The Real Justice
Michiel Peeters - I often wonder what question Jesus’s words are answering, or what confusion he observed among his disciples that led him to tell, for example, today’s parable. Most likely, the disciples had asked something like, “One can pray, but God does not always grant what one requests.” Then Jesus shares this parable about the widow who persistently asks for justice from an unjust judge, until he, tired of her persistence, grants her justice to get rid of her.
“Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says. Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
God will soon bring justice to those who pray to Him day and night. But to see this happen in our lives, we first need to learn from experience what justice truly is. Often, we confuse our limited idea of justice—crumbles of justice—with the justice we actually need—the justice God gives as soon as we ask for it. The Roman jurist Ulpian is credited with defining justice as “giving everyone his due.” What is our due? As human beings, what more is our due than to breathe freely in the relationship for which we are created?
I want to illustrate this with an example I heard last week. When a teacher entered her classroom one day, a bully was waiting for her and made a comment that deeply hurt her. And he saw that he had hurt her.
At that moment, the teacher asks herself, “Who is it who really tells me who I am?” That realization fills her with energy to teach her lesson. The boy sits there waiting for some punishment or to be sent out, but nothing happens. She teaches a lesson like never before. After class, the bully has no choice but to come forward and ask her, “But who are you?”
What kind of justice does the teacher need? Is it achieved when the bully is expelled from school? Or when he is struck down immediately, as the brothers John and James wanted to ask God? Or do we see justice happening when the bully’s remark brings the teacher so deeply into herself that she can recognize the great Presence and flourish in its light, in the face of everything and everyone?
“I tell you, [God] will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.”
There is one condition. That we “call out to him day and night.” That we “pray always without becoming weary.” That we always desire, because, as Augustine says, “If we always want to pray, we must always desire.” That is why, according to the same Augustine, the whole of Christian life is one lengthy exercise in holy desire, that is, true desire, desire for that for which we were made, for true justice, for true fulfillment, and therefore, for the only presence that can truly fulfill us.
That is why Jesus asks at the end of today’s Gospel, “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Will he find people who have known him, that is, experienced him so much that they continue to desire, look for, and ask for him, day and night?
To those chosen ones, God will soon bring justice, as He did for that teacher, as we are all invited to experience.
