The Evangelical Pope | Hungry and Thirsty for Justice

Michelangelo, Separation of the Earth from the Waters / Wikimedia

Each week we let Saint Pope John Paul II share meaningful signposts to spark socio-economic resolves through justice and righteousness combined with mercy and compassion; in short, love.

               “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice …”

               __ Mathew 5: 6

The Creator is the foundation of human morality. He is, at the same time, the supreme Legislator. By creating humankind in his image and likeness, he inscribed in the human "heart" the whole order of truth, which conditions good and moral order and, therefore, is also the basis of human dignity - the image of God.

At the very center of this order is the commandment "thou shalt not kill," a firm and absolute prohibition that simultaneously affirms every man's right to life from the first moment of conception until natural death. This right notably defends innocent and defenseless men and women.

               “Being hungry and thirsty for justice” - means doing everything to ensure that this right is observed so that no man becomes a victim of an attack on his life or health so that he is not innocently killed, tortured, tormented, or threatened.

At the same time, however, it is difficult not to affirm that our century is the century burdened by the death of millions of innocent people. The new way of waging wars, which consists of massive fighting and destruction of the population that does not actively participate in the war, has contributed to this. It is enough to remember the bombings (until the use of the atomic bomb), then the concentration camps, and the massive deportations of the population, which ended with the death of millions of innocent victims. Among the nations of Europe, our country had a noteworthy part in this massacre. In our territories, the commandment "thou shalt not kill" has been violated by millions of crimes and crimes.

Among these crimes, the systematic exterminations of entire nations remain particularly shocking - first of all, of the Jews or ethnic groups (such as the Gypsies), solely for reasons of belonging to that given nation or race.

Was this just a fact of particular cruelty, of immediate cruelty? It must be noted that entire plans of racial and ethnic hatred had prepared the deadly effects of the last war! Such programs rejected the moral principle of the commandment “thou shalt not kill” as absolute and commonly obligatory.

Referring to insane ideologies, they left the right to decide on the life and death of individual people, and even of entire groups and separate nations, to privileged human instances.

In place of the divine, "do not kill" the human, "it is permissible to kill," and even "it is necessary to kill" has been put. And so enormous parts of our continent have become the graves of innocent men, victims of crimes.

The root of the crime lies in humanity’s usurpation of divine authority over life and death. A distant but insistent echo of those words accepted by man "from the beginning" against his Creator and Father makes itself heard in this.

They sounded like this: "You will become like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3: 5) - (which means you will decide what is good and what is terrible, you men - like God, like God - against God).

Excerpted from:

VIAGGIO APOSTOLICO IN POLONIA (1°-9 GIUGNO 1991)

OMELIA DI GIOVANNI PAOLO II, Aeroporto militare di Radom (Varsavia) - Martedì, 4 giugno 1991

https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/homilies/1991/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19910604_messa-radom.html