By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami

Homily By Archbishop Thomas Wenski at Mass for the consecration of Miami-Dade County. St. Mary Cathedral, August 29, 2015.  

I welcome to this Mass his honor, Mayor Carlos Jimenez, county commissioners and other officials of the Miami-Dade County along with their spouses and families. Later in this liturgy, Mayor Jimenez will join me in offering the prayer consecrating this county and all who live within its boundaries to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

I also welcome those who have helped promote this event, an event that is like similar acts of consecration that have taken place in our cities and communities throughout the hemisphere. 

Of course, tonight, as we consecrate our county, we prepare for what Erika might bring us. And so we also pray for the safety of all – throughout the county and throughout the State of Florida. Hurricane preparedness also means not neglecting the powerhouse that prayer represents for us as a community of faith – both in giving us courage and inspiring within us the solidarity to help those in need. 

In his Exhortation, the Gospel of Joy, Pope Francis criticizes those "sourpusses" that we sometimes find in the Church. I'm sure we all know who they are — those people who would take the joy out of Easter Sunday. The Pharisees and the Scribes were the sourpusses of Jesus' day. They made religion a burden rather than a blessing. Sometimes these sourpusses can be very zealous — as the Pharisees were — but their zeal, like that of the Pharisees, is a "bitter zeal." You can see this bitter zeal in those who point out peoples' faults not so much to help them but to humiliate them, to put them down.

Do people look at us — and instead of seeing Jesus reflected in our lives and our actions see something of the Pharisee or Scribe? Apparently, many people do see us in this way — they think our Catholic faith is just about a bunch of rules and regulations that they don't understand and certainly don't want to follow.

I am not saying that our religion doesn't have its share of rules and regulations, and some are less important than others. But every society has its rules — that's the only way you can have people live and work together. But the rules and regulations are means to an end — rather than the end itself. When we confuse "ends" and "means" we can fall into the error of the Pharisees and Scribes — we can fall into legalism, and we can fall into the type of religious hypocrisy that Jesus criticized in very strong terms.

For Jesus, religion is always more than external practices and observances, it is more than “just going through the motions”. We learn in the First Reading, God through Moses gives his people the commandments to be life giving – following the commandments is not to make  us “self-righteous” but to help us be in a “right relationship” to God and to our neighbor. As St. James says in today’s second reading, “religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” 

Pope Francis said in speaking to a group of Lutherans, “We find ourselves professing our faith in the context of societies and cultures every day more lacking in reference to God and all that recalls the transcendent dimension of life.” Therefore, he says, “Our witness must concentrate on the center of our faith, on the announcement of the love of God made manifest in Christ his Son.”

And this really what this consecration is about – it is another way of reminding us that God is love, and that he loves us.  So tonight a group of citizens convinced of God’s love come together to pray for their county, Metro Miami-Dade. That we do so is a particular expression of our rights guaranteed by the first amendment of our nation’s constitution. Praying for our county, praying not for any partisan advantage or cause but for the common good is certainly an expression of civic responsibility on the part of those who are believers.

But, at the same time, today’s consecration is, for us Catholics, an opportunity to renew and deepen our baptismal consecration as a response to the love of Jesus and his mother, Mary, for each one of us.

In today’s gospel, Jesus insists that what defiles a man is not what goes into his mouth but what can come out his heart. Thus, in consecration the county to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, we also pray for the conversion of hearts, we pray that our hearts may be like theirs.

The Heart of Jesus was pierced with a soldier’s lance at the crucifixion; at the same time, Mary’s heart was pierced by a sword of sorrows. In the Immaculate Heart of His Mother, the Sacred Heart of Jesus is mirrored. The human heart both in Scripture and in literature represents the personal center of an individual; the heart symbolizes love. In consecrating our city to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, we wish to acknowledge their love – a love through which Jesus and Mary want to lead us to a selfless love of God and neighbor. It is through such selfless love that we can become good citizens both of the City of Man and the City of God – for it is through selfless love that we grow in the holiness to which we have been called as human beings created in the image and likeness of God who is love.  As we prayed in the responsorial psalm,  “The one who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.”