The Spirituality of Social Justice - Part 3

The Spirituality of Social Justice – Part 3

With the conclusion of the four archetypal stories of sin and their various dimensions, Genesis then goes on to provide us with archetypal figures – the patriarchs – who provide God’s people with an orientation and mindset to overcome sin in all of its dimensions.  Each patriarchal story is designed to address each dimension of sin we saw in Adam and Eve (sin as an offense against God), Cain and Abel (sin as an offense against neighbor), the world at the time of Noah (the cosmic effects of sin), and the people of Babel (structural sin).

Abraham is the father of faith for Jewish, Muslim, and Christian peoples.  His introduction to us is abrupt and represents a new chapter in the life of humanity.  God calls Abraham to move from the home he has known for 75 years and to move to a land promised and destined to be a homeland for the people of God.  And Abraham accepts this call, despite all of its challenges to his own comfort and security.  This willingness on the part of Abraham to follow God’s will is one we see in the many encounters we have with him:  the hospitality he shows to the three mysterious guests; the openness in receiving the high priest Melchiezedek; the trust he showed in believing the promise of a great nation coming from his lineage; the willingness to obey the command of God and sacrifice his only son Isaac.    

Abraham provides a counterexample for us to the sin of our first parents.  Adam and Eve were not willing to obey God.  Their sin showed for us the fundamental reality of sin as an offense against God.  By contrast, Abraham shows us how to glorify God in our lives, how to obey God in those times when God calls us.  The call of Abraham was not one single event, but a series of events wherein Abraham continually followed God’s will. 

Abraham’s son Isaac has twin boys through his wife Rebekah.  Esau was the older son who was a skilled hunter, while the younger boy Jacob stayed home.  In the story of trading his birthright, Esau resembles Cain in his jealousy and shallow discernment.  However, unlike the story of Cain and Abel that represented the second dimension of sin as an offense against neighbor, the story of Jacob and Esau represents a new opportunity to overcome division among brothers.  Jacob obeyed his mother who had told him to trick his father Isaac.  Rebekah did so because God had revealed to her that Jacob should be the one to receive the inheritance. 

Jacob remained home.  He remained faithful to family and the relationships among peoples God has set for us in our lives.  Justice toward other people flows from the justice we owe to God in being faithful to His will for us.  Whereas Cain neglected the bonds of family through the killing of Abel, Jacob shows to us the importance of family bonds and the obligation to neighbor that our existence requires. 

It is through Jacob that cosmic justice and order become established in the twelve tribes of Israel.  Through Jacob’s children all nations will come to right relationship with the one true God.  And in this right relationship with the one true God we will find our right relationships with one another and to the whole created order.  In fact, Jacob was given a vision of the heavenly staircase, indicating the order of the entire cosmos in the divine plan.  This reordering of the cosmos is the counterpoint to the flood and the disordering of the cosmos due to human sin at the time of Noah.

Finally, we saw the presence of structural sin in the story of the Tower of Babel.  In the person of Joseph, we find the perfect counterbalance to structural sin in his actions.  Egypt was not a particularly just society, and Joseph comes to occupy a powerful position in the administration of the Pharaoh.  In using the gifts of interpretation God gave him, Joseph was able to restructure society so that people did not go hungry during the time of famine.  In addition, Joseph was able to provide a unique example for his time in the use of restorative justice.

Joseph had the opportunity to exact revenge on his brothers for the evil they had done to him.  What is more, he had no obligation to provide assistance to foreign peoples suffering from famine in their own lands.  And yet Joseph provided a double portion of good.  First, he reconciled his family and restored them to right relationship with him.  Then, he provided food to these hungry outsiders during the time of famine. 

As we reflect on the examples of the patriarchs in overcoming the four dimensions of sin present in our world, we pray for God’s mercy upon us and that we may in turn be instruments of mercy in our world.  “Let us pray for the peace of the kingdom which we have been promised.  Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in your unbounded mercy you have revealed the beauty of your power through your constant forgiveness of our sins.  May the power of this love be in our hearts to bring your pardon and your kingdom to all we meet.  We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.”

The Spirituality of Social Justice - Part 2

The Spirituality of Social Justice – Part 2

Once we have the recognition of being a sinner, we must come to realize the full dimension of human sin.  St. Pope John Paul II delivered a series of catechetical homilies on the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis wherein he asked us to consider these four archetypal stories as a meditation on human sin.  John Paul finds in these stories four fundamental aspects of sin that call us to conversion both personally and communally. 

The first sin is that of Adam and Eve in the garden.  This sin reveals the first dimension of sin:  it is an offense against God.  The eating of the fruit does not have any other dimension other than the fact that it was a violation against what God had wanted us to do.  The Holy Father reminds us of the relational character of this event.  There is no law or institution or human relation involved in the story.  In this story we stand before God in all of our nakedness to discover the shame of our sinful action.  Adam and Eve both wanted to make this act about someone else, seeking to blame others for what they did.  But God reminds them that this fault is our own and that it stands in relationship not to any other being but to God alone.

In reflecting on this aspect, we have to remind ourselves that we alone are responsible for our actions.  They may be conditioned on many things, but at the end of the day we stand before God and realize that we have sinned and harmed our relationship with Him alone.  The story of Adam and Eve is a call to responsibility and to seeking a right relationship with God.

The second story of sin in the biblical text is the killing of Abel by his older brother Cain.  Here we find the fact that sin harms our relationship with one another.  There are sins against our neighbor.  We do not need God to tell us in a legal code that such sins exist; we can recognize them by their very nature and character.  Sin creates division within the human community, even in the closest of human relationships.  But this sin is not merely an external act; it is something that preceded the external act.  The biblical text reminds us that Cain grew jealous with his brother Abel, for his brother’s gift to God was found to be more worthy than his own. 

Every external act begins with a prior interior disposition and discernment.  This fact was also true in the story of Adam and Eve, for the conversation between Eve and the serpent can be seen as an interior dialogue within Eve that disposes her to commit the external act of eating the fruit.  In the story of Cain the point is more explicit.  In each case we see this interior disposition lead first to sin as offending against God, then in Cain sin as harming and offending our relationship with one another. 

The third dimension of sin is in the story of Noah and the flood.  Here, John Paul points out the cosmic dimension of sin.   The created order was cleansed by God in the flood, an allusion to our baptismal cleansing but also a reminder of the effects of our sins.  Our sin offends against God; it also offends against others.  Sin also disrupts the cosmic order of nature.  The relationship between ourselves and the entire created order lose their harmony and balance originally intended by God.  Our vocation to dominion over all creation becomes one of domination rather than of stewardship.  We are no longer in right relationship with the created order.

In this aspect of sin we become mindful of our responsibility as stewards of creation and our environmental responsibility.  Just as our sins can affect God directly and affect our neighbor directly, so our sins can and do affect the entire created order directly.  Human action does have environmental consequences, and as stewards of creation we are called to be mindful of these and discern how we can exist in right relationship to the created order – not in making a deity of creation as pagans did, but as discerning how God wants us to care for creation as stewards being mindful of the universal destination of goods.

Finally, the story of the Tower of Babel leads us to reflect upon what John Paul II called “structural sin.”  Sin is not merely individual and personal.  Sin can be built within the very structures of our societies – sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously.  The Tower itself was a structural sin as it sought to rival and challenge God.  It led to the further distancing and separation among peoples symbolized in the confusing of languages.  Sin has a social dimension that must be addressed.  God called the people of Israel to erect structures of justice within its society, and God judged Israel for its lack of justice within these structures. 

In our examinations we must also look to discern the ways in which we might be participating in and condoning structures of sin within our societies.  Sometimes we become conscious of these and work to create more just societies.  The abolition of slavery, creating  safe working conditions and just wage structures, and the like are all instances in which we came together to recognize a structural injustice and we took corrective action.  Many structural sins exist today that call for examination and corrective action.  The Church calls society to ever examine itself so that we may be what God calls us to be as social beings.

Sin has many dimensions, and none must be ignored.  All of them require our constant examination and reflection.  To neglect one is eventually to neglect them all.  We must have a sense of sin in all of its dimensions.  These stories from Genesis are a constant reminder and reflection for us to be aware of every dimension of sin in our lives. 

The God who calls us to lives of holiness in right relationships with Him, one another, the order of creation, and in the structures of society is also the One who alone can liberate us from sin.  God calls us in the person of Jesus – in his teaching and example – to be in right relationship in all these dimensions.  In our examination and discernment in prayer, we pray:  “Let us pray to the Lord who is a God of love to all peoples.  Father in heaven, the perfection of justice is found in your love and all mankind is in need of your law.  Help us to find this love in each other that justice may be attained through obedience to your law.  We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.”

The Spirituality of Social Justice, part 1

The Spirituality of Social Justice, part 1

In the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius we are asked to answer one fundamental question:  Who am I?  Many people who hear the question laugh because on the face of it the answer seems obvious.  We all have names, origins, identities we have shaped for ourselves based on our own talents and decisions.  And yet the question continues to haunt us, for in all those answers we might give they are at the end of the day constructs of our own design, masks we create to live in the world and at times hide from this fundamental question – who am I. 

In the famous interview with Jesuit publications last fall, Pope Francis provides us with the correct answer to this question, for the answer is the same for all of us.  These answers are important as we develop a spirituality to engage in the Church’s social mission.  Our identity helps us to remember who we are, and it helps us in how we deal with other people.  Who, then, are we?

1.  I am a human being, a child of God.  Very often we are tempted to identify ourselves based on our religious affiliations, political stances, professional associations, ethnic heritages, gender, sexuality, and the like.  But all of those particular answers only describe part of our identity, the parts that set us apart from other people.  Those unique qualities are important for our individuality, but they often become masks and walls that also divide us and lead to unnecessary conflict. 

In rooting our identity in the fact of our humanity and creature made as a child of God, we recognize what is common to us all.  We are created, finite beings who are united to one another in God’s fatherhood of us all.  Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, we are all children of God, which then makes us brothers and sisters with one another.  How, then, can I kill my brother or sister?  How could I steal from him or her?  How could I think any less of them or fail to give them the respect that is due to their dignity that is the same as mine?

We do so when we focus on our individual identities and masks that we create.  When we call ourselves Catholic and others as Muslim, we attach labels that can then be used to dehumanize.  We focus on the particular and overlook the greater reality of our existence:  we are human beings, children of God.  There is a M*A*S*H episode in which Frank Burns calls the Koreans “gooks”, to which Hawkeye Pierce replies, “You know, Frank, another name for gook is person.”  Once we remember this fact, we see why war and killing is so horrid.

2. I am a sinner.  Perhaps no other line from Pope Francis’ interview surprised us more.  When asked who he was, Francis replied, “I am a sinner.”  We don’t expect the pope to say this, but how often do we say this of ourselves?  We may go to confession often, and yet if someone asked us who we are, we probably would not identify ourselves to others as a sinner.  And yet that is what we are, another trait that makes us united to every other human being on earth.  We are all children of God, and we are all sinners.

Once we recognize the fact of our sinfulness, we become aware of our need for God’s mercy and love.  We become dependent and reliant on God and not on ourselves.  At the same time, we come to have a deep empathy for others since they share our weak, sinful condition.  If God has shown great mercy and love to me, how can we not show the same mercy and love to others?

Very often we become attached to our own sins that we are not even aware of its harmful effects in our lives.  At the same time we seem all too aware of the sins of others that we grow angry at our neighbor for their sins while overlooking our own faults.  The social mission of the Church has to recognize and acknowledge the faults of our own institution and seek to correct those areas where we fail in justice and mercy.  It requires accepting fraternal correction in the spirit of humility.  Then, we are able to offer correction to others in a humble spirit. 

Prayer:  Let us pray to our just and merciful God.

Lord our God, in you justice and mercy meet.  With unparalleled love you have saved us from death and drawn us into the circle of your life.  Open our eyes to the wonders this life sets before us, that we may serve you free from fear and address you as God our Father.  We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord.  Amen.