First Sunday of Lent
Every Sunday in this space we’ll offer a chance to dive a little deeper with Scripture and the Open Wide Our Hearts (OWOH) pastoral letter, with reflections by Fr. James Downey.
When the USCCB published Open Wide Our Hearts […] A Pastoral Letter Against Racism in late 2018, the Catholic Church in the United States sought to thrown greater light upon the issue of and the issues surrounding racism. Whether it be founded upon the belief of the superiority of one race over another or the inferiority of one race under another, racist action is sin against that second greatest commandment: Love Your Neighbor.
Certainly, it’s a lack of love (the divinely-ordered and -inspired desiring the good of the other), but particularly it’s a lack of justice. One problem we have currently is that a lot of things get labeled as “just” or “unjust” without having a good concept of what Justice is. It’s mere mention can conjure up any number of things including blindfolded balance-wielding women, social movements, political associations, Batman, or Judge Judy.
If we want a good idea or definition of Justice, the most-easily remembered contender comes to us from Plato through Aristotle, Cicero, Justinian, and Aquinas, and that is: Justice is to render each their due. As Christians, we know justice demands we render our praise and our love, our very lives, to the God Who made and loves us. But what is due to our fellow man; what must I render to them simply because they, like me, are a human being made in the image and likeness of God?
True justice demands that I owe my neighbor, even my enemy, my love. Injustice is when what is rightfully owed is not paid - Racism is when the demand to recognize and respond to someone’s God-given, inherent human dignity is denied or ignored simply because of one’s ancestral heritage. Just as justice must supplant injustice, so racism must be supplanted by love of neighbor.
But how are we supposed to work for justice, especially on this specific battlefield of the war for the dignity of human life? In what or who do we place our hope so that sins such as racist action and their effects upon our fellow man and our culture might be corrected? Is our hope placed in social reforms or in the “princes” of the world (Psalm 146)?
To work for justice solely from human means and for human ends will only succeed in setting up a system as weak and crooked as the humans who made it. As we hear in Psalm 127 and today’s second reading, if you desire what is just, what is righteous, you must turn to the One Who is righteousness and not to the ways of the unrighteous for whose sake the Righteous One suffered: “Justice finds its source and strength in Christ” (OWOH, p.26).
If we desire to sow the seeds of justice in an unjust world, if we desire bring light into a darkened one, if we desire the good work which God has begun in us to be brought to completion (Philippians 1:6), then we must be the first to respond to Christ’s call and command in today’s Gospel: “Repent and Believe in the gospel.” Believe in the gospel which tells us that, while all men are created good, all men are sinful and all need to be saved and that we can only find salvation when our lives are laid open to Christ, our Savior.
If “prayer and working towards conversion must be our first response in the face of evil actions;” then the first step is our prayer and our hearts being converted, which involves checking to see what logs we have stuck in our eyes. Afterall, “Racism,” like all sin “is a moral problem that requires a moral remedy – a transformation of the human heart,” a transformation that begins and ends in Christ (OWOH, p.29; 20)
Families:
Pick one reading from this weekend (available here) and read through it together (before or after Mass)
Ask your children if they have any vocabulary questions. If there is a place name mentioned consider looking it up on a map (google maps is great!) and ask older children to briefly re-tell the story to see if they understood the basics of the message/reading.
If you’d like to go deeper on the topic of justice, specifically social justice within our Catholic Social Teachings I recommend this blog post and links contained, specifically the section of Life & Dignity of the Human Person. (Justice for Us: Catholic Social Teaching at Home by Laura Kelly Fanucci, Mothers Spirit)