Scripture Reflections
29TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
EXODUS 17:8-13
2 TIMOTHY 3:14-4:2
LUKE 18:1-8
Like healing balm poured on an open wound are the papal letters written in certain historical times addressing the leadership of the Church and the People of God on issues of social concerns. Especially, I am a fan of Pope Leo XIII, who jumped into the thick of the human and economic injustices raging during the industrial revolution. In his first encyclical on social justice, Reum Novarum (Of New Things), he boldly addressed the horrific working conditions where people died in dangerous environmental conditions. Pope Leo addressed the “grasping speculators” who used “human beings as mere instruments for making money.” (33) He appealed to their better consciousness to provide just wages necessary for the human and economic sustenance of families. He talked about child labor and cautioned industrialists to “take great care not to place them in workshops and factories until their bodies and minds are sufficiently mature.” That this kind of labor for children “blights the young promise of a child’s powers and makes any real education impossible.” (33)
Unlike the unjust judge in the Gospel, who neither feared God nor respected any human being, Pope Leo XIII modeled justice for the voiceless.
The year:1891
Forty years later, Pope Pius XI called this encyclical “the Magna Charta of Social Order.” For, as Pius said, the document drew from the Gospels, as a living, life-giving source along with other doctrines that mitigated the “fatal internal strife which rends the human family.” (Quadragesimo Anno, 39)
One of my favorite papal encyclicals, Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth), was written by St. John XXIII. Maybe it is because I grew up during a time when air raid drills brought a rush of fear to our small psyches in a normal school day that I am blessed by Pope John’s careful wisdom. It was during the Cuban Missile Crisis when America’s shores were threatened by Russia that Pope John said: “The calamity of a world war, with the economic and social ruin and moral excesses and dissolution that accompany it must not be permitted to envelop the human race for a third time.” (112)
Pope John was our Moses. A man of justice, Pope John played a crucial role during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I read that when he was called to intervene between Russia and the United States, he knelt by the side of his bed and begged God to show him what to say. He appealed for peace on the Vatican Radio, providing a path for Premier Khrushchev to turn his ships around to avert nuclear war without losing face. From that event, Pacem in Terris was written.
The year: 1963
Finally, I look to Pope Francis as a model of a just judge. Though Pope Francis wrote one exhortation and two amazing encyclicals (see notes at end of the column) with common themes of care for the poor, a critique of economic exclusion and the environmental crisis, I want to highlight especially his contribution to holy listening when he convened the Synod on Synodality. He was not unaware of the tensions within the Church causing divisions. He called for the Catholic Church to come together to focus upon themes of communion, participation and mission. The Vatican process of synodality (journeying together) involved worldwide listening and dialogue among bishops, priests and lay Catholics to discern together the direction for the Church.
The years: 2021-2024
Papal contributions to the societal injustices have become over the past 135 years the corpus for Catholic Social Teaching. Returning to the parable of the unjust judge and the widow, I have often wondered what the widow needed from the judge. John Donahue, S.J., suggests that it was likely a dispute over an inheritance or a dowry, that portion remaining after her husband’s death. In which case, she needed the money to live!
The parable is rife with paradox and reversals. The one who is historically perceived as weak or voiceless is strong. Further, appointed judges were to be men who feared the Lord and in whom there was no perversion of justice, showing partiality, or taking bribes. (2 Chron. 19:5-6) But this judge is the antithesis of godly. So, what did those hearing this parable think? They are confronted with a new vision of reality, inaugurated by God’s reign, where victims will claim their rights and seek justice, sometimes in a troubling way.
Going forward, as followers of Christ, it is imperative we take to heart the vision of past popes. We must also continue to be aware of the places where injustices bleed the structures of society. We, too, must keep our arms lifted in prayer for the voiceless and the oppressed, trusting that if we do, “God will secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night.”
Notes: Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), 2013; Laudato si (On Care for Our Common Home), 2015; Fratelli Tutti (On Fraternity and Social Friendship), 2020.
