May we learn to live together as brothers and sisters

By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami

Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily during a Mass consecrating the Village of Key Biscayne to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Mass was celebrated May 31, 2019, at St. Agnes Church, Key Biscayne.

I welcome to this Mass his honor, Mayor Michael Davey, mayor of the Village of Key Biscayne, and the other council members and officials who join us on this special occasion. In his capacity as mayor of this beautiful community, he will join me in offering the prayer consecrating the village 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. Our Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, in his encyclical, Spe Salvi, observed that a “world without God is a world without hope.” And, with the ascendant secularism of our time, many believe that one can organize society or live their lives “etsi Deus non daretur” – as if God doesn’t matter. This ascendant secularism is increasingly taking on radical forms, forms that undermine religious liberty and often change the way people understand reality.

Today’s act of consecration brings together citizens to pray for their city – that we do so is an expression of the right guaranteed to us by the first amendment of our nation’s constitution. Praying for our country and for the communities in which we live, 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 do believe that God does matter. 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 for us of Jesus and his mother, Mary.

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 the Village of Key Biscayne 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 of both 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.

The Village of Key Biscayne is a young municipality – it was only incorporated in 1991. Like the rest of South Florida, this is a community that has grown and prospered because of successive waves of immigration. Sometimes I like to joke that the best thing about Miami is that it is so close to the United States. Almost everybody is from someplace else – some have come as transplants from northern states, others have come here uprooted from their native countries because of exile or persecution, or because here there are available opportunities not found in our countries of origin.

Like so many others, you came looking for freedom, for economic opportunity, for a new life. And, on top of it all, like icing on a cake, here in Key Biscayne, you also found a piece of paradise. Yes, 12,000 people is a relatively small diverse community represented by a mosaic of nations.

In fact, we could say that the forces of globalization have conspired in one way or another to throw us together as neighbors. Certainly, this globalization which is affecting everybody in every corner of the world is what has made the Greater Miami area such a vibrant and exciting place to live. What we have experienced in recent decades – what we are still experiencing in terms of human mobility and rapid change – is what the rest of the world will experience, if it hasn’t already.

Yes, globalization has made us neighbors – but it hasn’t necessarily made us brothers and sisters. And this explains why we would come to this church on a Friday evening to consecrate our city to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

As I said, in doing so, we acknowledge their love for us – a love which Providence has shown us in so many ways. But in acknowledging their love for us represented by their pierced hearts we wish to renew our hearts – so that we might think, speak, work and love as they do.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us! Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us! Following the example of your love, may we, whom destiny has placed together in this village as neighbors, learn to live together in harmony, in justice, in peace; may we learn to live together as brothers and sisters. Amen.