Embedded Files
From the earliest days of the Church, the Church and its leadership has focused on a person’s individual dignity. The Letter of St. James tells us that:
“If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (James 2: 14-18)
Furthermore, in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke tells us about life in the earliest Christian community in Jerusalem:
“There was not a needy person among them.” (Acts 4: 32-35).
Paul in 2 Corinthians writes to the community and quotes Psalm 112 when he says:
“He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.”
We are all endowed with rights directly from God that provides for our dignity. The Church teaches that we have the right to life, from womb to tomb. We speak out against the evils of abortion, but also against the evils of capital punishment. We seek to provide food for the hungry in our advocacy for nutritional support programs such as WIC, SNAP, and the National School Lunch program. (USCCB, Building a Culture of Life). Pope Francis has spoken extensively on the scourge of environmental profiteering and recognizes that the regions that are most at risk from ecological disasters are those where the poor and marginalized live. (Laudato Sí, No. 25)
Even Jesus demonstrated that we have an absolute right to healthcare. In the many healings that are depicted in the Gospels, Jesus heals because of the faith shown by those who sought care.
True, we have rights, but we also have responsibilities. Nothing will change if we don’t speak up. Nothing will change if we don’t advocate for human dignity. 1 John 3:18 tells us:
“Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”
Where there is injustice we are to fight it to the best of our abilities.
As St. Francis taught us,
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
It is at the very core or our faith to take care of others, in thought, word, and deed. It is our job to speak up for others where there is injustice being propagated. Though not from within Catholic tradition or Scripture, perhaps Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best when he said:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
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