The Red Mass we celebrate here today in the Mission Church is a tradition in the Catholic Church which dates back nearly 800 years. First celebrated in Paris in the year 1245, the custom quickly spread throughout Europe to ask God’s blessing on the start of the annual term of the courts. It came to be called the Red Mass in 1310, because the justices of the English Supreme Court wore scarlet robes.

We now associate that red, too, with the Holy Spirit, and we mark it here, as we have done for decades now here in the Mission, with a special sense of the vocation – the call God gives – to members of the legal profession and judicial system.

And with every vocation, God also gives special gifts. We call these charisms, gifts of the Holy Spirit.

A vocation that you share. And a set of charisms that God promises.

Today, our readings – which happen to be the ordinary readings of the day – seem to speak particularly to that vocation, and to the context in which we find ourselves. And they give us a path forward, both individually and collectively, through the charisms that God promises.

In our Gospel, we see Jesus facing head-on a particularly divisive moment, a time when the temptation – and the advice from everyone around him – is to step back from his vocation. To avoid the conflicts in the world. To protect himself. To keep silent and not speak up. To be frightened of those in power. To give up his prophetic voice.

Yet Jesus remains resolute, and where others step back, he steps forward. He chooses to go to Jerusalem, to the center of conflict and dissension.

But rather than add to that division, he chooses to give witness that their house – which God had chosen as a special dwelling place in order to be close to God’s people – will not be abandoned. It will not be further torn apart.

Jesus himself will go to gather the brood together under his wings.

You see, for Jesus, the way of his vocation, the way of justice, is one of drawing together. Of healing rather than harming. Of restoring to life and friendship and shared community.

St. Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, further points to the characteristics of this charism.

It’s interesting how much legal language he uses.

I’m especially struck by the verbs.

He says that, though others might “bring a charge against us,” God will acquit us.

He says that others will condemn, but God will intercede for us.

He says that where others will seek to separate us, God will see that nothing – neither death nor life, nor angels or principalities, nor present things nor future things, nor powers nor height nor depth – will separate us from the love of God.

Notice: the world brings charges, and condemns, and separates.

God acquits, and intercedes, and loves.

And what a wonderful resonance with the episcopal motto Bishop-elect Ligot, who is celebrating this Mass: Lex Christi, caritas est. “The Law of Christ is love.”

This is the essence of the charism which God promises to you who practice the Law. Not that you will avoid hard cases, or never acknowledge the need for firm judgements and true restoration. But that you will aim at something higher. You will cultivate in yourself and those around you a vision that finds its fullness in love.

Pope Leo, on September 20th of this year, celebrated the Jubilee of Workers of Justice in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, and he spoke of this higher aspiration. He told the assembled lawyers and judges and court workers, “Forgiveness is fundamental to the virtue of justice.”

 And remember, Pope Leo is a lawyer himself, with a doctorate in Canon Law, so he knows the challenges of law and justice, and that forgiveness is no easy thing.

He went on to emphasize that ​​the evangelical virtue of justice – what I have been calling the charism that the Holy Spirit gives – is not an alternative or a distraction from human justice. Rather, evangelical justice “questions and redesigns human justice: It provokes it to go even further, because it pushes it towards the search for reconciliation.”

Reconciliation. What a beautiful, faith-filled word. So much more than simple judgements of guilt or innocence. Reconciliation aims at restoration of relationships that have been broken. It never ceases to try to draw the brood together under its wings. With patience, and purpose, and trust that, as Jesus said “God will accomplish God’s purpose” in his, and our, action.

Yes, you who serve the Law have a special – and oh-so-needed – vocation to reconciliation in our world today. May you keep before your eyes the gifts, the charisms, that God so richly provides for you in that work, both here in this Mass and every day of your service.

May you acquit your station to the very best and fullest of your ability.

May you intercede for others with patience and persistence.

And may you abide in a spirit of hope and love that  always believes that reconciliation is possible – both for individuals and for our all-too-divided country and world.

May God, who has made the call to this legal vocation echo in your hearts, never cease to shower the gifts of the Holy Spirit upon you.