Fr Ben Garren

We are conscious today that many, many centuries of blindness have cloaked our eyes so that we can no longer see the beauty of Thy chosen people nor recognize in their faces the features of our privileged brethren. We realize that the mark of Cain stands upon our foreheads. Across the centuries our brother Abel has lain in blood which we drew, or shed tears we caused by forgetting Thy love. Forgive us for the curse we falsely attached to their name as Jews. Forgive us for crucifying Thee a second time in their flesh. For we know not what we did. —Pope John XXIII

Dear Siblings in Christ,

Today the Episcopal Church commemorates Pope John XXIII, a modern saint of the Catholic Church whose life and witness to the Gospel is celebrated not only by Catholics but across the church.

While his work at liturgical renewal impacted worship as we experience it in the Episcopal Church our bringing him into our calendar of commemoration has to do with his witness to the church’s need to confess the wrongs we have done as we held power over others. In the time after WWII this work was overwhelmingly focused on the antisemitic theology that had infested most of Christian theology.

The extent to which the church was willing to allow low levels of antisemitic ideology in our preaching, in our theology, in our understanding of the gospels was recognized as a foundation that allowed more dangerous forms of antisemitic ideology to grow in Europe contributing to Nazism. John XXIII brought the church to confess that sin and to begin the work of reconciliation.

On this day we need to think on how readily antisemitic ideology and other forms of supremacist ideology too easily rest within the church. How we can to readily become Cain and fail to see that Abel is our brother… when our sibling happens to be Jewish, Muslim, another race, another sexuality or gender identity, or the many other ways we are prone to be unjust?

Pax,

—Ben