(Twenty-third
Sunday of the Year (C): This homily was given on September 8, 2019 at St. Pius
X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Wisdom 9:13-18b; Psalm 90:3-17; the
Letter of St. Paul to Philemon; Luke 14:25-33.)
What do the following things have in
common (aside from the fact that they’re all evil)?
- Slavery
- Segregation
- Abortion
- Producing pornography
- Physician-assisted suicide
- The Holocaust
- Prostitution
- Apartheid
The answer is: Somewhere in the world,
at some time in the recent or distant past, all those things I just mentioned
have been legal.
And some still are.
Slavery was legal in the United States
until 1865. In other countries it’s
still legal. The Civil Rights’ Movement
in the 1960s happened because at the time segregation was legal in many of our
southern states. The Supreme Court
legalized abortion in 1973. Producing
pornography is a legal, billion dollar industry in the United States and in
most other places. Seven states in our
country have legalized physician-assisted suicide in recent years. So has Washington, D.C. Hitler legalized the Holocaust himself. According to one organization that monitors
such things, prostitution is legal in more than 70 countries in the world right
now—and in our own state of Nevada.
Apartheid only ended in South Africa a couple of decades ago.
Many people in our country confuse legality with morality. Thus they presume
that if something becomes legal, it automatically becomes moral. But that’s not the case, as these 8 examples
illustrate quite clearly. Slavery,
segregation, abortion, producing pornography, physician-assisted suicide, the
Holocaust, prostitution and apartheid are all immoral whether or not they’re
legal in any country or every country.
Which brings us to today’s second
reading, which is taken from one of the shortest books in the New Testament—St.
Paul’s Letter to Philemon.
Philemon was a wealthy Colossian man who had become a believer in
Christ through Paul’s missionary efforts. He was also a slave owner, like many other wealthy men of his time. Lest
we forget, in the first century world slavery was pretty much a universal phenomenon. In the Roman Empire it was certainly legal,
and since Christians had no political influence at the time, men like St. Paul
were in no position to change existing Roman laws. The most someone like Paul could do in
Colossians 4 and in Ephesians 6 was to tell masters to treat their slaves with
fairness and with kindness, so hopefully Philemon treated his slaves with
greater respect after his conversion.
But nonetheless he did own them.
One of these slaves was a young man
named Onesimus. Well at some point prior to the writing of this letter, Onesimus
had escaped from Philemon—and he had taken some of his master’s “stuff” in the
process! That made Onesimus a thief as well as a runaway slave.
But then he met St. Paul, who happily converted him to Christ.
(Paul at the time was in prison.) The apostle then sent Onesimus back to
Philemon; he sent the runaway slave back to his master—along with this letter.
He sent him back because of the existing civil law in the Roman
Empire, but in the process he made clear that he wanted Philemon to freely make
the choice to do what was morally right, and disregard what was legally
permitted.
His message to the slave
owner was basically, “Look, I could order you to do the right thing here and
free Onesimus, since I’m your spiritual father: I’m the one who brought you to
Christ. But I’m not going to do that. I want you to do the right thing of your
own free will. I want you to choose to act virtuously here. So I’m
honoring the law of the Roman Empire—unjust though it is—and I’m sending
Onesimus back to you. But please understand that after he escaped from your
service, I brought him to the faith. He’s also my spiritual child now. And if
he’s my spiritual child and you’re my spiritual child that makes the two of you
brothers: brothers in the
Lord. So I ask you to receive him back as your brother and not as your
slave. And if he owes you anything because of what he stole, charge it to me.
As his father and as his friend, I’ll be more than happy to pay his bill.”
St. Paul understood that legality and
morality are two different things in this fallen world of ours. In a perfect world, of course, they would be
the same. Exactly the same! In a perfect world without any sin in it, all
of our civil laws would be rooted in the natural moral law (that’s the law we
find, primarily, in the Ten Commandments).
But this world is far from perfect—as
we see every election year when we go to the polls to vote for the people who
want to be the makers of our laws. And
so, as Catholics—as Christians—the important question, the key question, the
crucial question for us on Election Day should always be: Which candidate will
best support the natural moral law in his or her legislative work? In other words, which one will do the most to
make what’s moral, legal?
And that’s
the person we should vote for—always!