I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth. (Isaiah 49:6)
This quote taken from the first reading for our first Sunday back in Ordinary Time reminds us that Christ and our faith is to be a light for the nations. Our world needs Jesus for salvation but also to make our world a more loving and just place. This week we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. He was an American Baptist minister and a great leader in the civil rights movement for an end to discrimination against people of different skin colors. Looking at his life, preaching, and speeches, there is no way to separate his faith and his outcry for justice. We need to continue to work for racial justice and and end to discrimination.
This week also we commemorate the Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of the Unborn on January 22 (observed on the 23rd this year). By faith, we see human life as most important, that is there is a fundamental right to life, and we seek to legally protect life from conception until natural death. There is so much work to be done for the cause of life.
We also still remember Pope Benedict XVI who died on December 31, 2022. You might not think of Pope Benedict as being a prophet of justice, however he did preach on the subject, including in his very first (2005) Papal Encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God is Love). To inspire us to continue to work to bring Christ’s light of justice to a dark world, I include some excerpts from Deus Caritas Est paragraphs #28-30 below:
…what is justice? The problem is one of practical reason; but if reason is to be exercised properly, it must undergo constant purification, since it can never be completely free of the danger of a certain ethical blindness caused by the dazzling effect of power and special interests.
Here politics and faith meet. Faith by its specific nature is an encounter with the living God—an encounter opening up new horizons extending beyond the sphere of reason. But it is also a purifying force for reason itself. From God's standpoint, faith liberates reason from its blind spots and therefore helps it to be ever more fully itself. Faith enables reason to do its work more effectively and to see its proper object more clearly. This is where Catholic social doctrine has its place: it has no intention of giving the Church power over the State. Even less is it an attempt to impose on those who do not share the faith ways of thinking and modes of conduct proper to faith. Its aim is simply to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just.
…Rather, the Church wishes to help form consciences in political life and to stimulate greater insight into the authentic requirements of justice as well as greater readiness to act accordingly, even when this might involve conflict with situations of personal interest. Building a just social and civil order, wherein each person receives what is his or her due, is an essential task which every generation must take up anew.
…The direct duty to work for a just ordering of society, on the other hand, is proper to the lay faithful. As citizens of the State, they are called to take part in public life in a personal capacity. So they cannot relinquish their participation “in the many different economic, social, legislative, administrative and cultural areas, which are intended to promote organically and institutionally the common good.” [21] The mission of the lay faithful is therefore to configure social life correctly, respecting its legitimate autonomy and cooperating with other citizens according to their respective competences and fulfilling their own responsibility….
The Second Vatican Council rightly observed that “among the signs of our times, one particularly worthy of note is a growing, inescapable sense of solidarity between all peoples.”…The solidarity shown by civil society thus significantly surpasses that shown by individuals….
In the Catholic Church, and also in the other Churches and Ecclesial Communities, new forms of charitable activity have arisen, while other, older ones have taken on new life and energy. In these new forms, it is often possible to establish a fruitful link between evangelization and works of charity. Here I would clearly reaffirm what my great predecessor John Paul II wrote in his Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis when he asserted the readiness of the Catholic Church to cooperate with the charitable agencies of these Churches and Communities, since we all have the same fundamental motivation and look towards the same goal: a true humanism, which acknowledges that man is made in the image of God and wants to help him to live in a way consonant with that dignity. His Encyclical Ut Unum Sint emphasized that the building of a better world requires Christians to speak with a united voice in working to inculcate “respect for the rights and needs of everyone, especially the poor, the lowly and the defenceless.”
Peace,
Fr. Greg