Catholics listening to the words of Fr. Michael Drea at St. Paul’s Parish in Harvard Square/Photo Fr. Robert J Carr

Monday night at St. Paul’s in Cambridge, Massachusetts a powerful thing happened. Around two thousand people of all ages and many nationalities gathered at that parish to worship the God who saves us in Jesus Christ. Even students from MIT walked in procession from that end of the Charles River to the Harvard end of Massachusetts Ave. They surrounded the Eucharist under an ombrellino as they walked the distance between the two famous campuses. This was a powerful night in response to a planned black mass at Harvard University. Fortunately, Harvard cancelled the satanic worship, but not without the Lord gathering His own people to show their devotion of the one true God, whom we call Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We Are a Holy Nation, a Royal Priesthood by Frbob Carr on Mixcloud

As I wrote about this for this blog to be published at midnight on that date, I realized that all of this transpired on May 12, the vigil of the Memorial of Our Lady of Fatima. During the crisis in the Church when agents seeking to silence our faith here in Boston attacked innocent Catholics weekly in the media and directly outside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, I was part of a Catholic spotlight team that investigated who was behind the move to silence our Church. We found they were using the same tactics employed by both the National Socialists of Germany and the Communists of the Soviet Union. We found some fascinating connections to this attempt on our faith; many of them today are coming to light. Enemies of the Church took great pains in keeping those connections hidden. However, this was nothing compared to the realization that our most profound discoveries came to us on Mary feast days. We understood then, as we do now, that this is a sign that Mary is the protectress of our Church. That is why Monday’s event happening on May twelfth was so significant. Again, we were on the eve of a Mary feast day and the power of God’s presence in His Church was made manifest. God is with His people. Mary’s mantle protects the Church that worships her Son.

What was also significant about that event, however, we can see in today’s second reading. For on display is the role of the Catholic people as, according to St. Peter:

a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may announce the praises” of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
New American Bible. (2011). (Revised Edition., 1 Pe 2:9). Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Our role as Catholics is to be a royal priesthood of people who worship our God so that His light may continue in our world that is surrounded by darkness. Clearly, his light shines in a place as significant as Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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I want you to think this through. What would have happened if there was no Holy Hour, but Catholics staged a protest outside the gates of Harvard University? Better yet, what if we gathered on the property of Harvard and staged a protest there. Our words would be heard, but then what? However the great response was not to fight Harvard or to stage a protest, but to turn to our Lord and worship  Him as part of the royal priesthood, into which each one of us is baptized. This turned our concern to worship of Christ and opened the door for God’s merciful power to be manifest. The people did not say by their actions, we will defeat you. We said, in the words of Joshua to the people of Israel, “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” That action was far more powerful than anything that could be accomplished by our protesting on Massachusetts Avenue.

Let me put this in context. Twelve years ago, at the beginning of what became known as the crisis in the Church, I spoke to various people in the media and in politics with the warning, “I am not worried  about the Church, as the Lord said that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it. I am worried about the country.” Fourteen years later, people are asking the question, what is happening to our country. They do not understand that our country has turned from God and given in to its deepest weakness.

The United States works when people understand that being charitable to one another is the backbone of the nation. Alexis de Toqueville warned that the churches were the tent poles of our nation, take down the churches and the whole enterprise fails. The reason is that in the community that is the church mutual charity grows. What keeps this country alive is that mutual charity.

Let me show you: The bill of rights does not tell you what you have license to do. It actually removes the license from the government to do what governments often do: control its citizens. The first amendment is not there to tell you that you can speak obscene words in the town square, it is there so that when you speak your mind for the good of the nation, the government may not silence you. The whole of the Constitution runs with the assumption that people will be charitable toward each other. Since the time we turned the Bill of Rights into a Bill of Licenses for me to do what I want and not what is best for others, our country began down a dark path.

Our population has the understanding of the Bill of Rights backwards and by doing so, have weakened the nation.

However, you and I have a call to be a holy priesthood to the ultimate authority who is God. The fruit of our weakened nation is the attempt to introduce a form of idolatry into our secular world. The response from us as Catholics to is be the holy nation God called us to be and to act on our love for Him. In a sense, we are a nation in a nation. As we saw Monday that manifests the power of God. This is our call, as defined by Peter, to be a people that manifests God’s presence on the Earth.

This is why mass attendance is so important, it is why Catholic morality is important, not so that we can be kept out of Hell, but so that we can manifest God’s presence in our world.

It is time that we reach out to all those who were similarly baptized into this royal priesthood and remind them of who they are. They need to return to the parish so that they too be the royal priesthood they were baptized into and we can even more strongly manifest God’s presence in our world.

God bless you,

Fr. Carr is an alliance member of the New Song Community (Canção Nova). He is the pastor of Holy Trinity Quincy, MA and is the editor of this blog. He is the author of several books, blogs and hundreds of videos all of which you may find at his website, carrbooks.us.  He also has a regular radio program on WebRadio Canção Nova, which he podcasts on Mixcloud and here on Catholicismanew.
You can follow him on twitter as @frbobcarr. Thoughts, comments on the homily? Let us know at Facebook