Pray for Those Who Persecute You

Below is a copy of last Sunday's homily written and preached by Deacon Paul Ochenkowski, a fellow parishioner and permanent deacon assigned to St. Veronica Catholic Church in Chantilly, Virginia. Deacon Ochenkowski's words are markedly stirring and particularly poignant given today's highly disappointing SCOTUS ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).  

I will allow the good deacon's words speak for themselves (posted with his permission) : 

HOMILY:

Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist

Sunday, June 24, 2012

            Well good evening/morning, brothers and sisters.  Today we mark the Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist, as well as the first Sunday in our two-week Fortnight for Freedom.  The fourteen days from June 21—the vigil of the Feasts of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More—to July 4, Independence Day, are dedicated to this “fortnight for freedom”—a great hymn of prayer for our country. Our liturgical calendar celebrates a series of great martyrs who remained faithful in the face of persecution by political power—St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, St. John the Baptist, SS. Peter and Paul, and the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome. Culminating on Independence Day, this special period of prayer, study, catechesis, and public action will emphasize both our Christian and American heritage of liberty. Dioceses and parishes around the country have scheduled special events that support a great national campaign of teaching and witness for religious liberty.

            Today, we mark the birth of St. John the Baptist, a martyr, and a man who certainly did remain faithful in the face of persecution by political power.  John lived in the Holy Land in the time of two kings, both named Herod, two civil rulers both of whom had a depressing record of meddling in religious affairs.  He was born during the reign of Herod the Great, famed for expanding the Second Temple, and infamous for slaughtering male infants in a desperate effort to eliminate the Messiah.  This Herod also regarded his Jewish religion so little, that not only did he regularly violate its Fifth Commandment during his murderous reign, but he played politics using religion, building temples to false gods to curry favor with the Roman emperors who now ruled the Holy Land.  St. John the Baptist survived the Slaughter of the Innocents, and outlived Herod the Great.

            But Herod the Great divided his kingdom upon his death, and bestowed the rule of Galilee upon one of his sons, also named Herod.  This second Herod, also known as Herod Antipas, would eventually take up an adulterous relationship with Herodias, wife of his half-brother, Philip.  John the Baptist, in the meantime, had grown up to become the precursor, the forerunner of the Messiah: the voice crying in the desert.  And it was this great and holy man, who as an adult, would have his famous encounter with this second Herod.  Herod would follow the depressing customs of his murderous father, and like him, also meddle in religious affairs.  We know that even though he regarded John the Baptist as a holy man, he feared him and had him arrested for denouncing his relationship with Herodias.  And of course we know how Herod set his own trap, how in a drunken swagger in front of his house guests, promised anything to Herodias’ daughter, Salome—who demanded the head of John the Baptist.

            The life of John the Baptist—from his escaping the Slaughter of the Innocents at the hand of Herod the Great, to his execution on the order of Herod Antipas—shows us graphically the importance of freedom of religion, shows us graphically what happens when civil rulers meddle in religious matters.  And despite everything, John the Baptist remained faithful and strong in the face of persecution by political power.  

            In a week and a half, we will mark the Fourth of July, the great celebration of American freedom.  Americans of the Revolutionary generation had grown up in an atmosphere of abusive use of power by their British colonial overlords.  The great revolutionary John Adams wrote to the equally famous revolutionary, Thomas Jefferson, these chilling words:  “Power is always at war with liberty.”  And so it is.  And recognizing this, the revolutionary generation sought to ensure liberty and to restrain the abusive use of power. 

            In the constitutions they wrote, religious freedom was guaranteed in very plain and unmistakable language.  Here in Virginia, on June 29, 1776, just days before independence, with British power crumbled away and Virginia’s last royal governor, the odious Lord Dunmore, fled back to Britain, Virginia put in place the first constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the first of six constitutions that would serve to govern this state.  Fairfax County’s own George Mason wrote the Bill of Rights that has been a part of every constitution this Commonwealth has had since then.  And Mason included a powerful article on religious freedom.  It says, in part, “all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience.”  Mason goes on, “No man shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief.”  Fifteen years later, in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, the first words of the First Amendment said a bit more tersely, “Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  No official church—no forced taxes collected from everyone to support an official church whether you believe in its teachings or not; and freedom of religion.  Freedom of religion is guaranteed—and yet that ideal is sometimes not observed.

            America’s colonial tradition was one for the most part of powerful and persistent anti-Catholicism, a sad tradition that wove itself into the fabric of America.  The Puritans of New England, even when times were hard and food was scarce or expensive, always made a point of eating meat on Fridays—just to prove to themselves their own anti-Catholicism.  Neighboring Maryland, founded as refuge for repressed English Catholics, was in the late 1600s stripped away from its Catholic owners, the Calvert Family, and not returned to them until they converted to Anglicanism.  Catholicism there was banned and went underground.  On the eve of independence, only two of the thirteen colonies allowed Catholics to worship freely—little Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.  And even in those, Catholics had various restrictions placed on their ability to vote or hold elective office. 

          

            Despite the guarantees, these problems persisted throughout our history as an independent nation.  And a pattern has emerged:  overt anti-Catholicism is then accompanied or followed by laws which reflect that anti-Catholic sentiment.  There have been three periods in American history where this has occurred.  Up through 1840, Catholics were few and far between.  In 1840, Catholics were the 7^th largest Christian group in the United States.  But then, between 1840 and 1860, some 2 million Irish and 1.5 million Germans fled Europe and came to these shores.  Among them were millions of Catholics, so much so that by 1850, Catholics had become the largest Christian group in America, a position we have held ever since.  These millions of Catholics were faced with unspeakable bigotry.  Despite guarantees of freedom of religion, government intruded itself into religious matters.  Public schools taught religion, not the occasional prayer in public schools I remember from my young childhood, but classes in religion—specifically, Protestant theology.  The Church responded by establishing hundreds of Catholic schools to make sure our little ones learned the faith of Holy Mother Church.  Anti-Catholic riots also broke out in Boston and Philadelphia, in which churches and convents were destroyed or damaged, and priests and religious were roughed up or attacked, and most horribly, the Blessed Sacrament desecrated.

            Following World War I, there was a second time of anti-Catholicism.  The revived Ku Klux Klan made vicious anti-Catholicism one of its sad and sorry hallmarks.  And once again, anti-Catholic laws followed anti-Catholic sentiment, and there was more government interference.  For example, the state of Georgia actually passed a law which enabled the sheriff of any county in Georgia to enter any convent in his jurisdiction, uninvited and without a search warrant, to try to ascertain if any women were being held there against their will.  When Al Smith, a Catholic from New York, ran for president in 1928, more anti-Catholicism appeared.  Smith was portrayed as an agent of the pope, and one North Carolina minister observed, “I fear Catholicism more than I fear communism.”  When Smith was defeated, a sick anti-Catholic joke made the rounds, a joke which had Smith sending a one-word telegram to the Pope, a telegram that supposedly read, “Unpack.”

            Some of us in this room are old enough to remember the election of 1960, when John F. Kennedy ran for president.  Anti-Catholicism erupted then, as well, most notably in that year’s West Virginia primary.  But since then, especially in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, I’ll bet most of us thought that anti-Catholicism had been largely put to rest.  I know I sure did.  But like those earlier generations of heroic Catholics, we, today, are faced with what several recent authors have dubbed “The New Anti-Catholicism,” calling it “the last acceptable prejudice” in America.  The anti-Catholic sentiments that appear in some journals, have, for example, attacked Blessed John Paul II in horrifying terms, and show quite graphically this new anti-Catholicism.  But unlike the first two periods of anti-Catholicism, which developed primarily out of ignorant hatred of two waves of largely Catholic immigration, modern anti-Catholicism comes from opponents of the Church’s stand on its eternal principles, on its stand against modern secular humanism and the culture of death.  You know the secular humanists’ program:  same-sex marriage, abortion on demand, and euthanasia—the whole sad, sorry list.  And because the Church holds firmly to the inerrant truth in the face of these horrors, the result has been a new outbreak of anti-Catholicism and renewed efforts by government to exercise its influence where it does not belong—in matters of religion.   I think there can be little doubt that our generation of American Catholics is one of those that will be privileged to confront overt anti-Catholicism and government meddling with our beliefs, just as our heroic forbears did in the 1840s, and in the 1920s, those courageous men and women who remained faithful in the face of persecution by political power.

            The life of the saint whom we honor today, St. John the Baptist, is a powerful example of what happens when civil authority meddles with religious affairs and obtrudes itself into religion.   And so, we all pray, that during this Fortnight for Freedom, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will succeed in all its efforts to have the Health and Human Services ruling reversed, so that American Catholics are free to practice their faith as Holy Mother Church teaches, not as government dictates.  We, too, must remember the words of Our Lord, recorded in the fifth chapter of the Gospel of St. Mark, to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  And so we must, but we also must never compromise with evil, and must ever keep our eyes on the right.

             As we approach the Fourth of July, we should pray that the words from the 25^th chapter of the book of Leviticus, those inscribed on the liberty bell, which rang out to mark American independence so long ago, may once again ring true for every American:  “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” (Lev 25:10).   

~ Deacon Paul Ochenkowski