Red Mass/Feast of St. Luke 2013  
Bishop Glen John Provost
Bishop of Lake Charles
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
Friday, October 18, 2013

“The kingdom of God is at hand for you.”  Luke 10:9

With words of peace and works of healing the seventy-two disciples proclaimed the “kingdom of God is at hand” (Luke 10:9).  Our Lord sent them in pairs into the countryside to the towns and villages without money to prove that the proclamation was free and without stopping along the way to show that the proclamation was urgent. 

By coincidence today we are celebrating the Red Mass and the Feast of St. Luke.  So the Gospel is taken from that evangelist’s own writing.  He was a physician, a man from a healing profession finding a greater remedy for the ailments of mankind in the Lord Jesus Christ.   In the eloquent prologue to his Gospel, St. Luke said that while others had “undertaken to compile a narrative of the events” recounting the life of Jesus, he was moved to write yet another account for his readers to “realize the certainty of the teachings [they] have received” (Luke 1:1, 4).  St. Luke had researched his topic and could testify to its truth and accuracy. 

In a certain sense, the legal profession is involved in healing.  The profession pursues the truth.  It executes justice but it does so because it determines the truth by the best means at its disposal.  Through diligent investigation, cautious deliberation, and a thorough knowledge of the law, the legal mind makes its rewarding journey toward the truth.   This is, of course, the ideal.  But the ideal must be kept before the eyes of the professional. 

I am sure that the disciples in the Gospel encountered unpredictable obstacles.  They had to keep before them the words of Jesus Christ and the instructions He had given them.  The Kingdom of God had arrived.  Their proclamation was to reflect that Kingdom. 

And so in the history of law, at least in the Christian era, the higher ideals of the Kingdom have always been reflected in the execution of justice and the legal craft.  If we turn to one of the oldest and most venerable texts of codification, that of Emperor Justinian, he makes clear the purpose of law.  In Justinian’s introduction to the Institutes, he writes the following:

    Imperial majesty should not only be adorned with military might
    but also graced by laws, so that in times of peace and war alike the
    state may be governed aright and so that the Emperor of Rome may
    not only shine forth victorious on the battlefield, but may also by
    every legal means cast out the wickednesses of the perverters of
    justice, and thus at one and the same time prove as assiduous in
    upholding the law as he is triumphant over his vanquished foes.

Law adorns the society, “so that in times of peace and war alike the state may be governed aright.”  The objective is virtue and “by every legal means” to put to rest those who would pervert justice.  This essential insight into the law is what we inherit from the Roman legal system.  The idea that law is a common patrimony and “a bond that can overcome … differences and enhance … unity” (A. P. d’Entrèves, Natural Law, p. 17) is the gift of this system to us.  

We know, as well, what threatens these ideals—the pursuit of selfish ends.  Power, money, prestige, and the flesh are what corrupt any ideal.  Our Lord knew this.  For this reason he warns his disciples to “[c]arry no money bag, no sack, no sandals, and greet no one along the way” (Luke 10:4).  The disciples must have nothing else to offer but the Good News, healing the sick as a sign of the Kingdom’s arrival—something which must have delighted St. Luke, the good physician. 

This same selflessness must delight the jurist.  The pursuit of virtue must fuel his or her desire for the truth.  Only in this way can mercy flourish along with the justice which is the ultimate goal of the law.  And all of these ideals work for the common good. 

When I was a young man, I read Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France, etc.”  It made a great impression on me.  In this work Burke, who had such a fundamental influence on the formation of the guiding principles of our own nation, was moved to reflect on the meaning of society.  He wrote:

    Society… is not a partnership for things subservient only to the gross
    animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature.  It is a partnership
    in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in
    all perfection.  As the end of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many
    generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living,
    but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to
    be born.