18th Sunday after Pentecost 30.9.07 Social justice
It is often pointed out that there should be no contrast or contradiction in the way we behave in church to the way we behave outside. What we profess in here should be the way we live out there.
On a similar line there should be no contradiction between what we profess as our own personal morality and the way we deal with larger social or moral questions.
Recent Church history is sometimes crudely divided into pre and post Vatican II, and the story runs like this:
Before Vatican II Catholics were worried only about individual salvation. Get your soul to heaven was all that mattered.
After Vatican II we worried less about personal salvation (which turned out to be easier than we had previously thought), and more about the state of the world - social problems like refugees, hunger, and more recently the environment.
Thus we find ourselves today, relaxed about salvation, worried about the world.
The real history is more complex, but in any case there does not need to be opposition between these two aspects.
We can and should worry about the state of our souls. There is still a Hell. Vatican II did not close it down; all the threats, all the pitfalls are still in place.
We can and we should worry about the state of the world. If a man is dying of hunger on my front doorstep then I should feed him (cf the parable of Lazarus and Dives).
And the last judgment scene: you neglected to do this to Me.
Concern for our neighbour will improve the state of our soul. So the one concern helps the other.
To be worried about the state of one’s soul is not selfishness. Genuine holiness could not possibly shut our concern for one’s neighbour. Above all we should be concerned for the neighbour’s soul.
This is another dimension. If I want to relieve world hunger or poverty, the biggest hunger is lack of knowledge of Christ. People do not know their Heavenly Father; they do not know their Saviour; they do not know the Virgin Mary as their Queen and Mother. This is the most urgent void which needs to be filled.
Am I getting too abstract? No, because people have souls, even starving people. Of course we should feed them with normal food before giving them doctrine, but they need the doctrine more. They need to receive and live in the grace of God. This is the real life which God wants every person to possess.
I came that they might have life and have it to the full.
We still want to relieve physical suffering whenever we can, but we always realize the spiritual is paramount.
Jesus would heal the whole person, body and soul, to demonstrate His compassion for all human need.
But as He said: better to enter heaven with one hand or one eye, than hell with two, thus acknowledging the greater demand of the spiritual.
So the Church has not really changed anything post-Vatican. We need reminding of our neighbour’s needs; we need to be challenged out of any too-selfish view of salvation, but this is no more than the Gospel itself warns.
There have always been sins of omission, and they are harder to detect than sins of commission.
A true concern for my soul will impel me to be aware of my neighbour and to help in whatever way I can, only with the proviso that my perception of what another needs might not equal his own perception.
Some would say the Church is only useful for its charitable works, but should leave religion out of it. We would say, sorry, but ‘religion’ is central to the whole works. It is the only way to make sense of what another person is, and what we are doing on this earth.
Still, we won’t force it on you, just offer the way to eternal life. If you don’t want eternal life, just a bread roll, then so be it.
