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By Austin Hatfield
Life as a Catholic follows a natural rhythm. Our daily rhythm, at a minimum, follows morning prayer, evening prayer, and grace before meals. Weekly, this daily rhythm culminates on Sunday, with a day of worship, rest, and contemplation. Beyond that, the Church also celebrates numerous holidays at different times throughout the year: Christmas, Easter, All Saints Day, Ash Wednesday, etc. The Church gives us this rhythm to imbue our daily lives with grace. Without each of these constant reminders, we humans become distracted and grow stale in our faith.
And no truer is this fact than with lawyers. Out of all professions, lawyers are among the most distracted. Every day (often including weekends) we face competing demands from our clients, colleagues, judges, administrators, and superiors. Most of these demands are significant and require our full attention—not to mention the demands from our families, which are often even more compelling. Amongst this cacophony, it’s easy for a lawyer to lose the calm, steady rhythm of our faith.
Soon morning prayer gives way to inbox notifications; evening examens are replaced with late nights at the office; grace before meals is forgotten during breakfast in the car, lunch at the desk, and dinner after family bedtimes; and Saturday confession and Sunday Mass are overshadowed by Friday afternoon emergencies. As a result, over time we lose sight of the purpose of our vocation.
Thankfully, there are tools (or instruments) at our disposal to maintain the Church’s steady rhythm in our careers and to prevent us from losing touch with God’s grace.
On an individual level, we can combine our religious calendar with our professional ones; adorn our offices with icons, crucifixes, and artwork; choose to draw boundaries that protect our prayer time; and ask for saintly intercession in our work. On a community level, we can share our faith openly, check in on one another, hold each other accountable, and meet regularly to remind each other of our duties. Over time, these small interruptions turn into a new rhythm of life.
And we can start all these things now. On Saturday, October 12, at 5:30 p.m., Louisville will celebrate the Red Mass at the Cathedral of the Assumption. The Red Mass is celebrated by Catholic lawyers nationwide and held annually nearest the commencement of the Supreme Court’s term. This year, Louisville’s Red Mass will be said at the conclusion of the Catholic Bar Association’s 2024 National Convention. The CBA is a national guild that helps lawyers rediscover the purpose of their vocation and provides a supportive network of Catholic professionals. The Louisville Catholic Bar Association is a local chapter of the CBA, which meets regularly throughout the year for the same purpose. This year, the CBA’s National Convention will be held in Louisville and bring together Catholic lawyers from across the country for fellowship, networking opportunity and lectures, including CLE credit. The National Conference will culminate with Louisville’s annual Red Mass, and while the history and significance of the Red Mass is well known, this year, it can serve an additional purpose: in offering our vocations to God through the sacrifice of the Mass, each of us can begin to calm the noise of our profession through the steady, life-giving rhythm of the Church. As a community, the Red Mass can be our first concrete step towards subordinating our work under God’s timing rather than our own.
For this purpose, we invite all members of the legal community—lawyers, judges, professors, staff—as well as laymen, to attend Louisville’s Red Mass and begin the sanctification of the legal profession in Louisville.
Austin Hatfield is an attorney at Frost Brown Todd LLP.
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