JUSTICE
ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE AND TO PALAZZOLO’S CHARISM
Biblical point of view * Reflection by FATHER PIERO GARAVELLI
According to biblical mentality
There is no contrast between justice and mercy, in accordance with our saying: “God is merciful but he is also just”.
God is just because He is faithful to Himself, to His choice, to His covenant of Alliance, to His unreserved promise: “I am your God and you are my people”.
He shows His justice when He intervenes in history to free His people from every yoke and oppression; when He bends with mercy on the sinning man to restore him to the right relation: Father – Son.
ð Justice is like a place of relations which edify and keep men’s communion with God and among them.
ð It is a work of God that creates His family.
ð Who believes in Him is made just, that is to say able of communion, and is freed from egoism and violence, forces alien to community.
ð Men’s justice springs from the source of His Justice, it is a “miracle” of His mercy.
NB At the same time man is just and sinner... And even the Church-Community is like that.
There is a continuous tension between the original sin of Eden, where it comes from, and the final grace of the Kingdom man is driven to by the Paschal strength of Christ.
“Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5,20). It is a justice which expresses itself and reaches its fullness in love: “Who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law” (Rom 13,8).
ü Abraham is just
Abraham is just because he believes in the Lord “who credited it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15,6).
He believes in God’s fidelity, trusts to His promise, and so he becomes ready to the communion with Him. His right relation with Jaweh is not established by moral or cultural works, but by faith.
(Gen 18,22-33): Abraham looks for 50... 10 “righteous people” among the inhabitants of Sodom et Gomorrah, but he cannot find them. From these towns the cry of the oppressed, of the weak, of the exploited by others’ violence, rises up to God. There is no justice: there is neither goodness, nor fidelity, nor pity for the poor.
NB God looks for men in agreement with others, able to build the community giving up every kind of violence.
ü Justice is a gift of God (Deut 9,4-6)
God addresses Israel the sinner, who has not his own justice, and makes him just by giving him the promised land. If they observe the Torah (= The law which constructs a community), people will show they have been “justified” by God; but this justice reveals itself in the social behaviour of each one (Deut 24,10-15)
NB The communion with God is kept by the faithfulness to the Torah, which requires the community a social fidelity.
ü Amos is the prophet of justice:
He rails with violence at the unjust (5,7).
Judgement and justice are fundamental pillars of community life, they are the river, the living water which comes from God and would heal society, if accepted (5,24).
The innocent-poor man, who is a victim of the oppression of the powerful, is called “righteous” (2,6; 5,12), because his misery is a silent denunciation of injustice... Only from the poor-meek a renewal of society can start.
God does not realize His justice by reforms made by ‘Pharaohs’ of this world, but by the cry of the oppressed , as He did it by Jews, slaves in Egypt.
Why then does the Church turn to the summit rather than to the base, to powerful-oppressors rather than to people who suffer, to obtain the right reform?
NB For prophets, justice goes far beyond the simple “to each his own”: it implies compassion, mercy, solidarity... that is public fidelity.
ü People is far from justice: (Is 46,12)
Now they are right, now they are not, like sea waves.
ð It is in WAITING FOR the MESSIAH, as for the just man who builds a harmonious and peaceful community. He will be even “Lord-our-Justice” (Gen 23,5-6).
NB God is just because He saves; if sometimes He punishes, He always aims at salvation... He corrects His sons for them to be converted and so to live.
JUSTICE IN PSALMS
God Himself is justice (4,2)...
He is the only king who is really just (103,6).
Everybody praises his justice:
â heavens (97,6);
â the believer and the assembly echo the voice of heavens (35,28; 40,10-11).
It has been sent onto earth to:
make life and fecundity (65,6-14);
overcome the enemies (48,11);
give people the ability to make right and justice reign (99,4; Psalm 112).
ð It is the source of a flourishing individual and community life, good and happy.
Man alone cannot build a community. God is called a “fair judge” (9,9; 96,13; 98,9), when He delivers the weak and saves the oppressed and does justice to the poor. He is just because He helps, is benevolent and merciful, delivers and gives victory, saves and capacitates of justice.
NB Very often the Psalmist declares, before God, to be just:
¦ he does not want to do a self-examination and show he is just, that is morally unexceptionable...
¦ but he affirms he wants to be just before God, that is to say that God make him just, find him just. It is the “believer” who expresses his will to accept the divine justice.
In the world injustice reigns (Qo 3,16)
The social order is upset and the wise man assists powerless to the domination of injustice.
¢ Society is a chain of injustices (5,7).
¢ The just man dies and the wicked one lives (7,15).
¢ All men die likewise (3,20).
And then? we need to fear God:
there is a sense of world, there is a justice, but they escape to man because only God knows them. Man must learn to rely on God and receive the daily bread from Him.
A people who does not recognize God can only have “strength” (Wis 2,11) as his law, that is unjust violence. Injustice accumulates from generation to generation, giving rise to an unjust structure in the world (12,10-11), almost an insuperable strength:
ð it is the social and structural sin.... it is strength serving egoism. If in God justice is His powerful love which makes live and pardons (Wis 11,23-26), our human justice will be only love and reciprocal forgiveness.
JUSTICE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
In Matthew
it is a keyword of Jesus’ preaching:
¦ it is a just man who fulfils Father’s will (Mt 7-21,24-26). But who can fulfil such a will? Cf. the parable of the two sons (Mt 21,28-32). We need to believe in the “way of justice”, which Jesus talks of in his speech of the mountain, and to take it (Mt 5,6.10.20; 6,1.33).
Jesus fulfils every justice (3,15) because He perfectly realizes his Father’s salvific plan.
Justice is will to live like Jesus in a new society, in which the rule is Jesus Himself; Jesus’ family (his brothers and his sisters are those who do Father’s will [Mc 3,35]) makes justice, a new social order, that Jesus summarizes in the commandment of the love of God and of our neighbour (Mt 22,37-40).
ð According to Matthew, justice means the new community life of those who follow Jesus... all that constitutes the “religion” of that community which is now separate from Hebraism.
NB The dualism just-unjust is the same as the contrast Church-world. But wheat (= Church) and darnel (= world) have to grow together; only in the end the division will be clean and final: cf. Mt 13,24-30.
In Luke
Jesus is called “THE RIGHTEOUS MAN” (Lk 23,47; At 3,14; 7,52; 22,14). He is the innocent martyr who gives his life for the love of God and of brothers.
ð Righteous = to be faithful, till death, to the communion with God and with one’s brothers. Whoever has a relation with God is called ‘righteous’: Zachary and Elisabeth (1,6); Simeon (2,25); Joseph d’Arimathie (23,50); Cornelius, a pagan centurion (At 10,22).
In St Paul
the theme of the relation between justice of man and justice of God is fundamental.
Justice of God
It is God’s salvific, merciful and faithful activity for man... It reveals itself fully in Jesus Christ, cf. Rom 3,21-22: in Jesus Christ, God gives man justice, that is to say salvation.
ð The one who believes, accepts the gift.
ð The one who does not believe, does not submit to divine justice, cf. Rom 10,3.
The one who looks for justice by the law, comes to a dead end. Christ has put an end to this human way of justice: “There may be righteousness for everyone who believes” (Rom 10,4).
ð It is no more a God who exacts, rewards and punishes, but a God who gives and forgives...
ð Believers’ works are not useful, but only his faith is like this.
Justice belongs only to God, who keeps his promises to fathers (Rom 4,9ss); he saves humanity, by and in Jesus Christ...
ð Man cannot save himself, cannot conquer justice, but he has to receive it as a gift from God.
Justice of man
Man becomes just by observing the law and commandments;
ð he is the author of his justice, cf. Phil 3,9.
ð To be just means to believe in Jesus Christ, to receive from Him the Holy Spirit which makes us naked men, “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4,24) and just men (2 Cor 5,21).
ð God not only proclaims the just, but does justice by Jesus Christ and by the gift of Holy Spirit.
Faith making just is the total confidence which is put only in God, as for Abraham (Rom 4).
God’s justice is identical to mercy, cf. Rom 3,25. Becoming just is the fruit of the death-resurrection of Jesus, that frees us from sin (Rom 4,24-25), cf. Rom 5,9. Made just men, Christians form a new society:
the body of Christ (1 Cor 12,27);
the wife of Christ (Eph 5,21-33)... with some new relations, both internal and external, cf. Rom 12,9-21.
It is a complete liberation of man in view of a communion with God and with brothers: here it is the aspect of Christian community where the justice God wanted reigns... here it is the renewed practice.
ð The Christian is engaged “not to conform any longer to the pattern of this world” (Rom 12,2)... not to live any more “according to flesh” (selfishly) but “according to Spirit” (Gal 5,13-25) whose fruits are: love, peace, joy, goodness, tolerance, benevolence, confidence, sweetness, self-control.
God’s justice is his liberating love he gave us by Christ, in Holy Spirit, to make of us a new community of love towards God and brothers.
“Christ is our peace” (Eph 2,14): He reconciles humanity by His death and resurrection, He takes God’s justice into our world making us His body and His family and making possible some new relations among us and with the world. Everyone of us is involved, consequently, in God’s justice for the world.
“But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3,13).
The total justice concerns the final world, completely saved, but it has already entered our history by Jesus “the Righteous” who is attracting everything to Himself...
TO REFLECT BEFORE THE LORD
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned…Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Lk 6,37.41) // Mt 7,1.3.
Ü We are tired, Lord, to see only motes and beams, died and arid realities... to burn in fire.
We would like to ask you a favour: “Can you see something good in us, and what?”.
¦ You are my creatures... I love all thing that is living.
¦ You are precious to my eyes, because I love you and appreciate you... You are my people; you are sons who will never disappoint.
¦ I see a lot of oppressed sons and listen to their cry. I descended upon earth to free them, but I cannot find any servant who is receptive as “Moses” was.
¦ I see a lot of blessed and abandoned brothers on the verge; but there is nobody who stops as the “good Samaritan” did.
¦ Before your judgments of blame, I keep silent and write with my finger on the ground.
¦ I am like a farmer who sowed his field and already I see the golden and ripe wheat ready for harvesting. I sowed a lot of seeds on these hills and I dream about a great forest... “New heavens and new earth”.
¦ The world has Christ as its heart: “My design is to make Christ the heart of the world”.
But why, my Lord, cannot we see our brothers and the world as you can do?
¦ You have not a big heart, you are not magnanimous (= big soul, “mahatma”)... and so you cannot understand, you see only appearances and not the heart...
¦ You are like a train passenger who wants to fix a view... like the one who goes on taking photographs, thinking he can grab life...
We must realize that the Lord looks at the other by my eyes, listens to brothers by my ears, is moved by our heart...
He does not say: “Watch by God’s eyes”, but “He watches by my eyes”.
If the judgment freezes, we need the fire of mercy to melt and warm... we need also to accept we cannot understand; so I let the “mystery” exist...
After reading and reflecting on what God’s Word says
about “JUSTICE”, we can ask ourselves: