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By Fr. Roy Cimagala
Chaplain
Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)
Talamban, Cebu City
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
ONLY in Christ, of course, can we find true justice and peace. Outside of him, forget it. We can only have, at best, some appearance of justice and peace, but not the real ones. In time, the consequences of the counterfeit justice and peace will surely be exposed.
We are reminded of this truth of our Christian faith in the readings of the Mass of Tuesday of the First Week of Advent where we are told that “a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: the spirit of wisdom, and of understanding, the spirit of counsel, and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge, and of godliness.” (Is 11,1-2)
And in the responsorial psalm of that day, these beautiful words are said, which describe the effects of how the spirit of God will have on this rod out of the root of Jesse: “Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace for ever.” (Ps 72,7)
We should just try our best that we base our search for true justice and peace on Christ, the personification of the “rod out of the root of Jesse” that was foretold in the Book of Isaiah. We have to be wary of our strong tendency to rely mainly on our own estimation of things, on our ideologies and philosophies, in our search for justice and peace.
As we can see now, especially in the so-called developed countries that have all but abandoned God and religion in general, and are simply depending on their own ideologies, there is clearly a quagmire of acrimony and finger-pointing.
Even the commonest of common sense is contradicted as when some people claim that they have a right to abort, or kill, a baby at birth. Politics is not anymore a pursuit for the common good, with God as the ultimate common good, but rather a brazen conspiracy to acquire power and to keep it as long as possible. Of course, it would just be a matter of time before violence, and even war, would erupt.
We need to make a shout-out for the need to return to God if we want to have true justice and peace. With him, as taught and shown by Christ in the Holy Spirit, and as promoted consistently by the Church, we are sure to find justice and peace in spite of our unavoidable differences and conflicts. With him, we can still hold on to the power of love that knows how to keep the unity in the truth among ourselves despite our differences and conflicts.
Obviously, to be able to return to God, we need a lot of faith. We just cannot depend on our reasoning and estimation of things. Thus, in the gospel of the day, Christ told his disciples how lucky they were because they knew Christ. “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see,” he said. “For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.” (Lk 10,23-24)
We should always make Christ as the beginning and end of all our efforts to find true justice and peace in this world!
