1. PRAYER
Dear God...
We pray for a compassionate heart. Help us to be more understanding and empathetic towards others. Let us see the world through the eyes of those who are suffering and be moved to action. May our compassion lead us to help and support those in need.
Thank you for your compassion towards us. Help us to reflect that same compassion in our interactions with others. May we learn to listen deeply and to respond with kindness and care to those who are hurting. Guide us to be patient and non-judgmental, recognizing the struggles and challenges that others face. Help us to extend compassion to ourselves, understanding that we too are deserving of care and kindness.
We pray for a world where compassion is the norm, where people look out for one another and support each other in times of need. Thank you for the opportunities to practice compassion. Help us to seize those moments and to make a positive difference in the lives of others.
Amen.
"Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble."
- 1 Peter 3:8
2. MEDITATION
Richard Rohr sees compassion and justice as deeply intertwined, not opposing forces, arguing that true divine justice is compassion, mercy, and restoration, not mere punishment or rule-following; he emphasizes that justice involves addressing systemic brokenness by moving beyond retribution to see shared humanity and heal the marginalized, often rooted in embracing our own brokenness. For Rohr, love without justice is sentimental, while justice without love is cold, but both are necessary, flowing from a contemplative understanding of God's all-inclusive love that restores all people. Key aspects of Rohr's view:- Justice as Compassion: God's justice isn't a balancing of scales but an overflowing love and mercy that fills gaps, restoring everyone, even the unworthy, to wholeness.
- Beyond Retribution: He contrasts this with the world's common retributive justice (punishment for wrongdoing), which fails to heal or change people, leading only to more brokenness.
- Acknowledging Brokenness: True justice requires recognizing our shared brokenness and vulnerability, which fosters empathy, rather than punishing the visible brokenness of others.
- Systemic Change: Rohr critiques institutions that focus on charity (patching holes) while maintaining the structures that create the holes in the first place, advocating for a justice that transforms systems.
- Contemplative Root: Compassionate action for justice arises from deep contemplative awareness of God's presence, leading to a "belly-level understanding" that motivates service, as seen in events like the "Contemplative Sit for Justice" with Rohr and Rev. angel Kyodo williams Sensei.
In essence:"No true love without justice and no true justice without love.". Rohr's vision integrates these, seeing compassionate love as the essence of true justice, a restorative force for all people.
- Justice as Compassion: God's justice isn't a balancing of scales but an overflowing love and mercy that fills gaps, restoring everyone, even the unworthy, to wholeness.
- Beyond Retribution: He contrasts this with the world's common retributive justice (punishment for wrongdoing), which fails to heal or change people, leading only to more brokenness.
- Acknowledging Brokenness: True justice requires recognizing our shared brokenness and vulnerability, which fosters empathy, rather than punishing the visible brokenness of others.
- Systemic Change: Rohr critiques institutions that focus on charity (patching holes) while maintaining the structures that create the holes in the first place, advocating for a justice that transforms systems.
- Contemplative Root: Compassionate action for justice arises from deep contemplative awareness of God's presence, leading to a "belly-level understanding" that motivates service, as seen in events like the "Contemplative Sit for Justice" with Rohr and Rev. angel Kyodo williams Sensei.
"No true love without justice and no true justice without love.". Rohr's vision integrates these, seeing compassionate love as the essence of true justice, a restorative force for all people.
Where Justice and Charity Meet
Where Justice and Charity Meet
Sunday, October 31, 2021
Fr. Richard Rohr shares the importance of both justice and charity to bring about the common good.
“We need to make the kind of society where it is easier for people to be good,” said Peter Maurin (1877–1949). [1] That is our difficulty today. We are surrounded by good, well-meaning folks who are swept along in a stream of shallow options. Not only is the good made increasingly difficult to do, it is even difficult to recognize. It seems that affluence takes away the clear awareness of what is life and what is death. I don’t think the rich are any more or less sinful than the poor; they just have many more ways to call their sin virtue. There is a definite deadening of the awareness of true good and true evil.
I have found one fuzzy area that often needs clarification: We have confused justice and charity. Charity was traditionally considered the highest virtue, popularly thought of as a kind of magnanimous, voluntary giving of ourselves, preferably for selfless motives. As long as we rose to this level occasionally by donating food, gifts, or money at the holidays or in times of crisis, we could think of ourselves as charitable people operating at the highest level of virtue.
What has been lacking is the virtue of justice. Justice and charity are complementary but clearly inseparable in teachings of Doctors of the Church, as well as the social encyclical letters of almost all popes over the last century. The giving and caring spirit of charity both motivates and completes our sense of justice, but the virtue of charity cannot legitimately substitute for justice. Persons capable of doing justice are not justified in preferring to “do charity.” Although this has clearly been taught on paper, I would say it is the great missing link in the practical preaching and lifestyle of the church. We have ignored the foundational obligation of justice in our works of charity! For centuries we have been content to patch up holes temporarily (making ourselves feel benevolent) while in fact maintaining the institutional structures that created the holes (disempowering people on the margins). Now it has caught up with us in unremitting poverty, massive income disparity, cultural alienation, and human and environmental abuse.
Jesus preaches a social order in which true charity is possible, a way of relating by which cooperation and community make sense. Jesus offers a world where all share the Spirit’s power “each according to their gift.” And that “Spirit is given to each person for the sake of the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). That is the key to Christian community and Christian social justice. It is not a vision of totalitarian equality, nor is it capitalist competition (“domination of the fittest”). It is a world in which cooperation, community, compassion, and the charity of Christ are paramount—and to which all other things are subservient. The “common good” is the first principle of Catholic social doctrine—although few Catholics know it.
References:
[1] Peter Maurin, quoted in The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of Dorothy Day (Harper and Brothers: 1952), 280.
Adapted from Richard Rohr and Others, Grace in Action, ed. Teddy Carney and Christina Spahn (Crossroad: 1994), 3–5.
5. MEDITATION
https://youtu.be/BaaBHPjOf98?si=CaXditLpfNX_tC0j
6. SHARING
7. INTENTIONS AND PRAYER
Jericho Road
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's road side, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. Compassion sees that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.
Let us pray:
Ever present God, you called us to be in relationship with one another and promised to dwell wherever two or three are gathered. In our community, we are many different people; we come from many different places, have many different cultures. Open our hearts that we may be bold in finding the riches of inclusion and the treasures of diversity among us. We pray in faith.
- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
8. SONG
https://youtu.be/UC2bc2-wuHE?si=A_50x-Zpf_Q1e3-B
