Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. likely would have had much to say about the times in which we live today. Dr. King, who would have been 89 this year, was remembered at the archdiocese's annual Mass commemorating his birth and legacy Jan. 14 at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis.

"Here we are in 2018 ... I say to you that the lid has blown off, and blown off and been put back on, and covered and simmered, and blown off again in a world confusingly ... simultaneously losing and trying to find its way," noted homilist Father Art Cavitt, executive director of the St. Charles Lwanga Center and pastor of St. Nicholas Parish.

While technological advances are readily available in society today, people find themselves more like those in salvation history — wandering, discovering and being sidetracked from God's precepts.

"As the world is permeated by danger, by self-destruction by those '-isms' — racial and otherwise, which seem like a human addiction hard to break, hard to answer, hard to respond to, hard to talk about when it is so prevalent — we as a people have lost connection with divinity."

Reflecting on the legacy of another Civil Rights icon, Sister Antona Ebo, who died in November, Father Cavitt called on Massgoers to bring the precepts from the "old school" — recognizing our connection with God — and bring them into the "new school."

On his last night in Memphis, Dr. King reflected on feeling discouraged living with the threats, abuse and criticism — sometimes from his own people — but yet somehow the Holy Spirit revived his soul once again.

"Dr. King might as well have been talking about the Lamb of God," Father Cavitt noted. He encouraged everyone, including the teens recognized that day as Model of Justice Awardees, not to be discouraged by the madness in this world.

"When we the believers magnify the Lamb of God in what we say and in what we do — then indeed the dream lives," he said.