Transcript

For years, the works of St. Thomas Aquinas have been a very powerful, beautiful guide for me in understanding so much about, not just the Catholic faith, but about the world.

And I love how St. Thomas presents to us the ancient idea of justice that the Greeks had long before him, that justice is giving to each one his due.

To each one what is due to her.

To each one, justice is giving what, what belongs, what we owe to them.

And so trying to understand justice in that light has helped me to, to see it at all kinds of levels I didn't see before.

I think that the, um, idea of, of justice, uh, living a life of, of, um, exhibiting justice, it, it goes along with the idea of, you know, if we're following Christ, we have to remember where he's going, and it's hard.

Um, we have to be willing to, to speak up and be advocates for those who can't a- advocate for themselves, and that's going to put, um, a Catholic, um, in the limelight.

Um, if we're going to, um, speak out for life, um, for, if we're going to live a countercultural life that exhibits what Catholics believe, um, about respect for life from conception to natural death, for example, then that's going to put us in a place where we don't fit in necessarily.

That's by virtue of living counter-culturally.

Um, and, and that's a very hard place to be.

Um, in my experience, that, um, that begins with maybe even extended family.

You're living counter-culturally and don't, don't really fit even i- uh, in your family.

So if we're gonna s- if we're going to live for justice, we have to be ready to not fit in.

We have to be ready to speak up.

We have to be ready to be pr- possibly the only one speaking up.

And, um, in today's culture, that's probably harder than ever.

Justice is the virtue by which we give to others what is rightly owed to them.

So we exercise this virtue in our relationships with others, how we treat them.

In simple terms, treating our spouses with respect, respecting our parents or other legitimate authorities, uh, putting the good of others before our own.

These are the ways that, that we exercise the virtue of justice.

I think the Catholic Church does a pretty good job of reminding us of the dignity of, of every human life and the respect that's owed to all human life, from natural conception to natural death.

And so the Catholic faith helps us to remind us of this great virtue.

What is it that I owe to each person, to other persons?

And, and I began to see that it doesn't just include a kind of narrow sense of legal justice.

Certainly includes that, but it's not everything.

Economic justice is very important, but it's not everything.

But at the most basic level, what do I owe each person that I meet every day?

What is it about that person that should call forth from me a response in accordance with who that person really is?

And it was the Catholic faith that helped me to understand in a very profound way the mystery of human dignity, of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God, to become a son or a daughter of God.

The, the immense value of that, and that if that's true, if that's how we belong to God, if that's who our true identity is, then justice means not just those other things we were talking about, but that I treat each person I meet, recognizing especially that each person is called ultimately to live with God forever in glory.

And they may not make that destination, and so the way I deal with them may actually help them along to one destiny or the other.

It's what a writer called C.S. Lewis called the weight of glory.

In what ways am I acting justly to each person I meet?

Do I treat them as God's beloved son and daughter, or do I treat them as a means to an end?

And in that, I've come to see justice in a whole new light.

Now, some of us may fear God's justice, and I'm not sure that justice is necessarily something to be feared in, in a servile kind of way.

I know that I have to go and face God someday and make an accounting of my life, but I can't help but think about the words of Saint Therese of Lisieux, who said that she would go to judgment day with, with open hands, not relying on any of her own merits to make a claim on heaven, but simply relying on God's goodness and his mercy.

If we're truly sorry for our sins and we make an effort to make reparation for them, then we don't have to fear God's justice.

We'll have nothing to fear on judgment day.