Reflection
If we take time to reflect on situations around us, the actions of our national leaders, the prejudices we take as norms, 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. Justice impels us to recognize the equality and dignity of all and to deal fairly with them. It requires that all people, especially the poor and the weak, have access to opportunities and that none of us is free until all of us are. We begin to understand that among the poor and the voiceless are all living creatures and the violated earth. Those who live justly see 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
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
Dom Helder Camara
The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
Jimmy Carter
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.
God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
Jacques Deva
No one in the world needs a mink coat but a mink.
Murray Banks
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
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