Sermon: The First Duty

Posted on 11 Aug 2024 @ 4:36pm by Lieutenant JG Hovar Kov

1,462 words; about a 7 minute read

[ON]

It was Sunday morning (ship's time), and Hovar was a completely different person. Instead of their friendly neighborhood chaplain, there stood Father Hovar, wearing the traditional Roman vestments and praying out of the Saint Matthew's missal. It was part of his tradition's pastoral duty to offer the Mass, even if there was no one present. Usually, he would recite the sacred office in his quarters. Again, Sunday's were different.

Those who wanted the full experience showed up when he showed up and set up the Holodeck to be a simple chapel. A small bell rang when the Mass started. As he recited the words, he came to the point where the sermon would start. He went to the center of the alter, kissed it, and then took off his maniple from his arm and placed it on the alter.

Going to his PADD, he grabbed it and he tapped the commands to start recording the sermon. Looking up, those who wanted to listen to the sermon could venture to the Holodeck at that time, and leave at their own desire.

"Friends,

We have all heard many words from all kinds of people throughout our lives. We hear them from our parents and our relatives, our teachers and social leaders, even among our friends. As a Chaplain, preaching is, by its very nature, one of words be it written or spoken. We practice writing sermons, we practice reciting sermons. Bishop once listened to a sermon during my formative years and he would constantly look at the clock that was behind us. It left us nervous to say the least.

At the end of my sermon, he asked me why does he look at the clock when we are reciting our sermons and if he was nervous or pressed for time. He said he wasn't nervous, rather, he wanted to time us when he figured we made our final point. You see, as Bishop Sheen once said, "there are two parts of a speech, a beginning and an end. And the goal is to bring those two parts as closely together as possible.

And so with all respect to time, I wish to talk about: duty. As a Chaplain, my duty is to the spiritual care of everyone on board this vessel. The Galileo is my parish, and the crew are my parishioners. I am outside of the chain of command; I am ineligible to take the Bridge Officer's exam. I also have a duty to your safety. Many chaplains of old have lost their lives saving the wounded, names that are edged in Earth history.

While my duty as a Chaplain is sin, my secondary duty as a Star Fleet officer is to be as tough and competent as everyone else on board. I am trained as any other member of Star Fleet in the competencies as set forth by my superiors. That is my duty to not just the Captain, but to all of you. I challenge any one of you to respect someone in a position of trust to not be able to do the bare minimum.

That is just my duty. Any one of you can say the same about your positions. Think of First Officer, the Chief of Boat, the Operations Manager, the Chief of Security and Engineering, the Doctor, the nurses. Everyone on board this ship has a duty to the ship. Their duties are not any more or less significant role to play on board this ship. Even our Captain is bound to her duties, which is the safety of her crew, her missions, and her ship. In that respect, we are all equal. Captain Tarin is the first among equals, and the most accountable, again in that respect.

However, as an esoteric, I do not believe in what is written down. Duty, honor, vigilance, competency, none of those traits can be just written down on paper. They can only reside when they are written in all of your hearts, but not just for your own sake. Our duty as members of Star Fleet are meaningless. Instead, our duty lies by a higher calling, a higher standard that is unobtainable by anyone who does not believe they can do it. We can get close, we can strive for it, but it will always fall short somehow.

Fredrick Douglas spoke these words: "Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."

Friends, the very mission of the Galileo is to oppose such ignorance. The whole mission of Star Fleet, in Fredrick Douglas' words is to ensure justice prevails, to ensure prosperity triumphs, to ensure there is no room for ignorance, and no member of society looks down upon others. Certain societies, of our acquaintance, are very much not in line with what Mr. Douglas, and the Federation, would see as objective founding principles.

We can look to the Dominion, the Breen, the Borg, the Romulans, and my own Klingon kin, as to what their founding principles are. Their principles lie on materialistic ventures. Many still seek, as they have sought: territory, power, and control. They have performed acts which have acted like a gangrene on the peace and prosperity of not just the Alpha Quadrant, but on the whole galaxy. After all, the only cure for an appendage corrupted by gangrene is amputation.

My friends, as much as we like to think otherwise, even the Federation suffers in that amputation. We not only have to sever our peaceful mission to do unto our enemies as they wish to do unto us, we run the risk of having to become better explorers to the science of war than we do the science of exploration. The Federation has proven that if we abandon our objective principles, everyone who wears a Star Fleet uniform becomes twice the sons and daughters of Hell as those who attacked us.

This is where the Federation, and Star Fleet as a whole, must remember our objective principles every time we put on this uniform. Our duty is not to this ship, our missions, each other, or Star Fleet, or even the Federation! Ships erode, missions become footnotes, us mortals die, Star Fleet falls, the Federation can erode into ruin; that is the way of life. It is objective principles, my friends, that never die. This, is our first, and only duty.

This is why we wake up for watch when we are exhausted. This is why we adhere to the chain of command and subject ourselves to Star Fleet regulations, and the consequences of breaking them. This is why our Captain wishes for us to be the toughest crew in Star Fleet. This is why our Captain demands our competence to ensure that we explore safely and with thoroughly.

This is why we must look to each other as brothers and sisters before any other rank. While we are all subject to regulation and the chain of command, we must rely on each other like a family whose standards of duty to each other go above and beyond by those who shares the blood that flows through our veins.

Our duty is guided by principles that goes beyond our flesh or our reasoning. It goes beyond anything that could be measured or quantified by the Scientific Method. For those among us who are non-religious, our egos, which lives in our subconsciousness, must submit to our duty. For us religious, our pride and our vanity must also submit to our duty. All of us, whether you are the Captain or the Crewman Apprentice, especially the civilian personnel among us, must remember that our duty comes from sound, objective first principles.

In conclusion, if you are dismayed in your duties, or if you feel like your duties are meaningless, know that it is not meaningless. We are the vanguards of the Federation, the flagship of our principles as the Federation. No matter where we come from or the circumstances of our birth, we all share our first duty. We will be tried, we will be tested; in the end, we will prevail.

Amen."

He grabbed his PADD again, stopped the recording, and turned around back to the alter to resume the service. Those who wanted to leave could leave at that time. Placing the maniple back on his arm, he took a deep breath, placed the PADD back on the alter in a place that would not get in the way, and went back to perform his first duty: the execution of his sacred office.

[OFF]

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