On February 28, 1954, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached a
sermon at the Second Baptist Church in Detroit called “Rediscovering Lost
Values.” In this sermon, Dr. King
declared “There is something wrong with our world, something fundamentally and
basically wrong…. The problem is with man himself and man's soul. We haven't
learned how to be just and honest and kind and true and loving. And that is the
basis of our problem.”
Within this long sermon, Dr. King identified two moral
“principles of value” that we have to rediscover: (1) “It's wrong to hate. It
always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. It's wrong in America, it's wrong in Germany,
it's wrong in Russia, it's wrong in China.
It was wrong in 2000 B.C., and it's wrong in 1954 A.D. It always has
been wrong, and it always will be wrong.”
And, (2) “God [is] behind the process.”
Dr. King concluded his sermon with these prophetic words: “Go out and be
assured that …God is going to last forever.
Storms might come and go. Our
great skyscraping buildings will come and go…. but God will be here. Plants may
wither, the flowers may fade away, but the word of our God shall stand forever
and nothing can ever stop him.”
The Holy Father reminds us that in the aftermath of the
global COVID Crisis and in the current war in the Ukraine that has had serious
global implications, “This war, together with all the other conflicts around
the globe, represents a setback for the whole of humanity and not merely for
the parties directly involved. While a vaccine has been found for Covid-19,
suitable solutions have not yet been found for the war. Certainly, the virus of
war is more difficult to overcome than the viruses that compromise our bodies,
because it comes, not from outside of us, but from within the human heart
corrupted by sin (cf. Gospel of Mark 7:17-23).”
Finally, the Holy Father tells us that now is time, “to let
God … transform our customary criteria for viewing the world around us. We can
no longer think exclusively of carving out space for our personal or national
interests; instead, we must think in terms of the common good, recognizing that
we belong to a greater community, and opening our minds and hearts to universal
human fraternity. We cannot continue to focus simply on preserving ourselves;
rather, the time has come for all of us to endeavour to heal our society and our
planet, to lay the foundations for a more just and peaceful world, and to
commit ourselves seriously to pursuing a good that is truly common.”
This weekend as we honor the life of Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr., we should remember the promise of Isaiah (49:6) in today’s first reading:
“I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the
ends of the earth.” It is up to us to
overcome hate, war, violence and killing by being just and honest and kind and
true and loving and by letting the light of Christ shine forth through us.
Our God and Father,
we honor Jesus, your Son in our midst,
with wonderful names: Jesus our Lord,
Lamb of God, servant of God and people.
Let these names not merely be
empty titles of honor among us
but words full of meaning
that commit us to become like him.
Help us to live for one another
and to bear each other’s burdens,
that we may be servants with him
who is our Lord for ever and ever.
Amen.
You can find the full text of Dr. King’s sermon at: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/rediscovering-lost-values-0
And you can find the full Text of the Holy Father’s
statement at: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/peace/documents/20221208-messaggio-56giornatamondiale-pace2023.html
