30th Sunday
White Mass
Basilica of the Assumption, Baltimore
October 26, 2025
A Word of Welcome
I am delighted to welcome to America’s First Cathedral healthcare professionals from around the Archdiocese. The special Mass we are celebrating is known as “The White Mass”, and takes its name from the white coats and outfits that doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals typically wear. This particular Mass is also sponsored by the Catholic Medical Association whose members dedicate themselves to respecting the God-given dignity of the patients they serve at every stage in the spectrum of life – from the moment of conception until natural death. They advocate for and uphold authentically Catholic ethical standards, seek to provide truly compassionate care, and work to ensure that healthcare is available to all, especially to those who are poor and live in underserved neighborhoods.
With us today are doctors and nurses as well as medical assistants, technicians, and administrators. They represent the four Catholic hospitals in the Archdiocese of Baltimore – Mercy Hospital, Ascension St Agnes, Good Samaritan, and UMMS-St. Joseph. They also serve in other healthcare institutions and practices located in Baltimore and its surrounding counties. Dear friends, we thank you for your leadership and service in the various fields of medicine that you represent with all their increasing challenges and complexities. At this Mass, we not only honor you and thank you, but we also pray for you as you fulfill your daily responsibilities. And with you, we reflect on your those weighty responsibilities through the lens of the Scripture readings just proclaimed. Let me suggest three points for reflection.
The Humility in the Practice of Medicine
The first point, humility in the practice of medicine, is drawn from the Gospel. As you recall, two individuals were praying in the temple area. One was a Pharisee, an expert in the Law of Moses. This individual displayed no lack of self-confidence as he boasted before God of his moral superiority. In fact, he spelled it out for God – he avoided sins like greed, dishonesty, and adultery. He fasted twice weekly and paid tithes on his income. To make sure God knew that he was better than others, he even pointed to the other person praying in the temple area, a tax collector, a publican, who kept his distance and begged for mercy: “O God, be merciful to me a sinner!”
As healthcare professionals, you are neither experts in the law nor tax collectors. But Jesus meant this parable to apply to everyone, for he wants to save us from the pride and arrogance to which all of us, myself included, are susceptible. Pride and arrogance take many forms, including the illusion that we are the owners and masters of our lives and of life itself. But we are neither the owners nor the masters of God’s gift of life, but rather its stewards and servants. It is this attitude of humility and reverence that permeates Catholic biomedical ethics: the patient before you was created, body and soul, in God’s image, and the life you seek to save or preserve is itself God’s gift. Thus, you reject medical procedures which, by their very nature, imply complete mastery over human life and the identity of persons – for example, procedures which terminate life at the beginning or the end, or which violate or impair the natural functioning of the body. So too you avoid dehumanizing forms of medicine that reduce all medical practice to technology, especially as artificial intelligence begins to play a dominant role. Thank you for your humble reverence before God and before his gift of life.
Care for the Poor and Catholic Healthcare
In the Book of Sirach, we learn of God’s reverence for the poor and distressed: I quote: “Though not unduly partial towards the weak, yet he hears the cry of the oppressed. He is not deaf to the wail of the orphan or the widow when she pours out her complaint.” Or, as the refrain of the Responsorial Psalm would have it, “The Lord hears the cry of the poor.”
In your work of caring for the sick, I am sure you often encounter the poor. The maladies that afflict all of us are amplified by poverty, whether it is the unwise decisions that poverty invites or the destructive forms of relief from poverty that are often sought. Many delay seeking medical help. Many are uninsured.
Catholic Social Teaching insists on the preferential option for the poor. In his newly released exhortation, “Dilexi te” (I Have Loved You), Pope Leo reminds us how much God truly does love the poor and urges us not to see the poor merely as a statistic or a problem to be solved. Indeed, the beauty of Catholic healthcare is its love for the poor. That has been its hallmark from its beginnings in the United States. Few people understand how much uncompensated medical care is provided by Catholic hospitals and by other healthcare institutions and facilities. This morning, I thank you for your service to the poor and marginalized.
Zeal for the Truth in the Practice of Medicine
Today’s reading from St. Paul’s 2nd Letter to Timothy directs our attention to yet a third quality proper to Catholic healthcare, namely, zeal for truth. As he approaches his martyrdom, St. Paul speaks of his zeal for the Gospel. He writes to Timothy: “I have competed well. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” No one probed and understood the Gospel more deeply than St. Paul and no one labored more strenuously for the Gospel than did he. Thus, St. Paul makes clear that his zeal is only for the authentic Gospel of Christ, not versions that were distorted or diluted, whether out of trickery or cowardice.
As Catholic healthcare professionals, you strive for excellence in the quality of the care you provide for your patients. But you also bring to those encounters, a deeper understanding of human dignity, and distinguish clearly between the treatments and procedures that enhance human dignity and those that violate it. But you recognize that even this is insufficient. For you advocate with understanding and zeal for quality healthcare guided by the highest ethical standards flowing from a truly adequate understanding of the dignity of the human person. You advocate for this in the institutions where you serve. Sometimes you advocate for this before the State Legislature – for example, when the legalization of assisted suicide is proposed. In these and in many other ways, you bear witness to the Gospel of life in a culture of death that is often forgetful and even adverse to sound ethical principles and practices.
A Brief Summation
Humility, love for the poor, zeal for the truth – three qualities drawn from the Scriptures and exemplified in your professional lives and in the healthcare institutions you represent. Thank you for your service. I entrust you to Mary, the Mother of God, Health of the Sick and ask God to bless you and keep you always in his love!