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Justice Up the River
Fr. George Smiga
January 25, 2004
Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21
There is a significant difference between charity and justice. Both are part of the teaching of Jesus. Both are a part of our Catholic faith. But we, like most Christians, are much better at charity than at justice, and we may not even be aware of the difference.
Harry Fagan, who was one of the pioneers of social action in our Cleveland diocese back in the sixties had a favorite story which he would tell frequently to draw out the difference between charity and justice. It was a story about a small Christian village located by a broad river. One day as the people in that village were busy doing their various tasks, a body floated down the river. When they saw it, they retrieved it and gave it a reverent burial, because they were good Christian people. The next day another body floated down the river, and they did the same. As the days passed, more and more bodies kept floating down the river. So they bought a boat and put guards at the river so that no body would escape their notice and each body could be reverently buried. As the days passed on, some wounded people began floating down the river clinging on debris. So again, being a Christian community, they retrieved these people and brought them to the hospital. They expanded their hospitals and in time provided retraining for those who had been wounded, so that they could earn a good living.
After a number of years, almost the entire village was engaged in caring for the dead and the wounded. The mayor decided to call a meeting to see if there was anything more that they could do. A few suggestions were brought up, but almost everyone believed that they were doing all that they could for those who were in need. Then, just before they were ready to dismiss the meeting, a young man raised his hand and said, “I know we are doing a very good job caring for the dead and the wounded. But don't you think we should send some people to go and find out what's happening up the river?”
At this point Harry Fagan would stop and say, “That small Christian village is like a typical Catholic parish—very good at some things: very good at burying the dead, of caring for the sick, of ministering to those who are hurting—very good at charity. But it is not so good at going up the river, at finding out why those bodies keep floating down, and seeing if there could be anything we could do to stop them. We are not as good at justice.”
Now doing justice is not easy. But it is essential if we wish to follow Jesus. In our Catholic tradition this truth was expressed in the clearest way in 197l when the bishops of the world met and issued a document in which they said that working for justice and contributing to the transformation of the world is a constituative part of preaching the gospel. That is an involved way of saying that, if we want to be disciples of Jesus, if we want to really follow what he preaches, we must go up the river. We must try to find out the reasons that the bodies keep floating down and see if there is something we can do to stop them.
The bishops of the world were not making up some new dimension of Catholicism. They were merely following the teaching of Jesus presented so clearly in today's gospel. In this great scene from Luke, Jesus comes to the synagogue at Nazareth and gives us his mission statement, the purpose of his ministry. When he defines his purpose, he does not say that he plans to teach people to pray, although he in fact does that with his disciples. He does not say that we should love one another, although he certainly believes that we should. What Jesus does is find a passage from the prophet Isaiah that says that he is called to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind, and to set those who are oppressed free. Jesus' mission is about justice, about going up the river, discovering the structures that oppress people and trying to free them.
We, of course, are called to follow him. Doing justice is not easy. It is much easier to help the elderly lady on our street by cutting her grass than to explore the reasons why she cannot find adequate healthcare. It is much simpler to feed the person who is hungry than to try to discover the structures that prevent that person from feeding his or her own family. It is easier to visit the prisoner in jail than to try to discover the reasons for violence and despair in our society that populate our jails with a disproportionate number of the poor and disenfranchised.
Doing justice is difficult and messy. It calls us to get involved in politics and economics and environmental science and sociology—all areas where religious people are not often welcome. But we must be there, because we are called by Christ to contribute to the transformation of our society.
So how do we do justice? Three simple steps: learn, pray, act. We must learn what the issues are, how people are oppressed by poverty and injustice. Our Social Concerns Committee is always providing opportunities to educate us in these issues. There are also many things that can be read. But once we identify injustice in our midst, the next step is to pray, to ask what God is calling us to do. Then when we see an opportunity, we act. Write a letter. Talk to someone. Make a contribution . Do something that is going to help society change for the better. That is what justice calls us to do.
Doing justice is not easy. But neither is it optional for those who follow Jesus. For Jesus calls us to go up the river, to discover the causes of injustice and to work to change the structures that support them. Yes, we are called to love one another. But we are also called to do justice, to contribute to the transformation of our world.
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