So what do you call a young woman who rejected Christianity, had an abortion, another child out of wedlock, spent time in jail, was considered a radical by some . . . but then had a conversion yet went on to become a chief advocate for the poor, became a devout Catholic, started a newspaper called The Catholic Worker, set up houses for the poor and in 2015, when Pope Francis made a historic address to Congress during his visit to Washington, singled this woman out as one of four “great Americans?” We called her BLESSED . . . Dorothy Day. Blessed means that she is on her way to be canonized a saint.
Or what do you think of a priest who was doing a fine job. Then became a Bishop who was nothing special, but then became aware of abuses against the poor and talked about politics from the pulpit, was accused of being a communist because he fought for the rights of the poor and finally so angered “powers that be” that we was shot to death as he celebrated Mass in 1980. He is called SAINT . . . Oscar Romero.
These are the two saints we are honoring this week. Two remarkable people. You can read more about them in bulletin. They, like all the saints, didn’t start out as saints. They grew into it, or they evolved to become a saint. It’s like St. Peter who at first thought to be a Christian, one needed to be Jewish first (that is, be circumcised), or St. Paul who started out hating Christians and wanted them dead, but had a conversion. Or even Jesus seems to have evolved in faith.
Like as it was mentioned in the readings today. In the gospel, Jesus is troubled about his upcoming death and pondered if he should get out of this. The writer of the second reading goes further and says he cried out with loud cries and tears before he died. And as we are going to hear next weekend during the reading of the Passion from Mark’s gospel, that in the garden of Gethsemane after the Last Supper, Jesus begged the Father to “take this cup away from him.” That is, to get him out of this. To stop everything.
Yet, he finally let go, trusted God and things worked out. In a sense it is about evolving, growing. I would like to hope we all want that. For example, I hope that I am not the same next year as I am now. With new information, new experiences that I will continue to grow, to learn, to improve.
Well that is the same for any of us. It’s like my friend Bob, he’s a priest. He is against getting the COVID vaccination. He’s old enough to receive it. He just doesn’t want inject an unknown into his body for fear of what it might do. MAYBE it will cause some future problems. Now, I get to tell you, Bob is a nice guy. He’s a normal guy. He’s not a goofy conspiracy theory kind of man. But in this case, he’s against vaccinated.
That is he WAS, until he started to get more informed and not depend on old information. He reflected on what Pope Francis said about the vaccination. Pope Francis said we all have a moral obligation to receive one of the new coronavirus vaccines as soon as possible. He said, “I believe that morally everyone must take the vaccine. It is the moral choice because it is about your life but also the lives of others." And let me add that the US Catholic Bishops have stated that any of the vaccinations are OK to receive.
Bob also heard from a report from a team of doctors who stated that whatever concerns you have about getting the vaccination, it’s safer than getting COVID. Here at Christ Our Light, we’ve had 4 people die from COVID, and 3 more who died from COVID related causes.
It’s confusing, because there is so much out there that seems conflicting. And so we don’t know what to believe . . . some sources underplay the COVID harm, some are overplaying the COVID harm. For yes, Some need hospitalization from COVID, but it’s only 1% (not 10% or 20%). And yes, kids and get COVID and even die from it, but its only .04% (not an inflated number that is out there). Look it up. Asymptomatic spread is a major source of transmission. And COVID has killed about 15 times more Americans than either the flu or vehicle crashes do in a typical year.
We are all in this together. Here at Christ Our Light we are changing things due to new information. We don’t need to clean the pews after every Mass, but only when there is another service occurring right after. And we can change the distance to every other pew and not every third because of the safety of masks. And we don’t need you to sign in at each Mass, but we invite visitors to do so, just in case we need to contact them.
We evolve as we hope you do . . . that you don’t stay stuck in the same patterns, or judgments, or anger that you’ve had. We hope that your faith invites you into the relationship that God said in the first reading . . . to have a new covenant, not like the one in the past. We are all invited to grow.
I like the story of Dorothy Day when at one of her Catholic Worker Houses, someone donated a large amount of butter to the house and someone put it on the table. Well, one of the new college interns working there wanted to impress her and announced, “We should not eat this butter, but instead save it and give it to the poor.” With that Dorothy Day looks up from the table and says, “Oh shut up, and pass me the butter.”