Tag: <span>Justice</span>

July 27, 2021July 26, 2021

Weeds and Wheat

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

We may unconsciously categorize the depiction of the Lord in the first reading as imperfect, proper to an Old Testament view of God:

“The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God,
slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity,
continuing his kindness for a thousand generations,
and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin;
yet not declaring the guilty guiltless,
but punishing children and grandchildren
to the third and fourth generation for their fathers’ wickedness!”

But in reality, this depiction perfectly describes the reality we live in as Christians, a reality brought to fulfillment with the coming of Jesus.

Jesus does not declare the guilty guiltless, and He has not chosen to remove the devastating effects of original sin from humanity with His coming–punishing effects that continue to pass from generation to generation.

But He is, above all, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, generation after generation; He forgives everyone who comes to Him.

And today’s gospel bears all this out. At the end of time, God does not declare the guilty guiltless; rather, evildoers are gathered like weeds and thrown into the fiery furnace.

Here we see the chasm that exists for eternity between those who have been weak and sinful, but have returned often to the well of God’s mercy, and those who choose willfully to persist in their sin, resisting all God’s invitations to conversion. The first may be confident, full of hope; the second are heading for a terrible destiny. It is confusing these two groups that often leads to a false depiction of mercy in our times. Our job as Christians, through our prayer, sacrifice, and counsel, is to help move others from the second group to the first.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to incorporate you, according to His own plan, into His beautiful drama of salvation, and offer Him your life for the salvation and sanctification of others.

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March 7, 2021February 23, 2021

God’s Whip

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

“For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their fathers’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation.”

This quote from the first reading sounds so–well, so Old Testament. This notion of a jealous God has been superseded in the New Testament, has it not?

Or maybe it has merely been superseded by late-twentieth-century superficiality and wishful thinking.

The Gospel passage from today does not contradict the theme of the first reading, but reinforces it, just as Jesus has not come to abolish the Law, but fulfill it (cf. Mt. 5:17). In this passage, Jesus is the very Incarnation of the jealous God depicted in the first reading.

There is a great lesson to be learned here if we ask ourselves: What is it that God, that Jesus, is jealous of? What stirs up His wrath? What leads Him to fashion a whip and start using it?

He is jealous of the welfare and happiness of His people. In His zeal for His Father’s house, He is zealous for the role that house plays in uniting the people of God to His Father, and He will not suffer that house to be turned into a stumbling block for that divine-human nexus.

We can forget that the human race has not been created for fulfillment in technology, nature, human friendships alone, with God as the stern overseer with His arms folded above, making sure we all play by the rules. The entire story arc of the Bible, which climaxes in Jesus’ mission, is about insertion of the human person into the dynamic of the Trinity–self-giving of divine persons, acceptance of that gift, union. It is from insertion into this dynamic, and this alone, that the human person is destined to find fulfillment.

Such was His jealousy for the exalted destiny of the human person, that Jesus became human to bear suffering and death.

Today’s gospel tells us that Jesus “did not need anyone to testify about human nature.
He himself understood it well.” God, who created our nature, established its destiny. And He is jealous of the fulfillment of that destiny.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Thank Jesus for your friendship with Him. Thank Him for the price He paid to establish it. And ask Him to help you to fulfill your role, and all the powerful potential He has given you upon gifting you with freedom, to help others reach that friendship as well.

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February 26, 2021February 10, 2021

Our Just Desserts

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

“If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?” This is what the psalm asks today.

And indeed, Jesus is very demanding in the gospel. Even anger in the heart, even verbal condemnation of another, is enough to incur God’s judgement.

And in the first reading, we learn that this judgement is the difference between eternal life and eternal death.

So what do we do, when we are aware that we sin often? “If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?”

The Protestants decided effectively to give up in this battle, at least as concerns its critical nature for salvation. They yield to the conviction of remaining forever corrupt, but Jesus covers them with His white mantle of salvation, thereby in effect hiding their corruption from the eyes of the Father. Thus it is that God does not “mark” their “iniquities.”

But we need not give up so fast. If we look closer, we also see in the first reading:

“If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed,
if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just,
he shall surely live, he shall not die.
None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him.”

Even if we sin often, if we continually turn back and sincerely repent from that sin, God does not “mark” our “iniquities,” but rather slowly works in us a profound transformation, by which even the tendency to sin is profoundly weakened. This, if we stay close to Him in prayer and in the sacraments.

Indeed, Proverbs tells us, “Though the just fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble from only one mishap.”

So what is your decision? To be just, or to be wicked? If it is to be just, then hold to that with confidence, avoiding sin and returning immediately to God when you have found, like St. Paul, that you have done what you hate. (cf. Rm. 7:15)

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus that your hope is not in your own virtue, but in His power, the power He exercised in saving us on the Cross. Tell Him that you embrace and accept His desire to transform you from the inside out into a profoundly holy person. Invite Him again to take over and transform your life.

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January 31, 2021January 20, 2021

A Mighty God

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Today’s readings are full of the power of God: of His serene and holy fury.

The admonition in the first reading, that those who prophesy an oracle that He has not commanded them to speak will surely die, should give pause to all of us who purport to speak in God’s name. It is not that we should not speak; rather, we must take care to remain united intimately with the vine through the sacraments and daily contemplative prayer, so that the fruit we bear may not spoil. This goes not only for priests and preachers, but for parents as well.

Then, in the gospel, we see witnesses awestruck as Jesus serenely but firmly commands the demon to come out of a possessed man. The witnesses may not realize it, but they are in awe before the living God.

Because of God’s infinite mercy toward those who approach Him with weakness but love–for example, St. Peter, St. Mary Magdalene–we who approach Him daily with the full and sincere gift of ourselves need not fear Him, flawed as we are.

But for all His seemingly endless patience with the affairs on earth, and bearing in mind His mercy, we must also take seriously the admonitions throughout Scripture. He is not a God to be toyed with, or to be taken lightly.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Contemplate God’s glory and power, signs of which we see in today’s readings. Praise Him for the unfathomable combination of His omnipotence and justice, and His goodness and love. Consider those who choose a path of indifference to God, in spite of His serious warnings; tell Jesus that you are willing to undergo whatever sufferings His path may bring you, offered for the sake of their conversion.

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