Homily for the Red Mass, Jan. 18, 2007

Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, Honolulu

[Scriptures: Isaiah 57:15-19; James 3:13-18; Matthew 5:38-48]

A little over thirty years ago, a movie called “The Exorcist” was making its controversial showing in theaters throughout the world. If you recall, the movie was about the exorcism of a sweet twelve-year-old girl who was possessed by the devil. It was horrible to see this beautiful girl so contorted, her head twisting around to her back, her eyes bulging out, vomiting green vomit on the exorcist, and using language that was foul and hateful. Many people were quite frightened by the movie, and prayed fervently that they would never have even a mild encounter with such an evil creature as the one that had possessed the girl. The cinematographers portrayed evil in its purest form. Or did they?

In the sixteenth century, St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, wrote his Spiritual Exercises. He emphasized the importance of discernment of spirits, and in speaking of how the enemy of our souls sometimes acts, Ignatius said this: “The enemy is accustomed to propose apparent pleasure.... He thus causes them to imagine sensual delights and pleasure in order to hold them more and more easily and to increase their vices and sins.” (Rules for Discernment, First Week #1) “It is characteristic of the evil one to transform himself into an angel of light, to work for the soul in the beginning but in the end to work for himself.” (Rules for Discernment, Second Week #4)

It is this portrait of Satan that Ignatius presents that is even more frightening – and even more destructive – than the portrayal wrought by Hollywood. In the movie, Satan’s evil was clear and unmistakable, and anyone witnessing it would be repulsed by it. But in real life, it is subtle, appearing at first to be good and pleasing, but in the end leading to destruction.

When we speak of violence, very clear images come to mind: stabbings, rape, shootings, beatings. Whether we talk of the premeditated violence of a murder, the unexpected violence of the streets, or violence perpetrated in the home by someone very close to us, we know that these are clearly repulsive. Society has found them so repulsive that we have created laws to protect people from these forms of violence and sanctions against those found guilty of perpetrating them. It is our constant challenge to find ever more effective ways to defend society against such obvious violence.

Yet I believe there are forms of violence that can be just as devastating as the acts for which we have laws to protect us. And these forms of violence are perfectly legal, and may even, at first sight, appear to be good. But in the end, they drain the life from all of us and work against the common good. Let me give a few examples.

Our legal system is set up to protect the rights of people when they are violated by others. It is a good system, and we need it to assure, insofar as it is humanly possible, that everyone is treated fairly and justly, no matter what their status in life. And so the legal system can be an angel of light in redressing real wrongs and establishing true justice. But too often it can also appear to be an angel of light, while all the while it is not true justice at all and does not strive to restore right relationships. People in other countries are often amazed at how litigious we are in the United States. And because we cover it with the sheepskin of justice, we can do real violence to our society through our legal system. If we look at the cost of medical insurance and the fact that so many of our citizens do not have adequate health insurance, we can trace the reason back, at least partially, to the tremendous premiums doctors pay for malpractice insurance, to the extraordinary documentation of every detail of their service they are required to document out of fear that they may be sued. And it is not an unfounded fear. The multiplication of lawsuits seems to be an indication that we are a just society – and sometimes lawsuits are very just – but they often indicate that we are a vengeful society. It is against the law to beat your doctor, but if you really want to do violence to him, you can sue him for a cause that is less than just. And when you do so, it has ripple effects on the whole community and its access to affordable medical care. There are, of course, other areas where our legal system is not used to establish justice but rather to do violence. And we all pay a high price for such bloodless violence. We need to be more discerning about what is true justice and what only goes by the name of justice but is truly vengeance and violence.

We are blessed to live in a country with freedom of speech and freedom of the press. We are only too aware of the dire consequences that result when people are not allowed to speak their minds, especially when voices against injustice are systematically silenced. Yet there is a danger here, too. Issues are often very complex, and the whole truth is not always as exciting as a small part of it may be. Sound bites can replace sound analysis. A partial truth can be presented as the whole truth. By a single word, a single story, a single article, violence can be done to a person or an institution. An entire populace can be fed misinformation and believe it to be the entire truth. The consequences are that we can become distracted from finding the real solutions to our problems, become side-tracked with secondary issues, and spend our time and energy defending against the untruth when it could be better spent working for the truth. Here again, discernment is so important. Freedom of the press, even freedom to criticize public leaders, including the clergy, can be a good thing, because it can keep us honest. But freedom of the press can also appear to be an angel of light while actually doing violence. Yes, we need to hold our public servants to high standards, but how many times has a trust in legitimate authority been eroded, not because of a misuse of power on the part of the public authority but because of manipulation of the press? How many wonderful citizens would never even consider being public servants, even though they would bring tremendous assets to government, simply because they know how violent the press can sometimes be? This, of course, is a loss to all of us. The freedom of expression that should be a source of pride for our nation, and very often is, can also too easily become a source of shame.

We have all been involved in the discussion regarding the lack of affordable housing here in Hawaii, as well we should. We have people living on the beach or in their vehicles or other places not fit for human habitation. We have shelters full of people who are lucky enough to get into them. Well-educated and talented young people who were born and raised in Hawaii cannot stay to contribute to the community they love, because they cannot afford to live here. So what violence was done here? Isn’t this just an unfortunate economic situation that we are trying to find solutions for? I think we have to look more deeply at our attitudes.

Why is housing so costly here? Who decides the prices of homes and rental units? Developers and owners do, for the most part. Certainly they are entitled to make a profit on their considerable investments. They are usually family people who want to provide the best for their families, as we all do. The high prices of homes are not illegal. But I would submit that they can be very short-sighted. We could talk about homes or gasoline, food or prescription medications. And if our attitude is to obtain the highest possible price for these commodities, then there will always be those who will suffer because they simply cannot afford those prices. If we do not think long and hard about all the people affected by the prices we set, and not just about ourselves, we can end up doing real violence to many people – and even in the end to ourselves. We value good teachers, good mechanics to keep our cars running, good service workers to grow our food and clean our streets, but if we exercise our very legal power to set prices unreasonably high for these brothers and sisters, we all suffer, and real violence is done to our community.

So what seems to be good is not always so. And what seems to be bad may not always be so either. We need to be discerning, to see not only our own needs but the needs of others, to be attentive to the consequences of all our actions, so that the legal violence perpetrated on so many lives can end.

I believe Jesus offers us the best solution. He speaks of refusing to be vengeful. On the surface that seems like tremendous weakness, but it is really incredible strength. He speaks of service that puts the neighbor ahead of oneself. That seems foolish, yet it is truly the wisest investment one can make. He speaks of loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us. At first sight, it would appear that that is a recipe for continued violence – against us! Yet Jesus knows human nature better than anyone else, since he is at once human and the God who created us human beings. He knows that only in this way will we truly be able to break the cycle of violence forever. He speaks from experience, having been the victim of cruel violence himself. But he transformed it with his love and overcame death to live forever.

We thank God for the angels of light who always surround us with their encouragement and their hope, with their spirit and dedicated service and love. But we need to be wise as serpents about the realities in our lives and in our society that appear to be angels of light because they are perfectly legal and generally familiar to us, but which are really agents of violence and discord.

It is in humbling ourselves before God, knowing that we cannot possibly live in the truth without his Holy Spirit, that we will be able to discern true good from seeming good, and to eliminate the various forms of legal violence in our culture. It is only God’s Holy Spirit that can lead us to all truth and help us to create a culture where true peace, the longing of every human heart, can become a reality for all.