Today, we hear the famous saying: “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” There was a lovely lady at St Richard who used to drive all of the way from the Carthage area to attend the mass at St Richard in Jackson every Sunday morning at 8:00 am. She would arrive in last row of pews in the church at least half an hour before mass to pray and to prepare. She told me that Father Ben Martinez used to often jokingly quote this Scripture passage to her before mass, telling her that the first would be last, and the last would be first, since she was all the way in the last pew in the church without fail.
When I was look at the readings for the day, I came across the name of a Frenchman who died in this date back in 1950; his name is Marc Sangnier. In 1894, Sangnier founded a movement called “Le Sillon”. That French title would be translated as “The Path” or “The Furrow” in English. Le Sillon was a religious and political movement that aimed to bring Catholicism into dialogue with the reality of the world around it, to provide a religious alternative to Marxism and the anti-clerical labor movement that were drawing a lot of the youth and young adults away from Catholicism in France and in the rest of Europe. Sangnier was inspired by the groundbreaking social justice encyclical Rerum Novarum issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, which called for the Catholic Church to address the major social issues at that time. Sangnier’s movement, which became very popular, appeared to have the approval of many bishops and even Pope Pius X. However, some traditionalists in the Church began to see the movement as too Republican and too modernist, criticizing the movement for what it saw as an emphasis on the opinions and the ideas of ordinary Christian lay people rather than the Church Magisterium and hierarchical authority. A papal letter condemned the organization in 1910, after which the movement dissolved itself. Sangnier retreated to the sidelines. Although he still promoted the cause of democracy and social justice, his voice never regained the prominence it once had. This is a person and a movement that I had never heard of before. However, our history of faith is full of many men and women who responded to God’s call and who tried their best to serve where God is calling them. Many of the saints and theologians who influenced the development of the faith were condemned or judged harshly in the own day. It is only through the lens of history that we can see the positive influence that they had. How is God sending us out in the world? How is the Holy Spirit working in our lives?
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