Benedict XVI's Message for Lent 2010
Dear brothers and sisters,
every year for Lent, the Church invites us to a sincere review of our life in light of Gospel teachings. This year I would like to offer some reflections on the broad theme of justice, beginning from St. Paul: The Justice of God has been manifested through faith in Christ (cf. Rom 3:21-22).
Justice: "give suum cuique"
I shall focus primarily on the meaning of "justice", which in the language common meaning of "to each his own - giving cuique suum," according to the known expression of Ulpian, Roman jurist of the third century. In reality, however, this classical definition does not specify what constitutes that "due" to each person. What the man needs most can not be guaranteed to him by law. To live life to the full, you need something more intimate that can be granted only as a gift: we could say that man lives by that love that only God can communicate since He created in His image and likeness. Are certainly useful and necessary for the tangible - indeed Jesus himself was concerned to heal the sick, feed the crowds who followed him and certainly condemns the indifference that even today, forcing hundreds of millions of human beings to death for lack of food, water and medicine - but the "distributive" justice does not make all 'the whole human being of his "due. As more and bread, he does indeed need God St. Augustine Note: if "justice is the virtue which gives each his own ... Human justice is not one that subtracts the man to the true God "(De Civitate Dei, XIX, 21).
Where is the injustice?
The evangelist Mark reports the following words of Jesus, which fit into the debate at that time about what is pure and what is impure: "There is nothing outside a man which going into him can defile. But the things which come out to defile ... What comes out is what defiles a man. From within, out of the heart of man, come evil intentions "(Mk 7,14-15.20-21). Beyond the immediate question concerning food, we can detect in the reaction of the Pharisees a permanent human temptation: to identify the source of evil in an exterior cause. Many modern ideologies have, in hindsight, this assumption, because the injustice comes "from outside", so that justice reigns, just remove the external causes that prevent implementation. This way of thinking - Jesus warns - is naive and shortsighted. The injustice, the result of evil, has no roots only external originates in the human heart, where are the germs of a mysterious complicity with evil. He acknowledged this bitterly the Psalmist: "Behold, I was born in sin, in sin my mother conceived me" (Ps. 51:7). Yes, man is weakened by an intense influence, that degrades the ability to enter into communion with each other. Opened in nature to the free flow of sharing, but he finds in himself a strange force of gravity that makes him turn in on itself, to assert itself over and against others: it is egoism, the result of original sin. Adam and Eve, seduced by Satan's lie, snatching the mysterious fruit against the divine command, replaced the logic of trusting in one of suspicion and competition, the logic of receiving and confident from the Other anxious saying and doing (cf. Gen 3:1-6), as a result of experiencing a sense of unease and uncertainty. How can a man get rid of this selfish and open to love?
Justice and Sedaqah
In the heart of wisdom of Israel, we find a deep connection between faith in God who "raises the weak from the dust" (Ps. 113.7) and justice for our neighbor. The same word in Hebrew which indicates the virtue of justice, sedaqah, expresses this well. Sedaqah actually means on the one hand, full acceptance of the will of the God of Israel; hand, equity in one's neighbor (cf. Ex 20.12-17), especially the poor, the stranger, the orphan and the widow (cf. Dt 10.18 to 19). But the two meanings are linked, because giving to the poor, for the Israelite is nothing that is owed to God, who had pity on the misery of his people. Not by chance given the Tables of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai took place after crossing the Red Sea. Listening to the Law presupposes faith in the God who first 'heard the cry' of his people and "came down to free it from the power of Egypt" (cf. Ex 3:8). God is attentive to the cry of the poor and in return asks to be heard: demands justice for the poor (cf. Sir 4,4-5.8-9), the stranger (cf. Ex 22:20), the slave (cf. Dt 15.12 -18). To enter the justice is thus necessary to leave the illusion of self-sufficiency, the profound state of closure, which is the source of injustice. It should, in other words, an "exodus" deeper than what God has with Moses, a liberation of the heart, that the word of the Law is powerless to achieve. So there is hope for justice for the man?
Christ, the righteousness of God
The Christian responds positively to the thirst for justice, as the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Romans: "But now apart from law, has manifested the righteousness of God .. through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. In fact there is no difference, because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, they are justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus' whom God put forward as an expiation, through faith in His blood "(3.21 to 25).
What then is the righteousness of Christ? E 'above the righteousness which is by grace, which is not the man who repairs, heals himself and others. The fact that the 'Atonement' takes place in the "blood" of Christ means that there are sacrifices to liberate man from the burden of guilt, but the gesture of the love of God that opens to the end, until the pass itself the "curse" due to man, to give in return the "blessing" due to God (cf. Gal 3.13 to 14). But this raises an immediate objection: what kind of justice is where the just dying for the guilty and the guilty party in exchange receives the blessing due to the right? Each one receives is not the opposite of "her"? In fact, here we discover the divine justice, is very different from that of humans. God has paid to us in his Son the ransom, an exorbitant price. Before the justice of the Cross man may rebel, because it shows that man is not a self-sufficient being, but it needs an Other to be fully himself. Conversion to Christ, believe in the Gospel, ultimately means this: exit the illusion of order to discover and accept their own poverty - poverty of others and to God, the need of his forgiveness and his friendship.
So we understand how faith is anything but a natural, comfortable, of course: we need humility to accept that I need Another free me from "my", to give me free "her." This happens especially in the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist. Through the work of Christ, we can get justice in the "greatest", which is love (cf. Rom 13.8 to 10), the justice of those who feel in any case more a debtor creditor, because it has received more than you might expect.
Strengthened by this experience, the Christian is encouraged to contribute to creating just societies, where everyone gets enough to live according to their dignity as men and where justice is enlivened by love.
Dear brothers and sisters, Lent culminates in the Paschal Triduum, which this year will celebrate the divine justice, which is the fullness of charity, gift, salvation. May this be for every Christian penitential time of authentic conversion and intense knowledge of the mystery of Christ came to fulfill all righteousness. With these sentiments I impart to all my Apostolic Blessing.
