We come together for Mass on this Canada Day. Yet Canada Day is itself not a religious celebration. Nonetheless, we take advantage of this civic holiday to pray for our country and for those who govern it. We gather as Christian people, as members of the Catholic Church, to place our country into God’s hands so that God may protect it and all who live in it from harm.

We come together for Mass on this Canada Day. Yet Canada Day is itself not a religious celebration. Nonetheless, we take advantage of this civic holiday to pray for our country and for those who govern it. We gather as Christian people, as members of the Catholic Church, to place our country into God’s hands so that God may protect it and all who live in it from harm.

We pray for wisdom in those who govern Canada, we pray that our country will be marked by “respect for human life and the dignity of every citizen, so that justice may flourish and all peoples live in unity and peace.” (Opening Collect)

To pray for our country and our world is part of the mission God has given to us, we who are His Church. As disciples of Jesus we understand that through our baptism we have been given a mission to carry out in our world and in our country. We are called to make known the Good News that Jesus proclaimed.

We do this by being witnesses to Christ everywhere we are. We have been made members of the Body of Christ by our baptism and we are called to let our example shine so “that thewords of the Gospel may reach the ends of the earth, and the family of nations, made one in Christ, may become God’s one, holy people.”(Rite of  Ordination of Priests)

We live in a country that is blessed with freedom and prosperity. Canada is also a country that struggles to find a way to meet the demands of justice and respect for all its citizens. In this struggle, sometimes solutions are proposed that are not in harmony with the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus. Pope Francis said in a letter to Britain’s Prime Minister recently that “Concern for the fundamental material and spiritual welfare of every human person is the starting-point for every political and economic solution and the ultimate measure of its effectiveness and its ethical validity,”

It is the concern for the well being of every human person that motivates us as Catholics to work for justice and respect for all in Canada. In our country there is great concern about our personal rights and freedoms. This has led on one side to a marked individualism. In its extreme it has brought people to do away with all notion of objective truth and moral laws. In this way of seeing life, I am God for my own life. I determine what is good for me. We are not far from Adam and Even in this particular view of life. As the old saying goes: “The apple does not fall far from the tree.”

Recently I visited Notre Dame College in Wilcox to spend some time with the Graduating Class. One of the questions I was asked was about why we need laws. Notre Dame, as you know, is very good in athletics. I asked the students: what would it be like to play hockey if there were not rules? They quickly answered: “It would be chaos!” And indeed it would. So it is with life. Life without laws and the rules would be chaos.

How do we know that our laws and rules are good? We Catholics believe that there is an absolute and objective truth, and that truth is found in Jesus, the Christ, who is the saviour of the world. Catholics see Jesus as the way, the truth and the life for them.

When we follow him, we find our happiness. When we follow his way, we find our full potential. When we follow his truth, we find ourselves. When we follow his life, we find a life far fuller than anything else can give us. So, we have good news for all who seek true happiness and wholeness in their lives. We have an alternative to the chaos. And that alternative is good news for our country.

Pope Benedict, in his letter announcing this Year of Faith which we celebrate this year, called all Catholics to give what he called the “witness of life” to our world. That means the way we live our lives as Catholic people is intended to show the world the beauty and attractiveness of lives lived in God’s love. The world around us needs to see our joy and hope.

Scarcely a century after the death and resurrection of Jesus and the birth of the church a letter was written explaining who Christians are. I will quote you one sentence from the letter:(Christians) marry like everyone else, and have children, but they do not expose their offspring. They share their food but not their wives. They are `in the flesh,’ but do not live `according to the flesh.’ They live on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey the established laws; indeed in their private lives they transcend the laws. (Epistle to Diognetus)

 

That message has not changed greatly over the intervening seventeen centuries. So, if we were to put that message into the context of Canada Day, 2013, the author could have written that Catholic Christians today get married when many around them no longer do, and they have children but they do not practice abortion. Nor do they practice euthanasia, giving lethal injections to their elderly, rather they accompany them in love and support.

Like the early Christians, Catholics today share their food and resources but not their spouses. They are faithful in marriage and strive to live moral lives according to the Gospel. Catholic Christians live on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. Catholics obey the laws of their society and in their private lives they go beyond these laws seeking the perfection promised by Christ.

This, I believe, is a gift that we have to give to our Country. Catholics seek to witness by lives lived in a way that respects the dignity and value of every human being. We seek to actively promote justice in our society and work for a country where all people who have their home here may live in unity in peace.

We oppose discrimination in any form whether it is based on race, religion, sexual orientation or the myriad of things that people use to discriminate against those who are different from us. We work to accept all people and treat them with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.

Jesus told us not to hide our light but to let it shine for all to see. We are to let our light shine into the darkness that afflicts many people in our country, the darkness of poverty, of alienation, of meaninglessness.

May God truly bless our Country. And may we who are followers of Jesus, the Christ, be a part of bringing that blessing to all of those around us.