"Aert de Gelder - Het loflied van Simeon" by Aert de Gelder . Source: Wikimedia Commons

Justice and Consolation

on February 4, 2015

It is easy in an age of ready information and instant communication to become overcome by the injustice of the world. It is only human to be dismayed by those injustices and to wish that they would be righted.  Often Christians and whole churches become so dismayed by real or perceived injustices that they forget that the fundamental problems are not societal, but personal – not between man and his neighbor, but between every man and God. Only when this most fundamental relationship has been restored can there be hope for lasting justice.

Standing before the civil governor, Pontius Pilate, our Lord declared that his kingdom was not of this world. Christians have long understood this to mean, though they may have failed adequately to practice, a distinction between the roles of the Church and the state. The state is empowered with the sword of temporal punishment, the Church is not. The Church and state both share the responsibility to pursue justice, though in different ways. The state is absolutely unequipped to address the spiritual problem at the heart of injustice. This is the mission of the Church: to address the underlying spiritual problem through the proclamation of the Gospel.

It becomes necessary, therefore, for the Church to remember that her mission must first be spiritual and redemptive; if she fails that post, there is no one else to stand in the gap.

On February 2nd many Christians celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. Forty days after our Lord’s birth, his parents take him to the Temple to offer the appropriate sacrifices and so that the Blessed Virgin Mary could be purified according to the dictates of the Torah. While there, they meet an old man, Simeon, who was “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” Upon seeing the infant, the old man rejoices, understanding that the consolation of Israel had come. Years later, our Lord read from the prophet Isaiah at the synagogue in Nazareth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” He told them that the fulfillment of that prophecy was before their eyes.

The Church must remind both man and society that the problem of injustice is first and foremost a personal, not societal problem. It is a problem between every man and God and between every man and his neighbor. Until the problem of personal injustice is solved, justice in the state will be coerced and fleeting. When man’s injustice toward God has been forgiven, and the relationship restored, man is truly free. St. Augustine writes, “Justice is that ordering of the soul by virtue of which it comes to pass that we are no man’s servant, but servants of God alone.” This is the glorious message of our Lord’s coming that was recognized by Simeon and proclaimed by our Lord at the synagogue in Nazareth: regardless of external injustice, when man is right with God, he is free. If man is not right with God, he is a slave – even if he enjoys a pleasant life. Upon seeing the infant Christ, Simeon was at peace because he understood that our Lord’s coming is the beginning of the righting of all injustices and the beachhead for the establishment of the kingdom of God where there will be true justice and true freedom.

Our Lord did not merely teach man how to act justly towards his neighbor or how to structure a just society. He came to make men free through making them just. If ever the Church calls for social or material justice and forgets to call men to personal justice, it will have failed in its mission. Our Lord said that he came “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” While the Church can and must protest against injustice, it must remember that the Gospel alone provides the cure.

  1. Comment by Lady Mandevilla on April 2, 2015 at 9:35 am

    Good article.

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