Homily

This past week, I read about a video clip where women were protesting the abortion laws in Argentina. One of our priests is from Argentina, our Patriarch was bishop in Argentina, the Society of St. John is a group of religious working in Oregon, from Argentina, and of course the Pope is a native of Argentina. The video was shocking; I certainly wasn't prepared to see it. As I found out, at these feminist demonstrations, wherever they are held, they try to get into the main church and disrupt services and cause damage. If they can't get inside, they use spray paint to mark the outside walls with political and vulgar slogans.

This group planned their feminists' rights demonstration this time in San Juan, Argentina. A group of men somehow came together and decided they were going to protect their cathedral from desecration by these women. So in the video, you see the men, young men in their 20's and 30's mostly, locked tightly arm in arm forming a human barrier between the protestors and the cathedral, and they were in lines two or three men deep. They were praying the rosary out loud, up against the noise, the drum beating, the yelling of the demonstrators out in the plaza in front of them. That was not the shocking part.

Up close to this human barricade of faithful young men praying out loud, protecting their church, were a number of the most vile and wicked women I have ever seen on film. They took markers and drew on the faces of the praying men. Some they spray-painted in the face and others they spray painted below waist level. They pushed, they poked, they screamed at the men, and I don't know what they were saying but I'm sure it was horrible by the hatred you could see in their faces as they screamed right into the ears of the guys in the front line. But these men stood as solid as rocks. They did not respond in any way. They kept their eyes forward and continued to pray. Because in the front line they were locked arm in arm, when it looked like someone might get spray painted in the face, a man behind would use his hand to cover the eyes of the man in the front, since he could not do it for himself without breaking the chain.

Since these tactics didn't work, the women intensified their assault. They began slapping the men's faces, and spitting on them. They started tearing at the men's shirts. They tied their bras around the necks of the men, since a number of the women were topless the whole time. And finally some of them began to perform extremely vulgar acts in front of the line. Watching this it is clear to me that these were not just women with pro-abortion ideas. You could, or at least I could, feel the darkness of Satan at work here, in the rage, the vulgarity, the hatred, the dehumanizing way in which they treated these men as if they were objects and not real flesh and blood human beings, because that is the way of Satan--to dehumanize men and women and children by encouraging people to treat them as objects. That's what happened in the death camps of Germany, the gulags of the Soviet Union, the criminal camps of North Korea, and the entire abortion business of our modern day. Objects to be used, abused or removed--not human beings with God-given dignity.

I think it is interesting too, that in Argentina at these protests the women always try to attack the Church buildings if they cannot assault the people inside praying--it appears there's a satanic influence. That's why these men were outside the cathedral.

In contrast to these horrible and disgusting protesters, the men praying in the line who were getting marked and painted and spat on and slapped and called every name in the book, these men did not react in any way, not even to wipe off the spit, but they stood arm in arm, praying the prayers of the rosary. And when they were done, they began to chant, "Viva Cristo Rey!," "Viva Christo the King!" You could see the power of their faith which allowed them not only to pray in the face of such long-lasting and abusive treatment but to literally turn the other cheek to their tormentors. And the protestors? Their tactics were horrible and inhuman, but they failed to get what they desired, and their power was shown as weakness in the face of prayerful Christians.

In today's epistle St. Paul wants the Christians in Colossae to remember their baptisms. Don't forget at this time most of the members of the Church were baptized as adult converts. So he wants them to remember what it was like on the day they received the baptismal water, when God made them fit to share in the lot of the saints in light. "He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." What were their lives like before they were Christian, and what were their lives like now, as members of the Body of Christ? And then St. Paul uses the words of a hymn to remind his readers that indeed, Christ is King, the Lord of all creation and of all time and of all people. He has called them. He has freed them from the weight of sin, He has reconciled them with each other and with God and he has given them the gift of divine and eternal life if they will hold fast in their faith.

Most of us do not have that same ability to remember what is was like being delivered from the power of darkness to become members of the Kingdom of God, since we were baptized as babies, but I think it's important to remember that there are two kingdoms in this world and they are not the Republican and Democrat Parties. I think it's a temptation to see the world as a morally neutral place where sometimes people do good and sometimes they do evil, and sometimes people just have a different idea about what is good and what is evil, and we're only human and everybody sins and we should just try to get along, as though we were Unitarians. The video was a sharp reminder to me that there are indeed two kingdoms and I need to remember where I want to be as a citizen, because at least some of those protesters, were raised as members of the Kingdom of God yet they transferred themselves into the power of darkness, calling what is evil, good and treating other people as less than human if they stand up for what is godly. I would be foolish to think the same could never happen to me because I did not guard my citizenship. And, as a member of His Kingdom to always remember that whatever happens out there whether it is good and loving, or whether it is spit and hatred, or whether it is trouble in my own life or in the lives of those I love, Jesus Christ has rescued us and transferred us into His Kingdom. Jesus Christ is Lord! Viva Cristo Rey!