This flame-red color signifies courage

By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami

Homily by Archbishop Thomas Wenski at the Broward Red Mass 2017 at St. Anthony Church. Thursday, April 27, 2017.

In today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter is hauled before a religious court. And he says to his would-be judges, “We must obey God rather than men.” Pope Francis said this morning at Mass in Rome, “The Christian is a witness to obedience of God” as Jesus himself was in the garden of Gethsemane when he prayed, “Father, not my will but your will be done.”  

These words of Peter, “We must obey God rather than men,” have been abused by countless individuals who have anointed themselves as being on a mission from God. But they do speak to the primacy of conscience – a primacy that obliges us to oppose unjust laws rather than to accept the violation of our consciences and the affront to our human dignity and freedom that such an acquiescence would impose on us. In bearing witness to obedience of God, we recognize the sovereignty of God over all human claims to sovereignty.  

Peter, who out of fear had betrayed Jesus on Holy Thursday evening, now courageously answers the High Priest. That courage – to obey God rather than men – came from the Holy Spirit given to Peter and the Apostles on Pentecost Sunday. St. Thomas More, your patron, also possessed that courage of obedience.  He too – filled with the Holy Spirit’s gift of courage – addressed his accusers with words like Peter’s: He said, “I am the King’s good servant, but God’s servant first."

At tonight’s Red Mass, we invoke Holy Spirit on you, officers of the court, so that you too will act, as you fulfill your duties, with a courage that will at the same time be a witness to obedience of God. To be “God’s servant first” in no way contradicts your constitutional duties as officers of the court. How could it be when the foundational document of our republic, the Declaration of Independence, states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….”? 

The red color of the vestments worn by the clergy this evening recall the fire of the Spirit which descended upon the early Church and which has remained with her and will remain with her until the return of Jesus Christ. This flame-red color signifies the courage – which is the Spirit’s gift to the disciple – as he goes forth into the world to witness to Jesus Christ, who is God's own last word on the truth about God and on the truth about man.

The color of our liturgical apparel is flame-red for courage; but also, it can be described as blood-red – for red vestments are also used to mark the feast of our martyrs. The word "martyr" itself comes from the Greek and means simply "witness." The martyrs are those whose unwavering commitment to the truth about God and man in Jesus Christ led them to accept even death. For martyrs believe that there is a fate worse than death. They accepted to die rather than to betray He who is the Truth, the Way and the Life. To fail to bear witness to obedience of God would be to surrender to the logic of the world – the logic of power, of lust, of greed. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ says that there is something better. 

As officers of the court you have a most worthy patron in St. Thomas More, chancellor of King Henry VIII. His martyrdom earns our admiration and should inspire our imitation even as we seek his intercession before Jesus, the Just Judge of the Living and the Dead. We ask the Holy Spirit to give you, in your mission as Catholics and as professional people who are sworn officers of the courts of our land, the aid of his seven-fold gifts so that you, like Thomas More, will have the courage of your convictions and thus be faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ.  

St. Thomas More suffered martyrdom because he refused to accede to King Henry the VIII's unjust and overreaching demand that loyalty to him and the State should precede More's loyalty to God and the Church. A man of a strong Catholic faith, he refused to betray his conscience. This conscience was not a capricious one; but one formed by reasoned faith and faith-filled reason. 

Today, we live in different times, of course. But, the shape –  or the peculiar shape of our times – was born of the convulsive breakup of Catholic Europe that took place during that span of time in which Thomas More lived.  

More was a man of his times. He was a Renaissance man as was, of course, Machiavelli. But Thomas More's witness was precisely in his refusal to go along with the spirit of those times. His witness is one much needed in our contemporary society. We need that witness of “obedience to God” that characterized More's life and his death.   

We need that witness especially today when objective moral principles and truth, understood as necessarily larger than us, are removed from the domain of public life, leaving the public square, as it were, naked. Today, with the irrationality that so much characterizes our postmodern society and with the sophistry that so often today passes as jurisprudence, a radical secularism threatens to replace a healthy secularity in civil society. In such a state of affairs, justice becomes increasingly Machiavellian – or simply the utilitarian imposition of the will of the strong. 

Thomas More literally lost his head because he refused in conscience to give legitimacy to Henry VIII’s declaring himself Head of the Church of England. Today, we are challenged to bear witness to our tradition of natural law, and our belief in the objectivity and universality of moral norms. As Catholics living and working in an increasing hostile environment, we must argue that natural law, objective truth, and universal moral norms do offer the best framework for recognizing the inherent dignity and worth of every individual and of the construction of a just society and political order. 

Without reference to the truth about the human person – a truth universally knowable through the moral law written on the hearts of all – “freedom deteriorates into license in the lives of individuals, and in political life, it becomes the caprice of the most powerful and the arrogance of power.” (Pope St. John Paul II) 

The only justice that such a society can attain would supposedly require all parties to give up any claim to absolute truth about the good. When a democracy bases itself on moral relativism and when it considers every ethical principle or value to be negotiable (including every human being's fundamental right to life), it is already, and despite its formal rules, on its way to totalitarianism. The might of right quickly becomes might makes right.

And so we pray, “Come Holy Spirit!” Give us courage, give us wisdom. As Pope Francis says, “Only the Spirit can make us witnesses of obedience…only the Spirit can change our heart and make us witnesses of obedience.” 

Through the prayerful intercession of St. Thomas More, may you bring your faith to the intellectual demands of your profession and your intellect to your faith.  

Be the King's good servant; by being God's servants first.