A Spirituality of Justice is focused in these important
elements of faith. First, in the scriptural covenants; second, in the virtues
and the sacraments; and third, in the life of the church. Let me speak about
all three. There are three important covenants that are part of our Judea
Christian spirit. The first covenant is the covenant with Abraham wherein God
enters into a relationship with Abraham to do two things. The first, to show
him that he has value enough for God to be in relationship with him. And
secondly, where God convinces Abraham that his progeny will sustain a continued
relationship.
In a very real way, the covenant of Abraham in relationship to
justice is what establishes the basic dignity of human creation. It celebrates
that interaction between the creator and his creation, and allows that dignity
to find focus, not just in this isolated life of Abraham but also in the
descendants that God promises will be as numerous as all of the stars in the
sky. So the first covenant that speaks to us at all about the link between
justice and our relationship with God is the covenant of Abraham, and it speaks
to us about the dignity of the human person. The second covenant is the
covenant with Moses. That covenant made in the process of Exodus. In helping
people move from a reality of slavery to a condition of freedom, and to have to
deal with purgation along the way. It’s a covenant that also focuses and shapes
the reality of law and order as it relates to the lives of people. The Mosaic
Covenant is one certainly that cherishes the gift of freedom that belongs to
the children of God. That we are not to be people who live in oppression, but
rather people who with arms open, are able to relate to the presence and the
power of God freely. And also in that freedom to recognize responsibility:
responsibility to the God whom we worship and responsibility to each other. So
the Mosaic Covenant adds those two other layers to the spirituality of justice.
Freedom from oppression as part of the human condition, and the
co-responsibility that we share not only in our relationship with God, but in
our relationship with each other. And the third covenant from which justice is
born is the covenant of Jesus. The new covenant. The covenant that finds itself
focused in underlying human worth so much that it is worthy of the gift of
salvation. Underlining human reality so much that it teaches us that our
purpose in existence is our orientation to the reality of God in our world and
beyond this world. It teaches us in very real ways that this basic worth we
have as humans, that comes from the covenant of Abraham, is expanded to help us
see that that worth comes from our ability to reflect the very presence and
power of God. We become the reflection of God’s presence in the world. Jesus’
life and ministry is a constant challenge for people to understand that. If you
want to look for the kingdom, don’t look up there. Look right here. Find it in
your own heart and find it in the hearts of others. It raises the dignity of
people even more, and it becomes an important focal point in terms of where
justice is born and how justice relates to our spirituality. There is another
angle from the covenant of Jesus that gives a birthing to justice and it has to
do with Jesus’ mission and ministry of forgiveness and peace. Because in all of
his healing miracles, in all of his calling people to the kingdom, what he’s
trying to do with all of that is create a particular way of looking at the way
life should be lived, kingdom living, and gives us an example that the way
humans relate one to another, the way we relate to our world, is in that
balance that is best expressed by the healing that comes from forgiveness and
by stepping out in the peace of God that surrounds us each day. So justice is
born in the covenants. The covenant of Abraham, the covenant of Moses, and the
covenant of Jesus. And in that birthing it challenges us to some very basic
realities that we are called to honor and respect. The dignity of all people.
The reality of human freedom. The co-responsibility that we share one for
another, and the challenge of the kingdom that calls us to look at ourselves
and at each other in very particular, loving ways, but also call and challenge
us to the recognition of peace and healing and forgiveness in each of our
lives. Justice is born of those covenants.
Justice is nurtured by two other realities. Justice is
nurtured by the life of virtue and by the life of the sacraments. For Catholic
believers that becomes a very important focus in the way that we spiritually
bring justice into our life and living. Justice is nurtured by the virtues.
Specifically let me talk about the three biggies that we stumble over a lot.
Faith, hope, and charity. Justice, is nurtured by faith, because faith gives us
insight into the reality of God’s presence in the world, and once we have
insight into the reality of God’s presence in the world, one of the things we
recognize is that God’s presence is not a unique presence. Rather, God is
present in the lives and the hearts of all people. In all of his creation. When
we are compelled to uncover the presence of God in other’s lives, that’s when
we find ourselves in the work of justice, and it’s fate that leads us to that.
Through the use of the gift of faith, through the recognition of God’s presence
in the human face, in human reality. The next step we have to take is that God
is just not present in the comfortable faces around us but rather God is also
very present in the broken pieces of human reality, and sometimes we can best
see and experience his face there. So faith compels us to see the face of God,
and when we see the face of God, we begin to recognize how there are no
perimeters. No limits to where this face is expressed in the world, and our
response then to the face of God in the world takes us beyond the simple
everyday. It takes us beyond the comfortable and into the realities of life
that challenge justice, that challenge mercy, that challenge compassion, that
challenge kindness. Faith becomes one of the ways that justice can be nurtured,
and hope is another. Another important virtue or value for us as believers is
to recognize that what we find ourselves in the midst of is not the whole
story, and what we find ourselves experiencing in our life and living is not
the only experience. Because as believers we know that our story began long
before us, and our story will continue into an eternity. When we are able to
recognize that then first and foremost, it becomes easier for us to deal with
the crises of everyday life. That’s what hope is. It’s the ability to stand in
the midst of those kinds of realities that continue to move on. Hope is that
thing that keeps us from being ground down in the dirt for long. Allowing us to
bounce back up in relationship to the things that we encounter. I’ve told this
story before about my nephew when he was young. My brother and I share a
passion for model trains and so we went to a toy store one time to look at a
group of model trains in a toy store in the mall in Philadelphia, where my
brother lives, and as my brother and I are mesmerized by these glass cases in
front of us, his son, who at that point was three-years-old, all of a sudden
became a distant voice somewhere else in the toy store, and along with that
voice there were a variety of other unfamiliar noises, and when my brother
realized that, he started looking for his son in the toy store and found him at
the end of an aisle with one of those air-filled bop bags. You put air in it
and stand in the bottom and you hit it and it goes down and bounces back up
again. We had found him over there. He had hit the thing and it went down to
the ground and it popped back up again. He had taken both of his fists and hit
it with both of his fists. It went back down to the ground and it popped right
back up again. The noise we heard was he had jumped on top of that thing,
[Laughter] and had it wrestled down on the ground, and when my brother pulled
him off, my nephew’s eyes got real big because that thing just popped right
back up. We left the toy store at that point. We were walking down the mall and
as we’re walking down the mall, my nephew says to my brother, "Daddy, are
you mad at me?" and my brother said, "Well, I’m disappointed because
you know before we went into the store I told you how I expected you to act,
and you didn’t act the way I expected you to." We walked a little further
and my nephew said to his father, "Well daddy, you shouldn’t be mad at me
because I learned something in there." And my brother said to his son,
"Well, what did you learn in there?" And my nephew looked up at his
father and as serious as he could be he said, "Daddy, I learned that
there’s someone inside that thing that keeps standing up." [Laughter]
That’s what hope is. Hope is the recognition that there’s someone on the inside
of us that keeps standing up, and once we come to grips with that in our own
lives, then that becomes part of the proclamation of our lives into other
lives. Especially those who are ground down to the dirt. Especially those that
need to be picked up so that they can bounce back up again to whatever reality
they need to. Hope is one of the things that nurtures justice. Because once we
are able to hope, we can become the catalyst for that same reality in the lives
and the hearts of others. And the third virtue that nurtures hope is the virtue
of charity. Charity is still the foundation for justice.
For many of us it’s
the entrée into it. It’s the first step in our understanding of what just
living can really be. Because we have at least come to a recognition that we
have the obligation to care for the needs and the lives of others. To bring
them to their basic dignity. To allow them to share in that common respect, and
when we do that through our volunteer time, through money that we might give,
bit by bit that charity opens for us the opportunity both in mind and heart to
begin to reflect further about the situations that people find themselves in.
To finally come to the realization that charity doesn’t solve problems, but it
can be the opportunity to cause the kind of reflection and the gathering
together of people to move beyond charity to the root causes of the problems
that we reach out to serve other in, and in that way charity becomes an entrée
into the ministry of justice. It allows us to make commitments in our life
deeper than just simple acts of charity, but rather that deal at the very root
with issues that cause a disruption in that shared basic human dignity and
respect to which we are called as God’s creation. So the first set of things
that nurtures justice is living the life of the virtue. Faith, hope and
charity. You can pick any virtue that you particularly like yourself, and you
might be able to find a way where that is an entrée to continue to keep the
challenge of justice before you. But I want to talk for a minute about the
second thing that nurtures justice besides the virtues, and that’s the life of
the sacraments. For us we believe that the sacraments are an opportunity to
have a touch point with the very presence of God. Opportunities for us to
touch, to see, the very face of God in certain realities in our life as church,
and any time we see the face of God, we are always moved to action beyond that
encounter. And so the sacraments become a real important opportunity to nurture
justice so that we can move on in its ministry. I want to talk about one
sacrament in particular, and that’s the sacrament of the Eucharist. Because in
a very real way, the Eucharist and justice live very comfortably together in
the same house, and are important adjuncts in terms of the spiritual life that
we share. The Eucharist for us is an opportunity to witness the breaking and
sharing of Christ’s presence among us. But more than that, the Eucharist is
also an opportunity for us as believers, to accept the challenge to become what
we eat. That is really the essence of our catholic theology of the Eucharist,
and the greater miracle. The miracle is not so much that Jesus comes to us in
the form of bread and wine. The greater miracle is that Jesus then challenges
us to go out and do and be the same. That what is broken and shared at this
table is something that we then need to table with others. We need to bring our
lives and hearts into the lives and hearts and others so that we can break
Christ’s presence there open. So that we can pour out Christ’s presence for
them. The sacrament of the Eucharist stands as an important nourishment for us
because it teaches us what we are to become, and in teaching us what we are to
become, it challenges us then to take that out into the world. Those of you who
are old enough to remember, when the mass shifted from its Latin text to its
English text, might remember that one of the things we had a hard time getting
over was the closing response of the mass. As we practice all this new English
stuff and we fumble over some of these words and then we got to the ending and
it was, "The Lord be with you and with your spirit. May almighty God bless
you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit," and then the priest would say,
"The mass has ended. Go in peace," and we all say, "Thanks be to
God." And we laughed when we said that. It seemed like such an odd thing
to say, although half the people were saying, "Oh, thanks be to God."
[Laughter] But in fact the reason that that response was such an important
response, to give thanks to God that this is over, is because we can leave this
place now and become what the Eucharist has been for us. The very word we use
to describe the Eucharist, "mass", comes from the Latin verb, miseo,
to be sent. Because the mass was called "the sending". What was
important ultimately about the mystery celebrated was that we took that mystery
with us and were sent out to be that mystery in the world, and when you take
the presence of Christ to break and to pour out into the lives of others, you
nurture the reality of justice. You sensitize yourself to it, and you feed
others with the possibility of it. So justice is born in the covenants.
Justice is nurtured in the life of the virtues and the life
of the sacraments, and justice lives in the reality of the church. That’s the
third element that I’d like to speak of. Justice lives in the reality of the
church. And when I talk about church, I’m using Lumen Gentium’s notim of
church, which is a much broader focus than a building or even a particular
denominational focus. But rather church is described in Lumen Gentium as that
whole struggling people that seeks to put into perspective an understanding of
who God is and of who Jesus is in God, and of who we are in Jesus. And it
encompasses all of those who have the fullness of that mystery, as well as
those who might live far away from that mystery, but still try as best as they
are able to understand the Godhead. One of the images I’ve used a lot here is
to talk about the church’s floor covering. These floors have been replaced
once. They’re about to be replaced a second time. So floor covering is
something I’m very familiar with and if you would gather a group of people from
different churches together and ask them to describe their denomination as
floor covering, some would be wall-to-wall carpeting. Some would be linoleum
tile. Some would be very plush and deep. Some would be very colorful. But the
catholic church would have to describe itself as a throw rug. A throw rug that
has an intimate design in the middle, and a lot of fringe all around the end.
Because when we talk about church, we don’t just talk about who we are
denominationally. We talk about maybe those in the center having the fullness
of the revelation, those who can call themselves catholic, but for us, church
is much bigger than that. It’s all of those who believe in Jesus. Beyond that,
all of those who have a revelation of God. Beyond that, all of those who have a
revelation of something beyond themselves that is all they’ve been given to
believe in, and all of that is church, and justice lives in that context. In
the interconnection between people who are able to take down religious, ethnic,
racial, social, cultural, sexual barriers and begin to recognize that what God
started in that covenant with Abraham is something that is intended for
everyone who fits on that throw rug, whether it’s in the center or the fringe
at the farthest end. Justice lives in the church when we understand church from
that perspective. It encompasses all of those who struggle with the meaning of
their lives and the essential meaning of the world in which they live, and we
are called to an obligation to journey with them. To reflect with them. To be
in solidarity and companionship with them as we continue along the way. So
spirituality in justice is something that I believe that we continue to unfold
for yourselves by looking at those three realities. That justice has a birth.
Justice has something that nurtures it. Justice has an end in terms of where it
has lived, and that birth comes from the covenants that we share because of our
religious courage. It is nourished and nurtured in the realities of our
Christian life, the life of virtues, and the life of the sacraments, and it has
an ongoing life in the recognition of who we are as God’s people, and the
commitment that we make one with another to recognize that we have been
cemented together in God’s love, and that cement is thicker and stronger than
any we have ever used for any project we’ve ever been involved in. So I give
you that focus as an overall spirituality of justice. To reflect for yourselves
what your own appreciation is of those covenants, of what it is that nurtures
justice, and how justice is lived in your own life. You might find other
[inaudible] parts of that spirituality that are particular to yourself, but if
you really want to know how to develop the spirituality of justice, how to keep
it balanced in your life, those three realities are a very good starting points,
and very good focuses for any believer to begin to shape an understanding of
how the reality of our faith imbues and informs the justice that we live.
Father Frank originally presented this in a lecture at the
Diocesan Peace and Justice Conference May 4, 2002.