Reflection
If we take time to reflect on situations around us, we may realize that we have been ignoring injustices that demand our attention. Justice is a central imperative in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It encompasses all human interactions, and is also a right of animals and the environment. It requires that all people, especially the poor and the weak, have access to opportunities and that injustice toward any group threatens us all. We begin to understand that among the poor and the voiceless are also all living creatures and the violated earth. Justice impels us to recognize the equality and dignity of all. Those who live justly understand what belongs to whom and work to ensure that they receive it.
Prayer
May the Spirit of Justice move every human heart, may barriers which divide us crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease so that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace.
Action
Name injustices when you see them. Speak boldly. Do not be afraid of “what others may think.
Suggested Reading
This is what God asks of you, only this,
To act justly
To love tenderly.
To walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6-8
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.
Matthew 5: 3-12
Let us be renewed by God’s mercy … and let us become agents of this mercy, channels through which God can water the earth, protect all creation and make justice and peace flourish.
Pope Francis
In the new year, together we walk with God with willingness to help those in need and to take actions that will lead to justice and peace.
Joyce Rupp
The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
Reinhold Neibuhr
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
Elie Wiesel
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.
Alice Walker
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire
I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.
Charles Bukowski
There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.
Montesquieu
True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.
Clarence Darrow
God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
Jacques Deva
With reverence for all creation, we work to secure the human dignity of all persons, especially the poor and oppressed.
Constitutions of the Sisters of Saint Joseph