By Communications Department - Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily during the Vigil Mass at Visitation Parish in Miami, during the annual Unity Mass hosted by the archdiocesan Office for Black Catholic Ministry on July, 19, 2025.
The theme of this Mass, organized by the Office of Black Catholic Ministry, is simply “unity.” An important theme given the sharp divisions and polarizations in our nation and our world today.
In his last encyclical issued in October 2020, Fratelli Tutti, on fraternity and social friendship, the late Pope Francis called the world once again to consider the common good and to strive for unity based on fraternal charity or brotherly love. The Scripture readings today are about hospitality, which is certainly an expression of fraternal charity – we see the hospitality of Abraham entertaining three mysterious persons; and then the hospitality of Martha and Mary in receiving Jesus into their home.
If you want to know real hospitality, authentic fraternal charity, go to simple folk, poor folk.
I remember when I was a parish priest at Notre-Dame d’Haiti, the doorbell rang one evening and a Haitian cab driver was there with two people, also Haitians, whom he picked up some place in Miami Beach. The two people’s clothes were still wet from the ocean waters. They had been dropped by a go-fast boat, probably from the Bahamas, hailed a cab (and most cab drivers then and now were Haitians) and he brought them to me because the paper with the address they wanted to go to was illegible because it had gotten wet and the cab driver couldn’t make out the address. So, he left them with me.
Next door at the school we had ESL classes going, and so I asked them what place in Haiti they were from, and I told them to follow me into the school. I went from classroom to classroom asking, “anybody here from this place?”. After one or two classrooms, somebody said yes. And so, I said, “these people are from your area, take them home with you and help them find their people.” And the man did. Here you saw fraternal charity, here was hospitality, here was an example of solidarity with the vulnerable by one who was probably pretty vulnerable himself.
In today’s first reading, when three mysterious persons appear at the door of his tent, Abraham welcomes them unreservedly.
Those three mysterious people might have been the Blessed Trinity; if not, they were surely messengers, angels sent by God, who blessed Abraham with the good news that his aged wife would give him a son. In the letter to the Hebrews 13:2 we read, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
Today’s gospel reading is paired with the reading from Genesis because it is also about hospitality, the hospitality shown to Jesus by two sisters, Mary and Martha.
Last week’s gospel reading with its parable of the Good Samaritan emphasized “love of neighbor”; today’s gospel could rightly be said to emphasize “love of God” in the person of Jesus.
And the point of today’s gospel reading is that before we can act rightly towards our neighbor, we must first listen to God’s word. This is why Jesus tells Martha that Mary has chosen the better part. Martha in her anxiousness to welcome Jesus, allowed herself to get distracted by the details and forgot what all her busyness was supposedly about, namely Jesus.
In Mary, we see a true disciple who greets the Lord with hospitality. Remember when Jesus talked about the Word of God as a seed, he described the good soil as those who “hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience.” That’s Mary; Martha exemplifies another response to the word, those who are “choked by worries” so much that the word cannot bear fruit.
So, the unity we seek must find its source in the Word of God. If we are not right with God, it’s hard to see how we can be right with our neighbor. If we believe rightly, then we can act rightly: orthodoxy leads to orthopraxis. Our unity with others must stem from our union or our unity with God. In writing Fratelli Tutti, the Pope wanted to remind humanity of an important truth: that we belong to one another.
“Unity based on fraternal charity” means we reject a concept of unity based narrowly on our tribe, or our political ideologies or personal self-interests; but like the Good Samaritan (which was last week’s gospel) we need to recognize the inherent dignity of all individuals, the need for solidarity with the vulnerable, and the pursuit of a more just and peaceful world. To work for “unity based on fraternal charity” is a challenge – for we live in a world of fragile peace and broken promises; here in South Florida we live surrounded by islands of pain: Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua. Venezuela. We see unity fractured by the lack of fraternal charity as evidenced in a persistent racism, in xenophobia, the fear of the stranger; we see unity broken in the indifference towards the homeless; we see that unity fractured by an economy that works for some – and very well for some – and not so well for many others, as they are priced out of their homes where they have lived for many years. When political leaders gathered in front of cages at a hastily constructed detention center they named “Alligator Alcatraz” and made light of the fear and anxieties of those to be detained there, can we say that “we belong to one another,” that the inherent dignity of another is recognized?
Jesus came into the world that sin had turned upside down; he lived, died, and rose again to show us how to live right-side up in this upside-down world and thus give a witness to what a reconciled and reconciling world could look like. Our unity is in Christ Jesus, for we are made one in Him in whose Body and Blood we share.
We belong to one another.
