Father Serra Today, 7/4/1996

This is the first of the talks I gave at the annual Independence Day Oratory Program at Memorial Park in Claremont after I became Pastor of Our Lady of the Assumption.

T. Willard Hunter, Oratory Program 
July 4, 1996, Memorial Park, Claremont
Rev. Thomas Welbers

FATHER SERRA TODAY

In 1864, Congress invited each state to contribute two statues of prominent citizens for permanent display in the National Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol building.  With the nation divided by civil war and recovery, the states were slow to respond—some haven’t to this day.

In 1927, the State of California established a commission to select the subjects and arrange for the placement of its two monuments.  California’s two statues were completed, erected, and dedicated in the National Statuary Hall in 1931.  It is noteworthy that both subjects from California are towering religious figures who, it could be argued, precisely because they were religious figures, made the most significant and lasting contributions in shaping the California of today.  In addition, both left their mark in an amazingly brief period of time.

The two statues are of the Reverend Thomas Starr King and Padre Junipero Serra.

Thomas Starr King was a Unitarian minister who came to San Francisco from Boston in 1860.  In four short years he was credited by no less than Abraham Lincoln himself as single-handedly keeping California joined to the Union and halting the popular secessionist movement in California.  This by the power of his religious conviction and his preaching—and of course the dedication and action of his life giving power to his words.

This is an immensely significant piece of history.  Lincoln received only 28 percent of the vote in California in 1860, and the Confederate flag—not the American flag—was flown over the Plaza in Los Angeles on the Fourth of July, 1861!  Had California seceded, its immense gold resources would have gone exclusively to the Confederacy, and the outcome of the civil war could well have been very different.

Thomas Starr King died tragically young in 1864, just four years after he arrived in California.

Father Junipero Serra, California’s other representative in the National Statuary Hall, lived a hundred years earlier, and was a contemporary of our nation’s founding Fathers.  Two of his California missions, San Francisco and San Juan Capistrano, were founded in 1776.  He was also declared “Blessed” by Pope John Paul II in 1988.  This is the final step to canonization as a saint in the Catholic Church.

In Father Serra’s time, however, there was not yet any thought of California as a State in the Union.  Spain was actively extending its colonizing power and influence through Mexico to the west coast of the Americas.

Most of us are familiar with Serra’s contribution to the shape of our state on the map, as well as the arrangement of social living patterns.  The settlements that became cities that became major population centers all had their origin in the missions founded by Father Serra and his associates.  As a result, the majority of people in California today, whatever their faith, live in places that bear the names of Catholic saints.

Serra arrived in what was to become San Diego in 1769, at age 56—an age when some people I know are thinking about retirement.  In the fifteen years until his death in 1784 at age 71, he personally established 9 missions from San Diego to San Francisco.  He traveled over 10,000 miles, half by sea and half by land—usually on horseback rather than on foot, popular legend notwithstanding.  He suffered a chronic and painful infection of his foot and leg, as well as asthma, and of course, advancing age.  He left a mark upon the land, and upon the spirit of the people who were to come after him, that subsequent years were unable to completely erase.  Fifteen years—that’s less time than it takes to even start building a freeway through Claremont today!

Of course, controversy is generated by the simple fact that he—just like all of us—was a man of his time and his culture.  The fact is that the Spanish crown was bent on conquering and colonizing the Californias, as they had done in Mexico and much of South America.  (Of course, at that time the English crown was not exactly Mr. Nice Guy in other parts of the world!) And the fact is that native peoples did not always fare well under Spanish domination.  (Of course the American native peoples did not fare very well under English colonization!)

It is to Father Serra’s credit that many of the best elements of European civilization, and of course, Christianity, first came to California.  The environment of conquest and colonization is not exactly the most conducive to the spread of either culture or Christianity, and Serra consistently challenged the interference of military and civil functionaries in religious affairs as well as their frequent brutality towards the native peoples.

The greatness of Serra in these last fifteen years of his life when he so indelibly marked the beginnings of a California that we continue to experience, lay in his unconquerable will—he would never turn his back on anything he undertook.  Nicknamed “el Viejo”—the aged one—his small, burdened frame marched along, climbing over every obstacle—for the glory of God and the earthly and eternal well-being of peoples the rest of the world either ignored or exploited.

Serra’s story is a pioneer’s story—and it is our story.  In these days when the First Amendment separation of church and state is marked more by ambiguity than by clarity, and when there are still many among us whom people of power would rather ignore or exploit, it is good to have a hero who is also a saint in our nation’s Capitol.  May his spirit guide those whose decisions in that very building continue to shape our national destiny.

Rev. Thomas Welbers, Pastor
Our Lady of the Assumption Church
Claremont, California
July 4, 1997

Postscript: How soon we forget!  In 2006, Thomas Starr King's statue was unceremoniously removed from the Capitol's National Statuary Hall and replaced by Ronald Reagan.  In 2009 it was installed and rededicated in the Capitol Park in Sacramento.