By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Public officials should treat those they deal with as if they’re family members, not strangers, a Texas bishop told the congregation at the Diocese of Phoenix’s annual Red Mass at St. Mary’s Basilica here.
The Diocese of Brownsville’s Bishop Daniel Flores was guest homilist at the January 26 Mass marking the start of the Arizona state legislative session, attended by a few hundred lawmakers, judges, attorneys, and other public officials.
Flores, who is one of two bishops asked to represent U.S. bishops during Pope Francis’ visit to Mexico from February 12 to 17, spoke for about 25 minutes in a resonant voice to the Arizona leaders. His full black beard might have made a person think of a biblical prophet.
The service lasted just under an hour and a half in the historic downtown Phoenix church visited by St. John Paul II during his U.S. trip in 1987. The spot is marked where the Pope knelt.
Flores, drawing attention to the day’s Gospel reading about Jesus’ mother and brothers looking for Him, said, “In a certain way, we are all related under one God in Heaven.”
An age-old question, the bishop said, is, “What is due to my neighbor?. . .
“Survival in the nation of Israel depended on your connection to your family,” he continued, where there was no such thing as “your room and my room” in the ancient habitations where extended families lived together.
The bishop referred to conditions in the part of the U.S. where he lives.
Today, amid the crime and violence of the Rio Grande Valley and northern Mexico, he said, people know “there’s safety in numbers.”
The ancient world thought in terms of “there’s us and there’s them” Flores said, but Jesus was telling people “you should judge everybody as if it were your mother.”
Especially evident in such a situation as working in family court, Flores said, “families are places of great tension,” where love and obligation meet. The person is no longer a stranger, but “my aunt’s eldest son.”
With this perspective, “all of our relations to our neighbor” change, he said, adding that no longer can one think, “that person, because he’s nothing of mine, has no claim on me.”
When Jesus began to announce the Gospel to the poor, Flores said, He was speaking “to those who had no power. . . . Jesus goes and does His favor to people who can’t repay Him. . . . Chances are they aren’t even registered to vote. . . .
“He didn’t use people to get Himself to a better place,” the bishop added.
Whenever someone comes before an official, Flores said, the official should have the attitude, “I must treat all with the respect I must afford to a family member.”
Citing a painting of the suffering Christ by 17th-century Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck, Flores said that Christ “is the man despised, He is the man judged, He is the man condemned.”
This powerless Christ is asking, Flores said, “Will you respond to me, and am I brother to you?. . .
“Let us not use the law as an excuse,” but to make a just judgment, he said. “. . . Let us look at Him frequently,” to answer whether He is brother.
Flores introduced his homily by noting that “when the complexity of life makes things difficult in making decisions,” people may feel, “I’m not adequate to the task.” That’s an honest voice of humility, he said.
The Brownsville Catholic Diocese’s website quotes Flores that Pope Francis’s “historic visit will be a time of renewed faith and hope for the people of Mexico. I am truly honored to be able to participate.
“Because the United States and, in a particular way, the Rio Grande Valley, have such deep historical and spiritual links to Mexico, I hope I will be able in some way to share the joy that we feel here in this country, especially in the Valley, with the Church in Mexico at this moment of great blessing,” Flores is quoted.
The bishop told the Phoenix Red Mass that to find Brownsville in Texas, “just drive south.”
Brownsville is at the southern tip of Texas, by the Rio Grande River and Gulf of Mexico. The city’s website describes itself as “On the Border, By the Sea.”
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