Sixth Sunday of Easter C

Sixth Sunday of Easter C. May 16, 2004. Our Lady of Grace. 7:30, 11:30 and 6PM. Acts 15: 2, 22-29. Revelation 2:10-14, 22-23. John 14: 23-29.

Faith without good works is dead. These words of the Letter of James echoed in my head as we again visited a slave castle in Ghana, West Africa this past week. I told you about the slave castle last year, and about getting choked up as I tried to speak at Mass in one of our African sister parishes about their African American relatives in the Untied States. Hundreds of thousands of Africans were ripped from their homes, violently separated from their families and placed in hot, cave-like dungeons in the salve castle, without toilet facilities or adequate ventilation to await shipment in chains to their buyers in far off lands. Thousands of slaves died in the castle dungeons. Thousands more died during the ocean journey. My father came to the United States as a very poor man. But he came with his dignity and his freedom. Most African Americans came to our land in chains and in slavery. Their journey to freedom, equal opportunity and equality has been a long one. After visiting many African homes, and meeting African bishops, priests, lay leaders, professions and countless children, I think that I am finally beginning to see the human being in each of them before I notice the color of their skin. How could human beings enslave, mistreat and sell other human beings?

The most difficult thing in the slave castle for me to understand is the church at the center of the great castle courtyard. The builders of the castle were from Portugal, a great Catholic nation. Above the doorway of the church is an inscription from the Psalms, “This is the dwelling place of God and the gate of heaven.” In this church Mass was offered and the solders and merchants worshipped. At the edge of the courtyard all around the church slaves were being held in dungeons, some were dying, and others were awaiting forced shipment to a foreign land. How could Catholic Christian men and women worship God when they had created dungeons of hell for their fellow human beings? Perhaps we learn or are taught not to see people different from ourselves as human being. Perhaps the root of our sin is our ability to dehumanize and distance ourselves from people who are different from us or who disagree with us.

Jesus said, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.” Faith without good works is dead. Worship without keeping the commandments, especially the commandment of love, is meaningless. In last Sunday’s gospel Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” In the gospel three Sundays ago, Jesus told Peter that if he loved Jesus, Peter would feed his lambs and tend his sheep. Sometimes our faith, our worship and our daily lives become disconnected and even contradict one another. The slave castle in Ghana is a very clear example of a rupture between Sunday worship and daily life.

These past two weeks we have been bombarded with pictures and commentary detailing the abuse of prisoners by Americans in Iraq. The images we have seen are almost too horrible to imagine. Some may wish that I would not talk about such things in church because of the presence of children. Having dealt with our children a lot, I know that they always see, hear and know more than we wish that they had. Children have their questions too. If we do not talk about such things in church, where are we going to talk about them? I was very proud to be traveling in a third would country with more than a hundred thousands dollars of the money you have given to help complete a church building in a very poor parish and to help build a college dormitory for very poor women in Africa. I am grateful to you for helping us offer a different vision of American and Christian than is currently appearing on TV and in the press.

A high official in the Vatican said that the prison scandal in Iraq is a bigger tragedy for the United States than 9/11. One of the news commentators said that this was just another example of an anti-Ameican attitude by some high officials in the Vatican. My reading on the matter is very different. To see American solders, both men and women, who were thrown together by the fate of military assignment, agree to engage in such an orgy of abuse may well be a symptom of something that needs attention in our society. It may be only the sniffles, or a cough or a sore throat, but it is a symptom of something none the less. The wise take notice and do what has to be done to strengthen and positively change the moral consensus, values and attitudes in our land. Along with saving face and addressing injustices, we also have to address the moral environment that shapes us as human beings. 9/11 is what terrorists did to us. We were victims. The prison abuse scandal is what the terrorist in some of us did to others. As followers of Jesus Christ we are challenged to find out where this kind of sexual violence is coming from in our midst. Why is there a growing disconnect between our Christian values and worship and our daily lives? We have the responsibility to ask this question.