My First Juneteenth

I only learned last year about how, after the Emancipation Proclamation, it took two and a half years until notice was given in Texas that henceforth wages were to be paid for all work—though the new freedmen were instructed to remain where they were (!) and warned of penalties for "idleness." Never mind those attempts to maintain as much of the status quo as possible: Freedom was established! 

That is something to celebrate:

• Even if your ancestors were not held in bondage.
• Even if your ancestors arrived in the US decades after all this.
• Even, no, especially if your ancestors were, on June 19 1865 definitively delivered from the risk of thinking they could own other human beings and control their families and their futures.

Juneteenth is a national holiday that is so full of meaning that Catholics could make a retreat about it: "For freedom Christ has set us free," St Paul insisted (Gal 5:1). We can take that in a spiritual sense (interior freedom is a rare and precious commodity!), and then make it very this-world practical, because men, women and children are still being bought and sold in the modern world (we just don't call it slavery). 

May the Lord inspire us, this first national Juneteenth, to "proclaim liberty throughout all the land," and every land. Because "for freedom Christ has set us free."