One day, a diocesan seminarian, my student, tells me, “Why do we say that St John Mary Vianney is the patron saint of parish priests? I find Archbishop Romero a more inspiring model.”
He is making a valid point. There is no one model for holiness. Both Vianney and Romero can inspire us, just as one may be a “fan” of St Therese of Lisieux, while another may learn much from Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela.
A passion for justice and the willingness to challenge oppression, and pay a price for it—this is both Biblical and a much-needed aspect of Christian spirituality.
It is often easier—and can be a selfish escape—simply to pray for the poor or for the world, than to get involved to improve things.
Today, there are many martyrs of justice, men and women who pay a heavy price—loss of job, false cases, opposition from the powerful—for taking a stand for justice. Think of Sr Rani Maria, or Sr Valsa John, or the Jesuit Martyrs of the University of Central America. They would not have made enemies if they had limited their Christian faith to saying their prayers.
The stand for justice begins in our own homes and institutions. Do we pay our workers a just salary? Are their working conditions fair and human? How do we deal with them? Do we look down on people because of their poverty, or ethnicity or gender?
You may have head the words of the much-loved (and much-persecuted) Brazilian bishop, Dom Helder Camara, “When I say we must help the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.” While most people are ready to do some charity, they are not ready to be challenged on matters of justice—e.g., land ownership, wages, working conditions.
Archbishop Romero, for instance, said that the most basic form of violence in his country (El Salvador) was structural injustice. Fourteen families owned most of the land. Anyone who protested was opposed, branded a Communist, and even killed. He was shot dead the day after he appealed to the soldiers to stop killing the poor.
Justice is more basic than doing charity. While we need to help at least some people through acts of charity, the more important thing is to create just structures where people are treated justly and get their rights.
For us, members of religious orders, who run institutions, our main concern cannot be how to save money or how to make money for our congregation, but how we serve the people, especially the poor. More basic than doing acts of charity for them (e.g., or giving money during an illness) is treating them justly.
Justice refers to three areas: money, gender and ethnicity.
Money: How is it that the top one percent in our country own 73 percent of the nation’s wealth? Or how can the super-rich swindle the banks for thousands of crores, while a needy person cannot get a small loan? In our own institutions, have we put in place just salaries and working conditions?
Money is the largest area of injustice. The only thing the New Testament calls “the root of all evil” is love of money.
Gender is another area. Do we bring up our sons and daughters with this sense of mutual respect? Do our marriages and the way women are treated in Church circles reflect a sense of equality and mutual respect? How far have we swallowed uncritically our culture’s low esteem for women?
Ethnicity: Do I look down upon some persons as lower, or disparage them, or treat them badly, because they belong to a particular race or caste or tribe? Will every human being, irrespective of ethnicity, get the same and respectful treatment from me?
Justice builds a beautiful world where human beings are treated as human beings, where all have access to opportunities—and no one is excluded from power or freedom or upward mobility because of poverty, or gender or being born into a particular group.
May our faith and our spiritual quest not be limited to conventional piety. May it find clear expression in a courageous and caring stand for justice, both in our institutions and in the larger world. Spirituality is far more than private devotion.
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