Honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.
At Mass yesterday our Pastor spoke of honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today, 19 January 2009. While that wasn’t the specific point of the sermon, he lauded Dr. King’s perseverance and refusal to accept the status quo and laws of men when those laws sat squarely at odds with God’s own. In Dr. King’s situation, it was the matter that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ and the laws that sought to make men of a different skin color into not-really-people should not stand. He landed in jail over that position and wrote his well-known letter from the Birmingham prison to address this.
We live in contentious times. While people of every age can make the case that the same label applied to them we have ample evidence that it certainly applies to us. It is important that we recall the work and philosophy of Dr. King and that we do so regularly. Those who forget the past – by accident, by design, or by the teaching they receive – are doomed to repeat it. On this day of remembrance, on the eve of the democratic passing of our nation’s political leadership from one administration to another, we must remember King and his words with purposeful intent.
