Raising Awareness of All God's People

We talk about it, sing about it, write about it, pray about it — social justice. Not again, you say? We just can’t seem to get it right or in some cases, get it at all, I’m afraid. As a high school student, my daughter was dumbfounded when one of her peers didn’t know anything about social justice. Someone said labeling this issue as “social” justice is redundant because biblical justice is all about society and therefore social justice. We can’t bog ourselves down with semantics because the issues are too compelling, too important for those who need us.

Who are these people in need? Not all of them live in Third World countries. Some could be our neighbors, certainly members of our own communities. They may not be able to read or write. They may be elderly and indigent, living in a nursing home where nobody visits them, nobody cares about them. They are single mothers, trying to find someone to care for their children while they find a way to get to work. They might be part of the newly or chronically unemployed, victims of the continuing “downsizing, even as we’re told the economy is turning around. They may be among the marginally mentally disabled, living on the streets or in abandoned buildings because they just can’t “get their act together.” They could be prisoners in one of our diocese’s many correctional facilities, or undocumented workers cycling through southern Illinois moving farther south as the growing season ends here and picks up down the road. The amount and degree of injustice seems limitless. And this list isn’t exhaustive, only those issues and instances that fit in this space.

We have to raise our level of awareness about all of these people, not because we can do something in every case, but perhaps we can make a difference to one of those people in one of those instances. That’s all it takes — one person trying to make a difference for one other person. Think of the chain of differences that could be forged if each of us tried it.
People of this diocese are generous — I’ve seen what a few can do and have done. We need to energize a few more, invite them to mobilize, to get involved, to spend a few of those precious moments we have in doing something for someone else. Jesus will not remember me for all the words I have spread across the pages but for what I have done to help others, and in so doing, to help myself. It is, as they say, a win-win situation.