Justice - What We Owe God
Justice is what we owe God
Justice is not about what is owed to me. That is a self-centered. Justice is about what we owe to God and what we owe to others.
The first three Commandments delineate what we owe God; the next seven, what we owe others. The first three -
You shall have no other gods before me
You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain
Keep the sabbath day holy
What Do We Owe God? Everything! God created us from nothing
He holds us in existence, He provides for our smallest needs, He became man, suffered and died to save us from Hell and give us eternal life. Then, in return - we owe Him everything.
Giving God what we owe Him is an aspect of Justice called the virtue of Religion
Some people, however say: “I am not a religious person” I want to respond - Oh, so you created yourself; you hold yourself in existence; you can save yourself from everlasting death – wow – I'm glad I have met such a god as you.” I think it, but I don’t say it...
We can never attain a level of pure justice with God because we can never perfectly repay this enormous debt that we owe to God. Joseph Pieper writes: “Man can never say to God: we are even.”
Nevertheless, we have an obligation to give back to God all that we are and all that we have.
Lk 17:10: When you have done all you have been commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.'
Keeping the Sabbath Day holy
The 3rd Commandment: Keep holy the Sabbath Day means that on Sundays we owe God worship in the way he chose – that is through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass – and we owe it to him to set aside time to rest, to have the leisure for friendship and good conversation and oh yes, for the Rosary.
But isn’t it ironic that God must command us to take time to rest. That’s because the devil has no new tactics. He keeps us from friendship with God, breaks apart families and keeps us from deep friendship with others by keeping us so busy and distracted we have no time for anyone, even God – the result being isolation and loneliness -the beginning of hell on earth.
The Mass is an exchange of hearts
The Mass is a great exchange: God gives Himself to us by giving us Jesus in the Eucharist. And Jesus gives us to the Father in His sacrifice made present. That is why the priest invites us “Lift up your heart” to which respond, “we lift them up to the Lord.” Your heart represents you united to Jesus.
In the Mass we can say “Lord, You gave us Jesus and we offer Jesus back to You.” That is the essence of justice, in fact, that is the source and summit of justice because only there do we give God something comparable to what he gives us. And that’s why we can say in the Mass, “It is right and just.”
It’s also why to fail to participate in Mass is a grave act of injustice, we refuse to give God what we owe Him and to do so freely and knowingly is a mortal sin – a relationship killer.
What happens when we skip Mass
Imagine I was never home, I never had a meal with my family. One day my wife says, “You know we haven’t seen you for weeks. Could we all sit down together at a meal as a family, just once this week?” And I roll my eyes and I say, “Ugh, sure. Fine. Alright, if it’s that important to you, fine, when?” And she says, “I don’t know, on the weekend, you know, when you’re not working?”
“Alright, fine, when do you want to do it?”
And my wife says, “We can build this family meal around your schedule. We could do 4 PM Saturday? We could do an early breakfast Sunday? We could do lunch at noon or even supper Sunday night?”
And I say, “Yeah, uh, don’t ask me to commit to one of those. I’ll show up to one of those, alright?”
And then the weekend goes by and I don’t show up to this one meal with my family that they’d asked me to come to, that they’ve made as convenient as possible for me to show up to. I don’t come and my wife sees me later and she says, “Hey, what happened? I thought we were set, why, I mean, did you get sick? Did you get in a car accident? Was there some emergency?”
And I say, “Oh, no. There was just some other stuff and I didn’t really wanna come to the meal.”
That would be a relationship killer. That is what we mean when we say skipping Mass without a serious reason is a mortal sin. A relationship killer.
The Sunday Obligation
The Bishops have removed the Sunday Obligation to encourage people to stay home if they are sick. But we don’t go to Mass out of obligation; we go because we love God and we want to give ourselves totally to Him in Gratitude. In fact, Eucharist means thanksgiving. Now here is a potential problem: We’ve had many weeks where we could not go to Sunday Mass, establishing a bad habit, and now rebuilding that habit is made difficult by all the precautions required to get there. So people may no longer go out of habit – this could be good. Now we must make a real act of the will, a choice, an act of love and justice to find and go to Mass. Bear in mind, if you live in a metro area there are Catholic Churches with big congregations and small ones. If you can’t get into your big congregation right now, then find a small one and go, and encourage family and friends to join you.