CONSEQUENCES:  

NOVEMBER  9^TH 

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “Consequences: November 9^th.”

I am planning on talking about 3 things that happened on November 9^th.:

·       November 9th, 324;

·       November 9^th, 1732;

·       November 9^th, 1989.

I will be giving some history. Relax it’s only 5 pages – 14 pica – Arial font – and you can watch me as I turn my pages.

CONSEQUENCES

Notice the first word in my title, “consequences” – the word just before the words November 9^th.

There are consequences! That’s one of life’s biggest lessons.

This day – November 9^th, 2014 – things are going to happen that will change lives. People will be conceived, born, say something, do something, die, and lives will be changed.

Working with our high school kids from time to time – I notice in articles about teenagers – that the frontal part of their brains – isn’t completely formed yet – and as a result – they often don’t get the reality of consequences.

NOVEMBER 9, 324

This day – November 9, 324 – the church of Christ our Savior was dedicated in Rome by Pope Saint Silvester [314-335].  It was the pope’s church – his residence – his headquarters in Rome – and to this day on paper it’s considered more important than St. Peter’s which didn’t come till 1626. In reality when people think Rome and the pope, they think St. Peter’s not this church of Christ our Savior or St. John Lateran’s.

This Church we’re celebrating today has a long history. In 313 Constantine had given a palace – the Laterini Palace to his predecessor – Pope Melchiades [3111-314]. It was Constantine’s wife’s palace – I hope she didn’t mind. This was to be the place called St. John Lateran.

Just before this time Constantine and his co-emperor in Constantinople had given the church the freedom to come up out from the underground and to exist freely and publically.

Consequences…. One reality ends and another reality begins. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another thing. The Church had to deal with problems from without – now they had to deal with problems from within.

In Northern Africa there were a group of Christians that ended up being called the Donatists – after a guy name Donatus. They were the rigorists. The Church had to struggle openly about the issue of priests, bishops and Christians who renounced their faith in the Diocletian persecution of the church right before Constantine. One had to give up one’s prayer books and make an oath to pagan gods – otherwise you’re a dead man – as Judge Chamberlain Haller says to Vinny in the movie, My Cousin Vinny.

Then when the church come up from the underground – what about those priests, bishops and regular Christians who wanted to come back?

Constantine “called a special council  of some 130 bishops in Arles in August 314 to hear another appeal from the Donatists, who were contesting the consecration of Caecilian as bishop of Carthage” on this very issue. [Cf. page 57 in Lives of the Popes, by Richard P. McBrien.

Regular meetings were held at the pope’s house – the former Laterini palace on these kinds of issues.  The Donatists said that Masses said by these priests and bishops where not true masses. Rome said, “Forgiveness is called for.”  The forgiveness was a long term forgiveness process – but many came back to the church. Priests and bishops functioned once again – without having to be re-ordained.

The Donatists lasted in those parts of North Africa to the arrival of Islam.

So what else is new? I assume that the Church – and most religions will have the purists and those who allow flaws – those who are strict and severe and those who are more relaxed and “liberal”.

The church just met in Rome – in a Synod on the Family. Using broad strokes, the same basic issues are going on in our Church. 

As I see it – and for the sake of transparency – this is my opinion – I assume that there are many on the other side of the spectrum. I assume that this issue will always be around in religious and life circles.

It seems to me that Pope Francis and others want to reach out with mercy and not rigorism – to all those folks who have left our church – and went underground because of broken marriages, birth control, this and that. I don’t know this for a fact, but I had read several articles about the last pope which said that he wanted a stricter – more lean – I won’t add mean - Catholic church – where everyone is much more serious about our faith.

There are consequences for both positions. Some folks are like the forgiving father in the Prodigal Son story; some folks are like the older brother in the Prodigal Son story – who won’t go in and have communion at the banquet of the Prodigal Son who went underground – to the pigs for a while.

Either way there are consequences.

NOVEMBER 9, 1732

Let me move on now to a second November 9^th happening.

A lawyer named Alphonsus de Ligouri in Naples Italy met in a place called Scala, Italy, up in the hills just above Amalfi this day – November 9, 1732.

He had been a lawyer in Naples. Then he quit being a lawyer – perhaps because he lost a case involving a land deal. He either made a mistake – or more likely, there was a bribe in favor of the other side. He quit – hit the pits – and then decided to become a priest. He did. Then as priest he worked his butt off – got sick – was told to go down the Amalfi Coast for rest and recovery. If you’ve ever been there – you’d say: “Good move.”

While there - someone told him there were a lot of goat herders and migrants up in the hills that no priests  cared about. There were lots and lots of priests enjoying a comfortable life for themselves in the big city of Naples. Alphonsus goes up into the hills and finds them – along with lots of people in small places in the hills that nobody cared about.

When he gets home – after his recovery he gets together with some priest friends and decides to form a new congregation of priests and brothers to serve the neglected.

They met at Scala, Italy, November 9, 1732. Since it was the feast we’re celebrating today – the dedication of the church of Our Savior in Rome – they decided on calling this new group: The Congregation of Christ our Savior.

We Redemptorists started that day. Today is our birthday.

It took years and lots of effort to get approved as a new congregation in the Church.  In 1749, when were finally approved, they had found out there already was a congregation by that name – so they switched our name to Christ the Redeemer.

We Redemptorists celebrate our foundation day today – November 9^th.

NOVEMBER 9, 1989

My third and last November 9^th is November 9^th, 1989.

This day in 1989 – the Berlin wall opened up and then came down.

All kinds of decisions brought about the wall going up in the first place in the 1960’s and then the opening up and tearing down in 1989.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Moscow made some openings – in atmosphere and outlook from Soviet Union.

When this so called, “Glastnost” blew into East German,  the hardliners there didn’t know what to do. The people did. They got  a breath of fresh air and started marching and protesting. A series of mistakes and statements were made by the East German dictators and more fresh air seemed to appear. Someone announced that travel restrictions to the west would be lessened.

There was an article in The New York Times on Thursday by a historian, Mary Elise Sarotte, entitled “How The Fall of the Berlin Wall Really Happened.” It talks about what happened that evening – November 9^th, 1989. Listen to this one short excerpt:

“When one of the regime’s most loyal subordinates, a Stasi officer named Harald Jäger who was working the Nov. 9 night shift at a crucial checkpoint in the Berlin Wall, repeatedly phoned his superiors with accurate reports of swelling crowds, they did not trust or believe him. They called him a delusional coward. Insulted, furious and frightened, he decided to let the crowds out, starting a chain reaction that swept across all of the checkpoints that night.”

That was key. The gate was opened. The wall came down.

Check Google for all this – as well as the papers today. There should be a lot about this 25^th Anniversary of the coming down of the Berlin Wall.

CONCLUSION

The title of my homily is, Consequences, November 9^th.”

Today – November 9th, things will happen that we don’t know about now till next year or 25 years from now.

My prayer is twofold – that we keep on putting walls up – walls that form homes and churches, hospitals and shelters – and walls come down – in families – in churches – in religions – and all discover we’re all one family, one body – created in the image and likeness of God.