In his name, the Gentiles hope

By John Pearring

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071820.cfm
Micah 2:1-5
Matthew 12:14-21

I just finished reading a history book penned as a fiction telling the tales of the growth of the Catholic Church in the Southwest — Willa Gather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, published in 1927. Vast distances, in thousands of miles, are sorely traveled on horseback by the founding diocesan bishop of Santa Fe in 1848. One diocese for five subsequent territorial US lands. 

The novel is based upon the life of John Baptist Lamy. His arduous travel and unimaginably lengthy waits for contact from Church authorities contrasts almost comically with our current ability to communicate instantly and travel everywhere in mere hours. We tap our keyboards and wait for minutes. He bounced upon a horse’s back and wandered for 40 years. Yet, here we are, similarly waiting for sequestered ministers to urge us in our faith.

The foibles of miserable lives amid beautiful surroundings in the 1850’s mirrors our existences 150 years later. Histories of plagues decimated and frightened civilizations, uncaring for either the poor or wealthy. Political and philosophical oppression crushed the spirits of yearning hearts, much like 2020’s beleaguered city protests harms the psyche of an entire population.

The lament of Micah in today’s reading chimes familiar to both eras of our last two centuries. Micah’s prophecies, though, were written 700 years before Christ. The model of ministry to win souls to God begins with the same ancient conflicts. 

Woe to those who plan iniquity,
and work out evil on their couches;
In the morning light they accomplish it
when it lies within their power.
They covet fields, and seize them;
houses, and they take them;
They cheat an owner of his house,
a man of his inheritance.
(Micah 2:1-2)

Pick your era in all of human history. Some have been mild in their holocausts and pandemics, sure. The reign of evil, however, has yet to cease. The results of sin seem to roll over goodness at a dizzying pace. That is, if we see only the evil.

In Cather’s account of the spread of Church mission and service, we read about the remnants of faith everywhere in the Americas, already present from previous centuries of missionary work. People of faith clung to their religious practices even though decades had passed from the last visits of holy men preaching and ministering to them. Cather’s fictional name for Father Lamy was Jean Latour. His assignment was to join Catholic Churches into a religious front, a beacon and force against both nativist and conquering Spanish sinful ways.

We might say our currently silent faith, demure in the face of social rules meant to combat infection, has already crusted into a hidden place. Our Church has been sequestered for only a few months. Returns to service have been halted, started, and halted again. Nonetheless, warnings portend compliance. We must remain inert in the face of an invisible enemy.

Our sense of disruption has been frustrating. We, though, are still expectant. It is the expectant part of our faith that carries us. Much like the Catholic pockets peppered throughout the Southwest that Father, then Bishop, then Archbishop Lamy overcame on his dutiful marches over trails and dusty roads.

Most of us must sign up to attend Mass, due to limitations on how many can attend. Not just a few, but all weddings and funerals and holy days are either postponed or meager in comparison to the last 100 years of common high celebration in our faith communities. Still, we are expectant.

This time prepares us for God’s ready presence. He is here. He is with us. He has always been here, throughout all of these generations of expectant people, regardless of their situations.

We have our redeemer. We have our King. Our ministers are hobbled. Yet we can hear them on our screens if nowhere else.

Behold, my servant whom I have chosen,
my beloved in whom I delight;
I shall place my Spirit upon him,
and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.
(Matthew 12:18)

In the chaos and the quiet, Jesus is within our grasp. And we are in his.

And in his name the Gentiles will hope.
(Matthew 12:21)