"A Call to Justice"

Five years ago, Michael S. posted this:

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was the principal celebrant and homilist at a mass celebrated March 18 for the participants of a conference sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace entitled "A Call to Justice" on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Gaudium et Spes.  In the homily, he said:

"As Christians we must constantly be reminded that the call of justice is not something which can be reduced to the categories of this world. And this is the beauty of the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, evident in the very structure of the Council's text; only when we Christians grasp our vocation, as having been created in the image of God and believing that "the form of this world is passing away...[and] that God is preparing a new dwelling and a new earth, in which justice dwells (GS n. 39)" can we address the urgent social problems of our time from a truly Christian perspective. "Far from diminishing our concern to develop this earth, the expectation of a new earth should spur us on, for it is here that the body of a new human family grows, prefiguring in some way the world that is to come" (GS n. 39).

And so, to be workers of this true justice, we must be workers who are being made just, by contact with Him who is justice itself: Jesus of Nazareth. The place of this encounter is the Church, nowhere more powerfully present than in her sacraments and liturgy. The celebration of the Holy Triduum, which we will enter into next week, is the triumph of God's justice over human judgments. In the mystery of Good Friday, God is judged by man and condemned by human justice. In the Easter Vigil, the light of God's justice banishes the darkness of sin and death; the stone at the tomb (made of the same material as the stones in the hands of those who, in today's Gospel, seek to kill Christ) is pushed away forever, and human life is given a future, which, in going beyond the categories of this world, reveals the true meaning and the true value of earthly realities.

And we who have been baptized, as children of a world which is still to come, in the liturgy of the Easter Vigil, catch a glimpse of that world, and breathe the atmosphere of that world, where God's justice will dwell forever. And then, renewed and transformed by the Mysteries we celebrate, we can walk in this world justly, living - as the Preface for Lent says so beautifully - "in this passing world with our heart set on the world that will never end" (Preface for Lent II)."

If you would like the full text, email me.