justice - 3rd week easter tuesday 2014

We have already reflected on two cardinal virtues namely prudence and fortitude.  Now we reflect on the third cardinal virtue which is justice.  Justice is the virtue that guides us to give what is due to God and to others.  Giving what is due to God and to the others is not charity.  It is a strict obligation.  As employers, as people who employ other people, giving the correct salary and benefits to which our employees are entitled, is a demand of justice and not of charity.  As employees paid for our work, by justice we are also obligated to render the service that is required of us.

The first demand of justice is to render to God what is due to God.  God is our creator, our redeemer, the person who sustains us daily.  By justice we have to render to God what is due to God.  Many times when people come to me confessing that they have missed Sunday mass, I always pointed out to them that actually it is not simply a sin of missing mass.  It can be a symptom of a deeper problem in our relationship with God.  And what is that?  Is God important for you; is God important in our lives; do his words in the readings of the mass matter for me; does my communion with him complete my day and week?  You usually do not miss or forget somebody important in your life, isn’t it?  Justice renders a strict obligation, not that I am coerced to do something I do not like, but I am obligated by the fact that I have an important relationship with this other person.  Going to Sunday mass is important because first and foremost I have a relationship with God, in the same way that I am obliged to render what is due to my parents, to render what is due to my wife and children, to render what is due to my country being a citizen, to render what is due to those who work for me and under me, to render what is due to my superiors.

In our gospel today we can see how God relates with us.  God does not relate with us in justice.  God cannot be obliged to do something for us.  And yet he loves us like a Father.  He created us even when he does not need us.  He sustains us in our needs even if we don’t deserve the things that we now have.  God redeemed us in his mercy even when we deserve is condemnation.    The relationship of God with us is one of benevolence, it is a relationship of charity and not justice.  But alas there are some who think and act as if God is obligated to us. 

This is what the first martyr Stephen had to die for in our first reading today.  The elders and the scribes in his time thought that as a chosen people God is obliged to love them and God is obliged to take care of them.  Like spoiled brats they could no longer see their lives as a grace from God, as a gift from God.  In passing our first reading talks of Paul’s role in the death of Stephen.  Later in life after his conversion Paul will be disturbed by this realization, when he said that God loved us while we were yet sinners.  God loved us not because we are good but even when we were yet unlovable.  In justice we don’t deserved to be loved and yet God loved us.  Now we are obliged to respond to God and that obligation is justice.