[On Sunday, January 20, 2002, Bishop Untener concelebrated the annual Martin Luther King Mass at Saints Simon and Jude Parish, Saginaw, but did not preach the homily. That was preached by Fr. Jesse Cox, O.P., from Detroit. Given here are Bishop Untener’s extemporaneous remarks at the end of Mass.]

I want very briefly, on behalf of everyone here, and on behalf of the people of the Diocese of Saginaw, to acknowledge that we have received the message – the message of Fr. Jesse Cox, with his repeated refrain: "Martin Luther King gave us a dream, and he left us a mission." We’ve received the message – the message of Martin Luther King, and the message of this Eucharistic celebration together, which carries implications for all of us. We have received the message.

It was another Dominican eight centuries ago – St. Thomas Aquinas – who said, "Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the one receiving it." Which is to say that whatever we receive falls upon the soil of our own particular life, and is conditioned by whatever is going on in our life.

By chance, these past weeks I was doing some work on St. Paul’s letter to Philemon. It is his shortest letter – only 355 words long. Most of us would probably be unfamiliar with it because it’s never read at a Sunday Mass except once every three years, and only a small part of it at that. Because I had been doing some work on this, it affected what I "received" this morning.

The letter revolves around a slave by the name of Onesimus who ran away from his master and somehow ended up meeting Paul in another city. Now, "slave" back then was a general category and didn’t necessarily mean the kind of slavery known to us. It could have been more like an indentured servant. Regardless, slaves were at the low end of the economic and social scale.

Paul was in jail at this particular time, which may be how the slave Onesimus met him, perhaps having been thrown in jail himself. We don’t know. We do know that Paul converted him to Christianity.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Philemon, the owner of the slave, is someone Paul knows. Philemon’s home served as the meeting-place of a "house-church" – one of those places where Christians met before they had church buildings. He could have been more or less the head of this "parish."

Paul is sending Onesimus back to Philemon, and Onesimus is to carry this letter with him. But in the letter Paul says that he wants things to be different, because both Onesimus and Philemon are now Christians. He knows that the slave has broken the law and that there are penalties for this. He also knows that all this has cost Philemon some money, because he lost a laborer. But he appeals to Philemon to re-think all this, and two of the things he says in this appeal apply very much to what we’re celebrating at this Mass.

The first is when Paul, noting that Onesimus has been away for a while, suggests that – and he words it very nicely – "perhaps he was away for a while... so that you might have him back forever... as a brother."

Could it be that blacks and whites have been "apart" for a while, for so long, that now we are able to come together forever, as brothers and sisters? Could it be that our failure to come together leaves room for God’s action to bring us together in a way we ourselves could never have done?

The second thing Paul wrote that struck me as we celebrated this morning is this. Toward the end of this short letter Paul, realizing that all this has cost Philemon some money, says: "If he owes you anything, charge it to me." Then he says that he is writing the next phrase in his own hand... and he writes: "I will pay."

What strikes me is this. If all the things that Fr. Jesse talked about in his homily are to happen, we’re all going to have to pay something. You don’t change a large-scale social situation like this without a lot of people having to pay in different ways, whether it’s more taxes, or less profit, or not having the inside track to promotions, or whatever. Let the words of Paul ring in our ears: "I’ll pay."

If I were to do this in the style of a black preacher, I’d ask you the question: "Are all of us willing to pay something to make this happen?” I think you’d shout back: "Well pay!" Or maybe I’d put it a little differently. Maybe I’d say: "Are you willing to suffer something for the sake of something good?" I know your answer would be "yes." The reason I know that is because our logo is the cross, and you all make the sign of the cross on yourself, and the cross is the symbol of being willing to suffer something for the sake of something good.

So, I end by acknowledging that we have all received the message. "Martin Luther King gave us a dream, and left us a mission." And I respond that we’re willing to suffer for the mission. I know we are, because we all place this sign over and over on our bodies – and I want you to do it now with me: "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

Originally given Sunday, January 20, 2002