Juneteenth Celebrated

In the body of Christ every person is of integral value, regardless of race, language, ethnicity or way of life.

That message was at the core of Father Tom Clark’s powerful homily during a Mass on June 18 celebrating Juneteenth at Immaculate Conception Church in Baton Rouge.

Father Clark SJ, pastor at Immaculate Conception, said any form of racism, discrimination or hatred is a serious sin, a wound to the body of Christ. And that sin requires conversation and repentance.

People from ICC, surrounding church parishes and from as far away as Gonzales, gathered to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. Also called “Emancipation Day,” Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to take control of the state to ensure all slaves would be freed. 

That day came two-and-a-half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863, declaring that all slaves should be free.

This year Juneteenth celebrations also coincided with the feast of the Corpus Christi and the launch of a nationwide, three-year Eucharistic Revival. Father Clark noted the intimate connection between the celebration of Juneteenth and the feast of the Corpus Christi. 

To illustrate, he told the story of Thomas Turner, founder of the Federal Color Catholics. In 1915, Turner went to Corpus Christi Church in Baltimore, Maryland, for a Holy Name Society convocation. His group of Black Catholics were seated in the side aisle even though seats were available in the main aisle. 

He wrote the archbishop of Baltimore and said “We were Jim Crowed. What made it worse it happened in a church named for the body of Christ.”

Father Clark said Turner understood the connection linking the Eucharist and how people treat one another in the body of Christ.

“We receive the body of Christ so that we can BE the body of Christ,” he said. 

Father Clark said Juneteenth is a day to celebrate freedom, Black achievement and excellence, Black resiliency, faith, love and service and to celebrate hope.

“We celebrate that we are the body of Christ, we are his hands and feet and eyes and we are the heart of Christ in the world today,” he said. “We are one body with many parts; one spirit –many gifts; one Lord – many ways to serve; one father with different workings.”

“And that is how God made us; different, diverse so that we learn that we need each other. We are incomplete without each other. We complement each other.”

“We celebrate the courage of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth,” the low-key Father Clark said with passion rising in his voice. “We celebrate the wisdom of Frederick Douglass, WB DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Carter Woodson; the poetry of Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Phillis Wheatley; the novels of Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Alex Haley, Ralph Ellison; the voice of Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, John Legend, Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, Billie Holliday, Beyonce; the acting of Sidney Portier, Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman; the legal minds of Thurgood Marshall, Vernon Jordan, Vanue Lecour and AP Tureaud; the leadership of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis, Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hammer; the holiness of Augustus Tolton, Henriette Delille, Mary Elizabeth Lange, Pierre Toussaint, Thea Bowman and Julia Greely; the uncommon faithfulness of Thomas Wyatt Turner, Father Charles Uncles, Ann Marie Beecroft, Sister Cora Billings; the athleticism of Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Steph Curry, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Walter Payton; the scholarship of Henry Louis Gates, Cornell West, Marion Wright Edelman.”

He went on to stress these achievements and excellence continue in today’s youth who will be future doctors, businessmen and women, inventors, teachers, engineers, priests, bishops and mothers and fathers. 

Father Clark also addressed whom he called his “White brothers and sisters,” saying they must be converted and turn away from three things. The first, he said, is rejecting the stereotypical depiction of the Black  community as presented by Hollywood, the press and culture which portray the community as poverty, drugs, crime and violence.

“It is so much more,” he said. “It is living, resilient, faith filled, courageous, creative, family focused, dedicated to education and achievement.”

He noted that if a White person has no personal contact with the Black community, then that person will only see what is portrayed by popular culture and has “no idea” of the daily life among that culture.

Secondly, he noted racism is not only interpersonal discriminating in crude and hurtful actions and words but is systemic in structure. He said discrimination plus the power to enforce it is racism. 

“Institutions by their policy and procedures deny people access to what is legitimately theirs solely because of the color of their skin,” he said. “If we believe in the body of Christ, we want to work to reform sinful structures so that all God’s children have what is rightfully theirs.”

In perhaps what were his most powerful words, Father Clark said the third component is that slavery is not something in the past that is over and done with. He said slavery has always found a way to morph itself, from slavery to Jim Crow, to the war on drugs, over policing of Black neighborhoods, overincarceration of Black men and women and voting restrictions.

“The vestiges of slavery persist through history to the present day,” he said “If we believe in the body of Christ, we want all of our brothers and sisters to be truly free.”

He also encouraged the White community to embrace the fact that change is possible, and everyone exercises the power to bring about change.

Immaculate Conception parishioner Glinda Lewis said she attended the Mass because the day is finally being honored nationally and is part of her history. 

“I do feel more hopeful and inspired,” she said. “(Father Clark) made us realize we are all one, and we just have to realize we all have something in common.”

Barbara Dunbar, also an ICC parishioner, said the message of Juneteenth is that everyone must stop and reflect on the future. 

“I felt like this was an opportunity to come out and have  some quiet time and to be able to do my reflection among the rest of my Christian community and really to receive the word of God,” she said.
Dunbar called Father Clark’s homily “exceptional” and added he “always hits the nail on the head.”

“He (included) everything in his message today,” she added. “He put a lot on our minds and in our hearts as well.”

Father Clark left the congregation with a simple but challenging message: “As we receive the body of Christ today, let us go out and BE the body of Christ to all our brothers and sisters.”