A homily is supposed to be a reflection on the three major readings of the day, especially the gospel. In typical fashion, however, he ignored the readings and just used a word or two as a springboard into his own message. He asked us to consider our faults and shortcomings taking care never to call them sins, an old-fashioned word.
His homily contained a litany of liberal causes and by the time he concluded, I was asking myself if he could see any difference between Christianity and modern Liberalism. For example, what about self-sacrifice, humility, and gratitude: fundamental tenets of Christianity that have been rejected by modern liberals.
Instead, he mentioned the shooting of a doctor in Orange county, a so-called bastion of conservatism, white supremacy and racism despite the fact that 60 percent of its population is of Hispanic and Asian origin. The priest asked us to pray for the doctor but typically did not ask us to pray for the hundreds of young black men who are shot down by other young black men every year in nearby Los Angeles. He asked us to consider the plight of those who are designated LGBTQ, but never mentioned the plight of Christians in Moslem dominated countries who suffer almost daily brutal persecution at the hands of their neighbors.
In a way, he seemed to be a little ashamed of Catholicism and found elements in its history that did not measure up to modern sensibilities. As an example he referred to colonialism, an issue especially relevant in California where the landscape is dotted with beautiful mission churches built by Franciscan missionaries in the eighteenth century to protect Native Americans (Indians) from the depredations of settlers from Spain and Mexico.
Junipero Serra, a Franciscan friar, built a mission system in California in the eighteenth century to protect the natives from the brutality and rapacity of Hispanic colonizers. Only after the anti-Catholic Mexican government shut down the missions in the nineteenth century were the natives thrown to the wolves. For his efforts, the Catholic church has canonized Fr. Serra, but protestors now vandalize and tear down commemorative memorials.
The efforts of Junipero Serra and other missionaries like him provide just one example of the efforts of billions of Christians, canonized and uncanonized, down through the ages to improve the life of their fellow man. Even today, their work goes largely unrecognized or appreciated. Below is an assessment of an earlier group of missionaries by an English historian written over 100 years ago.
Every traveller to South Italy should come to Montecasino only because of the immense influence it has had in the history of Europe and indeed of mankind. Fourteen hundred years ago and more S. Benedict founded here the cradle of that Order of monks which transformed Europe, cut down its impenetrable forests, drained its impassable marshes, educated its barbarians and made them Christians. It was the monks of S. Benedict who converted the English, supplied the country with statesmen, counsellors and bishops and presently covered England with mighty houses, Glastonbury, Reading, Durham, and the like, to be utterly destroyed by a reckless and unhappy king, yet are now rising again, so that it is today possible to land at Dover, cross the country to the Atlantic, and sleep at a Benedictine monastery every night.
Missionaries like St. Junipero Serra, and St. Benedict are just the tip of the iceberg. Millions and millions of uncanonized saints have worked from the dawn of Christianity down to our present time to follow the command of Jesus to love one another. Many of these unrecognized saints were sitting in the pews a few Sundays ago quietly enduring the priest’s “woke” homily. He was lecturing them but, in all humility, he should try to get to know them.
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