Bishop Kevin Farrell

The Chief Shepherd of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas

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A Labor Day reflection

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Worker

As we observe Labor Day that honors both the dignity and contribution of labor in our society we cannot help but be aware of the situation of so many workers in America.

In our Labor Day Statement the U.S. Bishops take note of the situation:

This Labor Day, our country continues to struggle with a broken economy that is not producing enough decent jobs. Millions of Americans suffer from unemployment, underemployment or are living in poverty as their basic needs too often go unmet. This represents a serious economic and moral failure for our nation. As people of faith, we are called to stand with those left behind, offer our solidarity, and join forces with “the least of these” to help meet their basic needs. We seek national economic renewal that places working people and their families at the center of economic life.

I am reminded of a story about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who asked a government official during the Great Depression, “are many people going hungry?” to which the official replied, “in general, people are not hungry.” The President quickly reminded him, “my friend, people don’t go hungry in general, hunger is a very particular thing.”

Statistics hide the human suffering they represent. Unemployment is a very particular thing, it is a father or a single mother who sees their family suffering; it is a new graduate with a large student loan who can only find a minimum wage job at a fast food restaurant; it is a family forced to move out of their home.

As individuals, as a Church, as a society we are obliged by the Gospel to offer individual help wherever possible.  This Labor Day, let each of us reach out to assist someone, but also commit ourselves to work to see that these human problems are addressed at the local, state and national levels.

Martin Luther King’s Birthday

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“When we allow freedom (to) ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

                                                                                       Martin Luther King,  Aug. 28, 1963

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Christmas Tree wishes

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Christmas Tree (1)

Christmas tree wishes are a custom in many parts of the world, from Naples to Yokahama and in some places those wishes are made on December 22, the traditional day for lighting the Christmas tree.

Last week Pope Benedict XVI used a digital tablet to light the world’s largest Christmas tree formed on the slopes of Mount Ingino in the Italian town of Gubbio, in Northeastern Perugia. Before lighting the tree the Pope expressed three wishes.

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A time for giving thanks

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More than any other national holiday Thanksgiving is family-centered. Although many of us are scattered and apart from our loved ones, we return in spirit, if not in person for Thanksgiving. It is a time when we are reminded that people are more important than things. This year we are especially mindful of the men and women of our armed forces, at home and abroad, whose mission to insure our freedom separates them from home and family on this holiday.

We truly have much to be thankful for in this great nation of ours. Even in this tumultuous time, compared to most of the people in the world, we live in a nation of great security and abundance. As we sit in front of our HD TV window-on-the-world, safely witnessing the wars and natural disasters that sweep the globe, few of us ever go to bed hungry. But 925 million people do go to bed and wake up hungry every day. The world is facing a hunger crisis unlike anything it has seen in more than 50 years. May the love of Christ move us to share our great abundance with our brothers and sisters in need.

Let us also remember that we enjoy freedoms not even dreamed of in many parts of the world, including the freedom to express ourselves without fear of retaliation. Reflect for a moment on the great democratic exercise we have just gone through during the mid-term elections. Campaigns got raucous and, to many, seemed to cross the lines of civility to mean-spiritedness. But it is time now to move on and work together for the good of our country.

Indeed, Thanksgiving is a time of healing. It is a time to realize how we tend to let hurts and disagreements keep us apart from family and friends and sometimes even from other members of our Catholic family. My fervent prayer is that we all may be reconciled.

So, let us thank God for all that He has given us. And, perhaps we might pause and thank Him for those things that, in his great wisdom, he has withheld from us.

I ask His blessings and mercy on you all and wish you a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving.

God Bless America

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On this Independence Day it is good to reflect on just how God has blessed America. As an immigrant and naturalized American I am well aware of the fact that we enjoy freedoms that are unknown in much of the world.

Consider for a moment the Four Freedoms articulated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union Address,made famous in paintings by Norman Rockwell: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Here are the actual words of President Roosevelt in that memorable address to Congress:

“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
“The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.
“The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world.
“The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants–everywhere in the world.
“The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world.”

Here in America we have come a long way toward assuring these basic freedoms for every person. That is the reason why so many wish to become Americans.

God indeed has blessed America, but we must continue to pray for His guidance.

We thank God for our fathers

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With your whole heart honor your father
Sirach 7:27

Someone once told me “my father was the smartest man in the world!” I suspect that as children many of us felt the same way about our fathers. He was the wise man who could solve any problem, right any wrong, drive out any fear. He was the pillar of strength in our small world.

That strength complimented the tenderness of our mothers. Together they provided us with a wonderful sense of security. Whatever happened, it would be all right.

For his sons he modeled what it meant to be a man. There are times that I look in the mirror and see my father and I find myself saying the same things that he said.

It is only as adults that we begin to appreciate the difficulties our fathers dealt with in providing us with the sense of safety and security we enjoyed. And in retrospect we realize how smart they really were.

We thank God for our fathers and honor them for who they were on this Fathers Day.