You can read the whole thing here. Teaching first-year law students, I was particularly struck by this paragraph:The proclamation of the Word of God today then invites us to invite the Holy Spirit for an action of revivifying and cleansing memories, opening us up anew to a deeper impulse of the Lords work among us. Though the invitation is received actively, it is an activity of receiving, dare I say, an act of contemplation. The legal profession is one of the first of human activities and bodies of human knowledge to receive the word and accolade: Profession. Its systematic knowledge has always been technical and nowadays the increasing specialization within the law is dizzying. Such wondrous formal knowledge frequently becomes semi-mechanical and distancing. A person can forget that the basis of that knowledge is something much more natural in the human condition, that the law and lawyers are around because justice among human beings is always an issue. There are always smoldering wicks and bruised reeds needing our human attention, an attention that cries out and says that even sophisticated knowledgeable human lawyers need reminding, need a purifying divine fire from the Lord, both in their personal lives and in their profession itself. It is that reality that brings us to praise, reflection, and prayer this day.

Cathleen Kaveny is the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor in the Theology Department and Law School at Boston College.

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