By Christian Bentley
Pax Christi USA Young Adult Caucus
Josephite Lay Associate
Black History Month, celebrated every year in February, is never only about the past. It is about memory that breathes, history that speaks, and faith that insists on truth. It is about asking what kind of people we are becoming and what kind of nation we are willing to build.
As a Black American whose family has lived in the same town since the 1700s, I carry both pride and pain in my bones. My ancestors tilled soil they did not own. They worshipped a Christ preached to them in chains. They endured laws that named them property, then three-fifths, then “separate but equal,” then “criminal,” then “suspect.” And yet they endured.
In this Season of Faithful Witness, a newly organized national Catholic movement, we are being called, as Catholics in communion, to stand publicly and prayerfully for the Gospel’s unambiguous defense of human dignity. That call extends beyond any single policy or headline. The fear surrounding ICE enforcement in immigrant communities is real. Families are living with anxiety and instability. But the violations of human dignity being perpetrated by our government stretch wider than one agency or one issue. They touch our criminal legal system, our treatment of those who are poor, people who are mentally ill, incarcerated, or new arrivals to this country.
We have seen this pattern before. When the English arrived and labeled Native peoples “savages.” When Irish and Italian Catholics were deemed unfit for life in this country. When Chinese workers built railroads but were excluded from belonging. When Japanese Americans were interned. When Filipinos were segregated. When Black bodies were enslaved, lynched, redlined, over-policed, and mass-incarcerated. The rhetoric shifts; the target shifts. But the dehumanization repeats.
What changes today? Why is this moment any different?
Our salvation history tells us that God is not neutral in the face of oppression. From Exodus to the prophets, from the Magnificat to Calvary, God hears the cry of the poor. Jesus Himself was criminalized by the state. Executed as a threat to public order. The Resurrection is God’s decisive “No” to an empire’s final word.
The saints before us knew this. St. Josephine Bakhita survived slavery and proclaimed forgiveness. St. Óscar Romero stood against state terror and paid with his life. Servant of God Thea Bowman sang truth into rooms that did not expect to hear it. Their witness was not partisan; it was evangelical. They understood that fidelity to Christ will always put us at odds with systems that deny human dignity.
My own salvation story includes wrestling with mental illness that went unnamed for years. In a society that often criminalizes mental health crises rather than treating them, I learned how easily suffering can be misunderstood as a threat. I saw how racism compounds vulnerability within our judicial system. And yet, even there, even in confusion, stigma, and fear—God was at work. Not erasing the suffering, but transforming it.
That is the mystery we proclaim: God works through our suffering for glory. Not glory as triumphalism, but the glory of story. The glory of surviving what was meant to break us. The glory of communities that refuse to let despair have the last word. The glory of Hope and Joy.
Hope and Joy, this is my message this Black History Month.
Hope and Joy that we will publicly live out our faith and prayer as Catholics in this Season of Faithful Witness. Hope and Joy that standing together in communion will embolden us to shape our nation’s morality toward what it can be. Hope and Joy that we can interrupt cycles of dehumanization with the stubborn insistence that every person bears the image of God.
This moment is different because we are not alone. We are connected, to our ancestors, to the saints, to one another, to Christ crucified and risen. The Spirit is stirring a generation unwilling to separate worship from justice, Eucharist from encounter, prayer from public witness.
Black history is the history of this country. It is Catholic history. It is salvation history unfolding in real time.
And so we witness not in despair, but in defiant joy. We organize not in hatred, but in communion. We pray not as escape, but as fuel.
Hope and Joy that change is coming. Hope and Joy that we are part of that change. Hope and Joy that love, rooted in Christ, will outlast every empire.
In this Season of Faithful Witness, may we be found faithful. And may our faith be visible.