6th Sunday of Easter
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
Live-streaming & TV Broadcast
May 5, 2024
Public Comment
Many years ago, at the behest of my former archbishop, Cardinal Hickey, I represented the Archdiocese of Washington in an interview with 60 Minutes. The interviewer was the formidable Morley Safer. At the time, I thought his name was ironic. As the cameras started rolling, I felt anything but “safe”.
Well, the resulting segment on 60 Minutes wasn’t exactly stellar, but I was surprised to hear from people I hadn’t heard from in years. They saw the interview and congratulated me on surviving it. One friend wrote to say that ‘any publicity is good publicity.’ I might have agreed with her then. Today, I’m not so sure. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Archdiocese of Baltimore has been in the news a lot more than I would like, most recently for its Seek the City Initiative, soon to reach a decision point.
The publicity was predictable and inevitable, given the open nature of a two-year process in which nearly 4,000 people were consulted about parish reconfiguration, and many meetings, big and small, were conducted. In fact, it was from those meetings that the proposed changes took shape. At that point, in most dioceses, the decisions would have been made, but here in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, we took an additional step. We held four public sessions in which anyone could comment on the proposals. And, as you know, this opened the floodgates. Well, what can I say? I invited public comment and I got it, a mix of understandable anger, dismay, sorrow, and constructive criticism. And while no one can please everyone – and I may be in the unenviable position of pleasing no one – the public comment sessions had their place and have their purpose.
Beyond Sound and Fury
Yet, I think it would be a mistake for anyone to reduce a thoughtful, prayerful, two-year consultative process to sound and fury. While the world around us goes that way, often to its detriment, there ought to be something different about us as Catholic Christians, something different about the way we express ourselves, something different about the way we evaluate the decisions before us, something different about the way we think, and hope, and choose. This is true of me and of the leadership of the Archdiocese but it is also true of every Catholic – clergy, religious, and laity.
And this critical difference ought to extend beyond the present process to the daily life and mission of the Church. It should extend to how regard one another in the life of the Church. This critical difference goes to the question of whether we really are in communion with Jesus Christ and with one another, of whether we really do regard fellow Catholics in parishes other than our own as our brothers and sisters in Christ, brothers and sisters bound together in “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph 4:5).
The Need to Reframe
That is why today’s Scripture readings are so timely, for they speak about the love we owe one another in Christ Jesus. In the 2nd reading St. John instructs us to “love one another because love is of God”. He also says we do not know or love God unless we love. Unless we love whom? Only our friends at church? Only those who agree with us? Only those we are comfortable with? And are we given license to abandon love when we are angry? To say anything, no matter how unfounded, to get our way? No such conditions are placed upon the love we owe one another in Christ. No such license is given us to trade in Christian love for worldly discord.
On the contrary, we really do not know or love God unless we love, for God not only loves, but indeed “God is love”. Moreover, the statement “God is love” is not an abstraction. The God of love revealed himself by sending his Son to redeem us of our sins so that we might one day share fully in the divine love through which and for which we were made. Summing up, St. John declares, “Love, then, consists in this: not that we have loved God, but that God has loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.”
This sets the stage for Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel. Here he invites us to be his friends, to remain in his love, to allow his love to penetrate our hearts, individually and collectively, so that we would love one another, not only as we love ourselves, but that we would love one another as Christ himself loves us: with a love that is sacrificial, a love that looks beyond our own interests. To love one another as the Lord himself loves us. This is what makes us, or should make us, different from the world around us. Love alone makes us credible witnesses of our faith.
A Better Way
Pope Francis once said that “those who build walls will become prisoners of the walls they put up.” These walls can be physical. Walls of parochialism. Walls of ideology. Walls of language and culture. Walls of personal preference. Or walls we erect in our hearts when anger festers.
St. Paul teaches, “…[Christ] is our peace…he who broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh” (Eph 2:14). What if we decided first and foremost to come together in Christ? What if we really took today’s Scripture readings to heart, really grasped what it means to open our hearts to Christ and his love, really embraced the communion that is ours in and through the Eucharist . . . and then looked with renewed love on our fellow Catholics, resolving to come together anew in reconfigured and sustainable parishes capable of doing the work of evangelization?
If we are to have a future, it must be a future of love. The world’s anger passes away into oblivion, but Christ’s love is eternal. Only love is credible. Only love drives the Church’s mission forward. Love that is not a fleeting sentiment but love that is sacrificial, like the Lord’s own love for us . . . Indeed, this is the very love with which we are to love one another in the Church, so that we, in turn, can love those who need to hear the Gospel and who need to know Jesus Christ and him crucified. Let us indeed Seek the City to Come – not the earthly city of discord, but a foretelling here and now in Baltimore of that City where the God who is love reigns supreme. May he bless us and keep us always in his love!