Daily word, 10 Mar 20

2^nd Tuesday of Lent (10 Jan 2020)

Is 1. 10, 16-20; Ps 50; Mt 23. 1-12

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J., 5-day directed retreat

4Ps

Lent is our opportunity to recommit to live the faith of Jesus more consistently. None of us wants to give lip-service Jesus, to our Christian life. Lip-serve, Jesus clearly said, will not win us entry into the kingdom of heaven.¹ Our lenten practices can help us accept Jesus’ invitation to allow our lives to speak eloquently. Jesus was not the first to recommend that we do good and make God’s justice our aim. Prophet Isaiah was one of many who recommended both. Isaiah advised how do both for his time and circumstances: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea; defend the widow. Orphans and widows included all the vulnerable ones in his society.

Justice is always social. Justice involves institutions and systems. An act of charity is personal: what one does for another; or help a person offers to aid this or that emergency. All Christians journey together in Lent; it is social in the way of God’s justice. By gracing our time God opens the way for us to cooperate with God’s justice.

Because it involves systems and institutions making justice our aim seems beyond you and me. Lent reminds us that we are cooperators with God’s justice; Lent allows us to practice the fine points of Christian living so they become daily practice. Practice is key. Practice develops and develops us. An example from our world.

While we are keenly aware now of our need to redress the wrong we have done to our planet, in 1987 Pope St. John Paul II reminded that

A true concept of [human, social] development cannot ignore the use of the elements of nature, the renewability of resources and the consequences of haphazard industrialization: three considera-tions which alert our consciences to the moral dimension of development.²

In 1991 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew convened an ecological gathering in Crete entitled “Living in the Creation of the Lord.”³ Later, John Paul addressed “the worrying…ecological question which accompanies the problem of consumerism and which is closely connected to it.”⁴ A development in Catholic social teaching followed when John Paul added to its principles a seventh: care for creation. Pope Francis has amplified this with Laudato Si!⁵ and by his other catecheses and homilies.

Our time and circumstances differ from those of Isaiah and Jesus. Yet God’s longing for justice among people by people for every created being abides. I rehearse this brief history of the development of Catholic social teaching to encourage our developing practice of God’s justice. Focus on the fine points, our individual choices we make daily. Each choice affects positively or negatively: the planet; peace; poverty; and parity, that is, economic justice that redresses the wronged. This graced season helps our choices incarnate God’s mercy. Our choices for God’s justice make it a joyful time.

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1. Matthew 7.21.
2. “The Social Concern of the Church,” 34.
3. John Chryssavgis, The Green Patriarch: Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and the Protection of the Environment.
4. Centesimus Annus, 37.
5. Laudato Si! helps us see interconnection by its phrase“integral ecology.”

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Wiki-images by: Auckland Museum Chemist’s scale CC BY 4.0; The Blue Marble PD-US