By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily during the annual Red Mass for Catholic legal professionals in Broward, hosted by the St. Thomas More Society. The Mass was celebrated Oct. 02, 2024 at St. Anthony Church in Fort Lauderdale.
Today, October 2nd, the Church celebrates the feast of the Guardian Angels. While the whole life of the Church benefits from the mysterious and powerful help of angels, the feast of the Guardian Angels celebrates those angels assigned to guide and protect each one of us from our infancy till death.
One of the first prayers that I learned in my childhood, and I can remember praying it in kindergarten, was the prayer to one’s guardian angel.
“Angel of God, my guardian dear to whom God's love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.”
As many people know, for recreation I like to ride a motorcycle, so I am sure that I have my guardian angel working overtime.
Of course, in a secularized, rationalistic world there is no room for angels, just as there is no time for Mass. For a world closed to transcendence cannot bring itself to admit of the existence of these purely spiritual creatures with intelligence and will, any more than it can admit that God matters.
Much of our culture in America today is deeply wounded by individualism, relativism,by narcissism; it is wounded by materialism that denies the transcendence of the human person. It is confused by false ideologies about what it means to be male or female. Men and women of faith are increasingly facing rejection, ostracism and exclusion from this ascendent secularism that has confused people about what is real, what is good, and true. Many today have been bewitched with a false sense of human autonomy that even justifies the killing of a baby in her mother’s womb. (This is the faulty reasoning behind those who would support Amendment 4.)
That the Guardian Angels watch over each one of us is a reminder of the infinite worth of each one of us. Even if in the eyes of the world some people are considered unimportant and even expendable, even if some are viewed as “nobodies”, in God’s eyes every human being is a somebody, every person no matter his station in life is important and indispensable. Every person, from the moment of conception till natural death, is loved by God who cares enough for each one of us to send a holy angel to watch over us.
In other words, on this feast day of the Guardian Angels and on this annual Red Mass here in Broward County, we invoke the Holy Spirit so that with the help of the Holy Spirit, you in the legal profession, men and women of the bar, officers of court , that all of you will listen to your “better angels” as you carry out your duties to provide the citizens of this nation “equal justice under the law.”
Of course, we are fallen human beings. We are not angels.
Catholic teaching proclaims the dignity of every human being, but it also acknowledges the reality of sin. Our police forces, our social service agencies, our schools, our courtrooms deal with the consequences of sin every day.
James Monroe, one of the principal authors of our Constitution, and the fourth President of the United States, is famously quoted as having said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary”.
Our founders also recognized human sinfulness, which is why they gave us a divided government based on checks and balances. All of the Constitution’s checks and balances serve to preserve liberty by ensuring justice. Justice is the purpose of government; it is the purpose or end of civil society. Their vision of freedom was one of ordered liberties, a vision remarkably congruent with Catholic social thought.
However, this vision of freedom “as ordered liberties” is increasing being eroded and corrupted in our culture today. Our entire constitutional, political, and social order was corrupted by fifty years of Roe v. Wade. As Aristotle said, law is a teacher.
The pedagogical result of a bad Supreme Court ruling a half century ago has darkened our national conscience. Generations of Americans were “catechized” in the belief that abortion is a right and that unborn babies have no rights and that we have no duties to the unborn. Dobbs was an important effort to repair this damage to our constitutional order. But it doesn’t – couldn’t -erase 50 years of political and social corruption.
To quote Ryan Anderson in an essay he wrote recently in First Things, “For nearly fifty years, the American people have built their lives around the ready availability of abortion. Even when they know that abortion stops a beating heart, they don’t always care, or when they do care, they aren’t always willing to make the personal sacrifices that follow. In April, Bill Maher said the quiet part out loud to a stunned audience. ‘They think it’s murder. And it kind of is. I’m just okay with that.’ There is a great deal of motivated reasoning – rationalization – in the abortion debate, because deep down people know the law written on the heart. They just aren’t willing to make sacrifices in order to live in accordance with that law.”
That natural law, written on the human heart, simply means that we cannot not know that lying is wrong, that stealing is wrong, that murder is wrong. But our darkened consciences rationalize that some lying, some stealing, some murdering are not really lying, stealing, or murder.
Without your contribution and commitment to both Catholic Social Teaching and our founders’ vision of freedom as “ordered liberties,” our system of justice could devolve to a type of judicial positivism based simply on a common agreement to set aside truth claims about the good – “We hold these truths...” – and to adopt a relativism which would make the practice of law the province of irrational tastes and arbitrary subjective judgments.
Following the example of St. Thomas More, may you be, in his words, “for the greater glory and honor of God and in pursuit of His justice... able in argument, accurate in analysis, strict in study, correct in conclusion, candid with clients, honest with adversaries, and faithful in all details of the faith.”
The example of this martyr and confessor of the faith should inspire your imitation, even as you seek his intercession before God, as you live out your commitments to the Bar and to your Baptism.
May your guardian angels ever be at your sides to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.