Monday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 389

Wash yourselves clean! Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes; cease doing evil; learn to do good. Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.


The call for justice in our scriptures -- both old and new testaments -- have a curious, immediate urgency; and yet they are hundreds of years old. Always there is the threat of judgment and apocalyptic doom but we grow old listening to these warnings. Saint Peter addressed this dilemma when he wrote:

Know this first of all, that in the last days scoffers will come [to] scoff, living according to their own desires and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? From the time when our ancestors fell asleep, everything has remained as it was from the beginning of creation.” They deliberately ignore the fact that the heavens existed of old and earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God; through these the world that then existed was destroyed, deluged with water. The present heavens and earth have been reserved by the same word for fire, kept for the day of judgment and of destruction of the godless.
But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard “delay,” but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be found out.

Saint Peter's first reply is to the scoffers. He reminds them that the world is sustained solely by the will of God. it was lifted out of water and could be instantly deluged with water if God so wills it. If scoffers exist it is only by the sufferance of God. 

Secondly, he reminds the faithful, God's merciful justice is not delayed; it may come "today," although we don't know what a day is by God's reckoning.
With the time we have, Christians practice an impatient patience. We hear the orphan's plea and respond immediately and to the best of our ability. We ignore the contempt of those who do not hear the plea; or, pursuing their own self-interests, create the cruel situation. We want to help; we try to do the right thing.
We also feel a certain helplessness because our own interests are somehow built on the backs of the oppressed. Anyone who keeps money in a bank has an investment in mutual funds which are entangled with every kind of industry, including the world's largest, oldest industry, weaponry. The money you and I handle today is the same fluid that supported slavery at one time, and still lubricates the black markets of drugs, weapons, piracy and human trafficking. Jesus advised his opponents to "render unto Caesar...," knowing how uncomfortable the righteous are with those unsavory investments.
We can never wash ourselves clean of the world's taint. Even as the Lord calls us out of the world he comes to live here with us. As he walks with us, he reminds us that Freedom is a jealous God: 

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

We fix our eyes on him as we carry the crosses he assigns to each one; and we listen to his voice as we walk the road to Calvary and Easter. He never said it should be easy, nor can we boast of any certain certainty, but we can always delight in his company.