Lawyers as Signs and Agents of Hope, Columbia Law School Catholics Red Mass, 29th Tuesday (II), October 22, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Red Mass for Columbia Law School Catholics
29th Tuesday of Ordinary Time, Year II
October 22, 2024
Eph 2:12-22, Ps 85, Lk 12:35-38

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following outline guided the homily: 

• It’s great to be celebrating the second of what we pray will eventually be hundreds of Red Masses for Columbia Law School Catholics in the decades and centuries ahead.
• Red Mass Tradition. 1243 by Pope Innocent IV for the ecclesiastical court. Grew quickly. It begins the judicial year. First Red Mass in the US was celebrated in 1928 by Cardinal Hayes at old St. Andrew’s Church, down by the courthouses here in NYC.
• The Red Masses take their name from the Red Vestments worn by the priest when he celebrates a Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit. Judges, Lawyers, Paralegals, Court Personnel, and everyone working in the legal profession have a special need for the Holy Spirit’s seven-fold gifts: wisdom, understanding, knowledge, prudence, courage, reverence, fear or awe of the Lord. We ask for those gifts tonight on us and on all those involved in the administration of justice and those preparing to be officers of the court.
• The Holy Spirit fills us with hope and the readings and today’s feast of St. John Paul II are all about hope.
• Those in the legal profession are meant to be signs and agents of hope.
  • Hope for justice for those who are wronged.
  • Hope for improving the laws of a nation and making it a better place for everyone.
  • Hope for getting deals done in a way that’s fair to everyone.
  • Hope within families for solid providers to care for loved ones.
• What hope is
  • Hope is living with God in the World.
  • That means presence of God. Aware that the Lord is near. Not doing our own thing but doing things in collaboration with him, with his virtues, with his integrity care and concern.
• JP II at the United Nations: Witnesses of Hope.
  • General Assembly of the United Nations in 1995.
  • “I come before you as a witness: a witness to human dignity,a witness to hope, a witness to the conviction that the destiny of all nations lies in the hands of a merciful Providence.”
  • In that speech, he gave the reason for the hope that he bore within. For him, hope was essentially a paraphrase of his famous repetition of Jesus’ words “Be not afraid!” in the Mass to inaugurate his papacy which took place 46 years ago today.
  • He said to the representatives of the nations of the world, “Now is the time fornew hope, which calls us to expel the paralyzing burden of cynicism from the future of politics and of human life. … We must learn not to be afraid, we must rediscover a spirit of hope and a spirit of trust. Hope is not empty optimism springing from a naive confidence that the future will necessarily be better than the past.
  • Hope and trust are the premise of responsible activity and are nurtured in that inner sanctuary of conscience where ‘man is alone with God’ and he thus perceives that heis not alone amid the enigmas of existence, for he is surrounded by the love of the Creator!
  • Hope and trust: these may seem matters beyond the purview of the United Nations. But they are not. The politics of nations, with which your Organization is principally concerned, can never ignore the transcendent, spiritual dimension of the human experience. … In order to recover our hope and our trust at the end of this century of sorrows, we must regain sight of that transcendent horizon of possibility to which the soul of man aspires.”
  • He finished by saying, “As a Christian, my hope and trust are centered on Jesus Christ. …Jesus Christ is for us God made man, and made a part of the history of humanity. Precisely for this reason, Christian hope for the world and its future extends to every human person.”
  • When George Weigel was choosing a title for his definitive biography of St. John Paul II, a work in which I played a small role, he chose “Witness to Hope,” something that not only summarized his speech to the United Nations, but his whole life.
  • Each of us is meant to be a witness to hope. Every Christian is. Every Catholic lawyer is.
• How do lawyers become people of hope?
  • There are a few answers from the readings.
  • First is through hard work. Servants in the Gospel. Second Watch. Third Watch. The Lord is proud of people who are working for and with him at that time, keeping an awareness of his presence.
  • The second is through communion with the Church. First reading. Dividing wall. Communion of saints, with Church militant and also Church triumphant.
  • The third is maintaining a clear eschatological sense of our work. That even the sufferings work out for the good. Jesus makes an extraordinary promise about heaven, that he will wait on us.
• John Paul II gave some other indications to lawyers about how to be true witnesses of hope.
  • John Coverdale’s 2005 article soon after JP II’s death, The Legacy of John Paul II to Lawyers. Seton Hall Law Review.
  • Coverdale is a professor emeritus at Seton Hall School of Law, with his JD from Notre Dame and Ph.D’s in both history and Philosophy as well as a licentiate in Sacred Theology.
  • He argued that JP II said that to be real agents of hope in a sometimes desperate world will come more from just legal expertise and hard work, but some other coordinates.
    • Recognizing the value and dignity of every person
    • Capacity for a gift of self, for real sacrifice.
    • Vigorous understanding of Freedom and its relationship to the truth at a time of epistemological and moral relativism. Thirst for truth. Real freedom, not license, but the uncoerced ability to know and embrace the truth
    • Grasp the nature of law as an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated. Unlike the positivistic conception which sees whatever the legislature (or in some cases, the courts) commands as law, thereby making the law essentially an act of the will of the legislator, John Paul II views law as primarily an act of reason which directs men toward their proper goal
    • Coverdale talked about applications to the protecting the life of those at the margins, to solidarity and subsidiarity, to economic organization at the service of the person, to private property and the destination of goods.
    • JP II’s thought, Coverdale say, “has special relevance to lawyers, because all lawyers who aspire to go beyond being mere technicians must come to grips with the ultimate questions that concern the goal of human life and the sort of society that will contribute to its attainment.”
  • Where does a Catholic lawyer get the strength to be a sign and agent of hope.
  • Here at Mass. Here the HS helps us keep a lively awareness of Jesus’ presence, which is the source of our hope. By his power, Jesus comes to abide in us in Holy Communion. By his work, he makes us more and more fellow citizens with the saints through Holy Communion.
  • It’s here at Mass that Jesus, “girds himself, has us recline at table, and proceeds to wait on them.” That’s what Jesus, after all, did at the Last Supper, taking on the form of a slave and washing his apostles’ feet and feeding them with his very own body and blood.
  • Every Mass is a Perpetual Pentecost. Here the work of the Holy Spirit to form us to be like Jesus reaches its zenith. He makes us witnesses to Christ, who is our hope.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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