UDM Events

Red Mass 2008: Daniel E. Flores, STD, Auxilary Bishop of Detroit, delivers a homily on Luke 8:18-21

All the ways of a man may be right in his own eyes, but it is the Lord who proves hearts. (Proverbs 21:2)

The Greeks bequeathed to us a fairly rigorous philosophical examination of the idea of Justice, and the Romans gave us the practical exemplification of this idea within a codified body of law. Justice, for Plato was an idea to be contemplated and then enacted. For Aristotle it is a virtue of reason and will to be inculcated in the community, for Cicero, a case to be argued and judged based on the merits.

Plato, Aristotle and Cicero all thought and taught about justice as a standard that exists apart from or beyond the realm of arbitrary whim, or power. Plato knew of course that there was a danger in talking about justice in a world where whim and power hold considerable sway. We only need to read the dialogues attending to the trial and death of Socrates to perceive this reality. The ancients struggled to identify a standard of justice that could assert its independence from the politics where personal relation to power is dominant. They knew all too well that such a politics rooted in relation to power is a corrupting influence, and too often deadly.

Politics, of course, is the noble work of ordering rightly the city, and it is good to remember that those who lived in ancient cities were variously related to each other by blood and familiarity. This formed part of its cohesion. It is not a long road historically from the politics of the tribal clan to the politics of the city. For indeed, these very relations of familiarity could pressure and even subvert the application of justice. Plato and Aristotle thought seriously about how the order of the polis, based on justice, is distinct from an order based primarily on who is connected or related to whom.

Historically, Roman codification of the law can be seen as an attempt to make more visible a reliable standard against which justice, as a work of practical human reason, could be measured. It was to be a protection against the purely arbitrary politics of power-relations. The ancients knew that the factor most complicating the administration of justice is excessive susceptibility to personal interest and the excessive influences of personal relation to the seat of power.

By Cicero's time, the idea of justice and the virtue of justice were discussed and lauded, although in practice the administration of justice was largely a function of who had the favor of the emperor. But the Ancients never lost the notion that a standard of what is fair and just could be identified with some accuracy and applied with equity. We find testimony to this in the examples of the outstanding jurists of the age railing against the practical abuses of the application of justice based on relations to power. (See, for example, Cicero's De Oficiis.)

The Gospels are remarkable in their willingness to display the utter failure of justice in the political order. The Gospels portray and hence identify how rabid personal interest is the principal enemy of justice. If justice is rightly defined, as both Aristotle and Saint Thomas taught, as "giving to your neighbor what is his due," then the Gospels depict graphically how personal interest run wild blinds the eye and atrophies the will in the pursuit and application of justice.

John the Baptist, a just man, falls victim to the injustice of Herod and his relation of intimacy with Herodias. He succumbed to pressure placed upon his conscience by personal relations and morbid self-interest. His cowardice, that is to say, his failure to act in a way that the standard his conscience could identify, is vividly displayed in the Gospel, and is what we most remember about Herod.

The Passion of the Lord is itself a narrative with profound theological eddies swirling through its telling, but one of the plainest aspects is its display of one innocent and defenseless man, who is the Son of God, who is unjustly treated and judged by the whole edifice of the political and social order. Everyone is implicated in this most radical display of injustice. His friends betray or abandon him, handing him over to religious authorities, who judge him and hand him over to the political authority of Rome, who hand him over to the mob. Each had their personal interests motivating their participation in the subversion of justice. The whole account narrates how personal interest corrupts and destroys the capacity to see and judge situations clearly.

This line of thought may help us appreciate today's Gospel: Lord, your Mother and brothers are standing outside. This is a call to recognize personal relation. Not that Jesus did not share close ties with his Mother or his relations; rather, it is that he takes the occasion to teach about the proper order of relations: My Mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it. The Lord announces a standard relation above and beyond that of the personal relation of blood and familiarity. The standard is rooted finally in our relation to the Justice of the Father, who manifests his will in the activity of the Son.

The faith that issued forth from the Incarnation of the WORD did not render irrelevant the civil administration of justice. As Christianity spread, courts were still needed, and lawyers and judges were still relied upon to adjudicate issues and cases. But Christianity did intensify both the search and the adherence to a standard beyond that of personal relation and interest. For a Christian, the will of the Father is manifested in the Justice of Christ, and a Christian can hear in this the call to offer first allegiance to the justice beyond the merely personal relation. The Gospel subordinates all human relations to the ultimate relation human beings have to the God of Justice and Mercy.

As I say, the Greeks and Romans perceived the existence of this standard, but found it rough going to sustain it against the sway of power and relation. Let us say the Christian announcement in the ancient and medieval world lent a considerable shoulder to the work of sustaining the wall of justice against the onslaught of corruption based purely on personal relations and self-interest. That shoulder was and is the integrity of a conscience that recognizes intensely an allegiance beyond personal relations to power and interest.

To the extent a jurist takes into his or her own conscience the notion that the ultimate relation is to the God of Justice, to that extent there is a bulwark set against the tossing influences of arbitrary corruptions based upon the relations of a particular and personal sort. It depends, in the final analysis on the integrity and sincerity of that individual conscience that surrenders its particular relations and interests to a standard of goodness revealed in Christ as "the Will of the Father."

To be known as a Christian or a Catholic does not guarantee that the conscience has indeed surrendered to the standard of justice beyond that of personal gain and interest. History, sadly, testifies to this. Such is the difference between S. Thomas More, whose conscience could not abide the subversion of the order of justice based upon the king's personal relations, and some of his less courageous contemporaries. Many of his contemporaries on the bench and in the practice of law saw the arrest and execution of More and his friend Bishop John Fischer as "necessary expedients" for the good of the realm, a good unfortunately identified exclusively with the maintenance of the king's personal relations, and his will to power.

More and Fischer saw a higher standard of justice, something beyond the relations of power, and paid that standard due honor through the shedding of their blood. Cicero would have praised their courage, and probably inquired of them the source of their integrity. "The love of justice, my dear Cicero," could have been their reply. "What you saw as a standard hard to grasp and harder to apply, we see and love as a Person, innocent and defenseless, who in our judgment of Him, makes judgment of us."

Thus, today, it is good to take to heart the lesson of the Red Mass: In this world, a conscience fortified by faith in the Justice of God made manifest, in the flesh, to eyes of flesh, will at times in history find itself at odds with reigning passions of power and self-interest. We must ask for courage to judge fairly and honorably whatever issue is brought before us, for we know the Innocent and Defenseless One, stands above us, and will judge us. And we must pray not to flinch when the Christian conscience is pressured to yield away its loyalty to the innocent, defenseless Christ. If we yield away our loyalty to Christ, little stands in the way of a complete washing away of standards of justice and reason that are designed to check the rise of passions originating in personal self-interest and the seductions of power.

It is a matter of justice, and of witness to the Truth. We know something Cicero, Aristotle and Plato did not fully perceive, and we must pray for the courage to live by it: We know that in the end, by our judgments, we render judgment upon ourselves. The standard will not be denied, for He lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.