Catholic Commission for Social Justice
During this Year of Faith, CCSJ plans to organise a series of workshops to focus on some of the parables in our Gospels. One of these will be the parable of the barren fig tree (see today’s reading: Lk 13:1-9).
In some ways this parable reminds me of my early teaching career in London at a school where many poor black students of Caribbean origin were being suspended or expelled.
Today’s Gospel reading (Luke 9:28b-36) provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the messages that can be derived from the account of the Transfiguration of Jesus. Who better to tell us who Jesus is than His Father in heaven? God’s words spoken to Peter, James and John from the cloud apply to us also: “This is my Son, the Chosen One. Listen to him.”
Wednesday, February 20 is the fifth World Day of Social Justice. At its sixty-second session, in November 2007, the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed February 20 as World Day of Social Justice. The day was observed for the first time in 2009.
For us Catholics, the work for social justice is an integral part of the mission of the Church:
“Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appears to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel or, in other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation” (World Synod of Bishops, 1971).
“Christians are people who have been conquered by Christ’s love and accordingly, under the influence of that love…they are profoundly open to loving their neighbour in concrete ways… faith precedes charity, but faith is genuine only if crowned by charity.” (Pope Benedict XVI, 2013 Lenten Message).
These words from The Holy Father’s 2013 Lenten message should spur us on to demonstrate our love for God and neighbour by reaching out to assist children and their parents. The Holy Father focuses on “the indissoluble interrelation” between faith and charity. His message is entitled “Believing in charity calls forth charity”.
“It is necessary that the whole of society defend the right to life.” Pope Benedict XVI (2011).
Tuesday, January 22, marked the 40th anniversary of Roe vs Wade, the US Supreme Court’s decision which legalised abortion throughout pregnancy in the USA. Priests for Life estimate that in the USA more than 53 million have been legally killed since 1973.
Statistics from the World Health Organisation show that “every year in the world an estimated 40-50 million women decide to have an abortion. This corresponds to approximately 125,000 abortions per day.”