WORSHIP AND JUSTICE

Liturgy and life are two sides of the same coin. Everyday life is about relationships; establishing them and developing them. It's about the hard work of loving the next person; being just, fair, considerate, non-exploitative, forgiving and peaceful. Is there a significant gap in our minds between how we pray in church and how we live and deal with one another at home and in the market place? If we pray on our knees on Sunday, do we prey on our neighbors on Monday?

There's an intrinsic connection between going to Mass and practicing social justice. Their relationship to each other is more than simply an external juxtaposition of items in the Catholic bag of tricks. For the prophets in the bible, there was a huge relationship between cult and conduct. They railed furiously against the Israelite worship of their day, which often ended up being a substitute for social responsibility. Here is a typical sample of their preaching.

"Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" - Amos 5:21-24. And to Isaiah, after a similar tongue lashing, God says, "Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow..." - Isaiah 1:16-17. The prophet Micah wondered how he should worship: "Shall I come before God with burnt offerings....? God responds to him, but not with a solution for the liturgy committee! "Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:6-8.

What was true about worship in the days of the prophets of Israel is even more so about our Sunday Mass. The prophets didn't condemn ceremonies out of hand. They condemned religious formalism, prayers said and ceremonies performed with mechanical exactness but with no sense of justice for the poor and oppressed. No doubt about it, caring to sing the right hymns and reading the prescribed readings is commendable, but God reminded the prophets that more is required than keeping ceremonial laws and rules. Worship is rooted in justice. It's either the concrete expression of right relationships between people, or it is hypocrisy. "Justice cares for the establishment and development of relationships, liturgy is their celebration" wrote Kathleen Hughes R.S.C.J. several years ago.

The late Archbishop Anthony Bloom said that if our lifestyle contradicts our prayers, they will never be alive or real. There's a relationship between praying and being: we pray only out of who we are, and not out of who we are not. It is hypocritical pretense to attempt to pray out of somebody we are not. The nature of Sunday Mass calls for an understanding of who we are and what we are doing, i.e. for full, conscious and active participation.

PASTOR EMERITUS