over hatred,
service over selfishness, tolerance over bigotry, patriotism over
nationalism—these and so many things that have always been at the heart
of what makes America truly great, seem at this time to be gravely
compromised. So much so, that I find myself asking the question, can we
no longer put aside our differences in order to pursue the great vision
of our Founders and build a society with freedom and justice for all? I
wish I didn’t need to ask that question but I think I do.
We have much to pray for, don’t we? And much to overcome! In the
cacophony of partisan political name-calling, in the unfolding of a
national drama over the possible impeachment of a President, in the
too-often rancorous and acrimonious debate over who we want to be as a
people and a nation—who we want to invite to the table, and what we want
our place in the world to be—we who call ourselves Catholic need to
return to some basics that Catholic Social Teaching sets forth for us
with crystal clarity. Prominent among these are the following, which,
according to the teaching of Pope Francis, are not a menu from which to
pick and choose, but “are equally sacred and urgent.” They are: respect
for the dignity of every human person without exception beginning with
life in the womb and continuing throughout the lifespan; a preferential
option for the poor, the vulnerable, and the marginalized, including
migrants and refugees, and victims of human trafficking; care and
respect for God’s creation, our common home; and a commitment to
building a just and peaceful world without war or violence. The word
“respect” features prominently among those principles, and yet, sad to
say, we have become a nation that seems to have forgotten the very
meaning of respect. Regrettably, we find this at every level—from those
who govern us, to those who are governed.
And where are the role models to show us the way? Who can we look to as
a nation? Who can inspire us? Who can capture our best instincts, appeal
to “the better angels of our nature”? Sadly, strong role models with
moral standing and moral credibility are hard to find these days. But we
who are Christian believers don’t have to look very far for our role
model, do we? Jesus Christ—who came to preach Good News to the poor, to
proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, who
devoted his entire ministry to reaching out to those on the margins and
welcoming those on the fringes of society—Jesus Christ is our role
model.
I sometimes find myself wondering what Jesus would say to us if he were
to take the pulpit some Sunday, but it’s actually a question I’m able to
answer rather easily. He would speak the same words to us that he spoke
to his contemporaries. That’s because societies change and so do
political challenges and situations, but the message of Jesus doesn’t
change. Jesus would challenge us today in the same way he did the people
he preached to in the synagogue of Nazareth and along the shores of the
Lake of Galilee. And what is his challenge? It’s to put the little ones
first—and the least, and the last. It’s to let the poor lead us out of
ourselves and lead us to God, as Pope Francis recently reminded us.
That’s the challenge of Jesus, the upside-down logic of the gospel, and
we believers ignore it at our peril.
So, my friends, if we want to know how to begin to heal our nation, how
to treat one another, how to reset our priorities—how even to vote—we
need to go no further than the gospel of Jesus Christ in all its rich
and challenging complexity. And I know, the separation of Church and
State is written into the fabric of our Constitution and we must never
blur that line. But Christian believers don’t need to blur the line
between Church and State in order to bring about societal change. All
that needs to happen is for us to change: for us to let the gospel of
Jesus Christ—rather than the wearying, divisive rhetoric of some of our
elected leaders who serve themselves and not the people—wake us up to
the world around us, recharge our moral batteries, and inform our way of
thinking. Christians formed by the gospel of Jesus Christ have an
unbeatable recipe for the healing of our nation and for the re-discovery
of our true national greatness. And we don’t even need to quote
the gospel; we only need to live it!
I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, and I pray for you and your families
even as I pray for our beloved country!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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