The Church’s convictions about the unity of the human race and about her own unity come from her belief that Jesus is Lord of everyone.

During this exodus of the people that God called together to be his own, there were occasions when grumblers and troublemakers among them caused Moses to complain to God. Moses would have liked to be rid of those whose constant complaints were demoralizing thepeople, but God didn’t want anyone left behind. There was an occasion when God and Moses reversed roles. God had had enough of the complainers and told Moses he was going to eradicate them all and give Moses a new people. Scripture has Moses telling God that everyone knew these were God’s own people and that God would look foolish if he abandoned his own people. Again, no one was left behind, although some, including Moses himself, didn’t make it to the promised land. Some people chose to be left behind, because they wanted to go their own way rather than God’s way.

Last week, as the papers and media reported, the remains of the fourth Bishop of Chicago, Bishop James Duggan, were laid to rest in the mausoleum for the Bishops of Chicago in Mt. Carmel Cemetery. (See photos, Page 17.) He had been buried in Calvary Cemetery in Evanston when he died in 1899, and his body was not brought to the mausoleum with other former bishops when the tomb was built in 1912 by Archbishop Quigley. Bishop Duggan was left behind. As Mr. Jac Treanor, the Archdiocesan archivist, wrote in last week’s Catholic New World, Bishop Duggan died in an asylum for the mentally ill, where he spent the last thirty years of his life. Perhaps shame about his mental illness prevented his being buried with his brother bishops. Bringing him to the mausoleum over one hundred years after his burial made it possible to talk about how we accept and relate to people who are mentally ill, people who are sometimes a cross both to themselves and to others. Mental illness can be a silent suffering and, silently, those with it can be left behind by those impatient with them and even by society itself.

Last Saturday, I returned to Portland, Oregon, to talk at the Portland Archdiocese’s annual Catholic Charities banquet. It occurred to me in preparing my talk that the poor who are served by Catholic Charities are also those whom others have left behind. When the attention of the Church and the world is brought to bear on the homeless, the hungry, those addicted to drugs, those without father or mother, the immigrants who cannot find their place in a strange land, those who have lost their job or position and who need emergency help, it is not only in order to help them personally, necessary though that is, but also to make sure that we stay together as God’s people in the journey of faith. The Church organizes charitable assistance to help the poor because she wants no one to be left behind.

The Church speaks about justice as well as about charity, but for the same reason: no one is to be left behind. The Church in an age of globalization, when those without access to technology are in danger of being left behind, calls for globalization with solidarity. Much of the ministry for justice focuses our attention on individuals or groups who are systematically forced to stay behind. On April 4, I published a pastoral letter on racism, a sin which is rooted in personal prejudice but which spreads out to capture social structures and relegate entire peoples to inferior positions. Not only the victims of racism are oppressed; so are its perpetrators. Racists, those who believe their own race or social group can exist and flourish separate from other members of the human race, cannot in good conscience walk the journey of faith, for the faith insists that no one should be left behind. (See story, Page 5; excerpts, Page 7.)

The Church’s convictions about the unity of the human race and about her own unity come from her belief that Jesus is Lord of everyone. In Holy Week we enter into Christ’s passion, death and resurrection not only to be delivered personally from the sin that separates us from God but also to make visible to the entire world the work of its savior. The Church is credible in her witness to Christ to the extent that she is united in her own life and leaves no one behind. In every generation, of course, there are those who, like some of the Chosen People in the desert, go their own way rather than the way of the Lord. In every case, the Church has to listen carefully to see how they can be re-incorporated in the invisible life of grace and the visible communion of the Church. For example, efforts are being made again to reconcile to the Catholic Church the followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who could not accept all the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. (See story, Page 15.) The complaints from Lefebvrists and others about developments in the Church since the Council have to be listened to carefully, for some of them contain an element of truth. The Council was a development in continuity with the tradition that unites us to Christ. Presenting it as an excuse for legitimating dissent from the Catholic faith or as a license for disobedience to Pope or bishop, on the part of right or left, prevents our continuing together on the journey of faith. Among bishops themselves, the collegiality re-emphasized by Vatican II doesn’t mean opposition among bishops or between a bishop and the Holy Father; disunity, in fact, prevents the bishops from acting collegially. No one goes his or her own way in the Church; we come to new life in Christ together.

The most important teaching from the Second Vatican Council was that everyone is called to holiness. That God gives a universal vocation to sanctity means that God wants no one to be left behind. If we pray to become saints, our prayer will surely be answered, for this is what God desires. If we can, during Holy Week and the Easter Triduum, overcome our fear of intimacy with God, we will surely find ourselves on Easter ever more fully rooted in the new life of the risen Christ and more firmly united with one another.

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