The Perspective of Justice

Today’s liturgy affirms our faith that “the dead rise again” and our “God-given hope of being restored to life” after death. This faith and hope are founded in Jesus Christ, “the first-born from the dead,” the source of our “eternal consolation and hope.”

Our “God is not the God of the dead but of the living,” and our religion is not a religion of death but of resurrection and life.

Faith in eternal life has energized Christians for centuries. It has also, unfortunately, caused some of them to neglect the immediate task at hand: the right ordering of the world in preparation for the coming of the kingdom.

Today’s liturgy counteracts that tendency with a message of doing God's work on earth and giving our lives in service to all.

“The King of the world will raise us up to live again forever.” In the meantime, there are the “burdens and challenges of life” which must be met head-on if we are to be “a kingdom of priests to serve our God and Father.”

All too often Christians are faulted with a certain indifference toward earthly projects, as if one could not fully count on us for radical social reform. The charge may be unfair, but the danger is real enough.

Our hope in another life must not be allowed to seduce believers into neglecting our task in the present one.

U.S. Bishops, Pastoral Letter on Marxist Communism,1980:4

Gerald Darring

**From Saint Louis University