This week I watched a Public Television documentary called, “Elusive Justice: The Search for Nazi War Criminals.” After the Second World War there was a brief period of bringing to justice those who had committed the war crimes of genocide. The most famous of the trials was the Nuremberg Trial held in 1945 and 1946, during which 24 of the most important, still living Nazi officials were put on trial. There were other trials as well, but within a few years of the end of the war, energies shifted to things other than vengeance.
There were thousands of Nazis who were never tried, but the starch to go after war criminals petered out. This happened to the great dismay of families of people who had fallen prey to the genocide.
This documentary picks up on the story of how certain individuals went in search of war criminals, capturing them from their various places of hiding, and bringing them to Jerusalem to face justice. The most famous of these was Adolf Eichmann, the architect for the Final Solution, the mass murder of Jews.
The documentary is actually rather exhausting as the viewer settles in with the fury of those who were frustrated with the general lack of interest in bringing such war criminals to justice.
Since I am a preacher, always alert to see a connection between events in life and the Scriptures we read at Mass, I had an “Aha! Moment.”
It occurred to me that the hunger for justice, even for vengeance, is one of the most powerful motivators human beings have. It spurs people to give their lives to correct what we call “social injustice.” Think of the wrath of the descendants of American slaves, a wrath that, on the positive side, begot the Civil Rights movement, and on the negative side, begot the race riots after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.
There is at the core of every human being a hunger for justice, a demand for justice, especially if it is you, or your people, who have faced some enormous injustice. If the injustice is not fully addressed, it moves into the soul and becomes so terribly frustrated that it pours out in a loss of faith, a loss of humanity, or a loss of hope, eventually bringing about some form of revolution.
What was so remarkable about South Africa was the peaceful and just resolution of this very dark energy of vengeance. It was done by the very honest effort of the “Truth and Justice Commission” where all the ugly horrors of apartheid were faced and not only repented of, but were also forgiven.
Today’s Gospel assures all victims of injustice that if there situation is not rectified in this life, there will indeed be a truth and justice commission called the Last Judgment. They will have their justice!
When the Son of Man comes in all his glory he will separate them into two groups: the goats and the sheep. The goats are the perpetrators of social injustice, especially those who perpetrated injustice by their inaction, in the face of hunger, thirst, immigration injustice, poverty, and lack of care for the sick and imprisoned. Apathy sends goats to hell.
The sheep, however, are those who do care for all these people in need. Attending to people in need is called the work of social justice.
We cannot be one-sided: either interested in social justice alone or in personal righteousness alone. We must be personally holy and socially engaged. To do so is to face the Son of Man when he comes in all his glory and find oneself placed among those on his right side.
Once when Mother Teresa was asked how she had the energy to do all she did for the sick, the dying, the orphaned and the unwanted, she held up her five fingers and said, “Five words: ‘you did it for me’.”
St. Ignatius of Loyola said there are three degrees of humility. The first degree is to have the humility to stop arguing with God about the 10 Commandments. For all the money in the world, I will not commit a mortal sin by breaking even one of the 10 Commandments.
The second degree of humility is to have matured in Christ so much that I don’t want to commit even a venial sin. Nothing could entice me to do the least little thing against God’s will. This is not scrupulosity, but a desire to be one with God in all things.
And the third degree of humility is to be able to see in the hungry person, the thirsty person, the alien, the naked, or the imprisoned person, the rejected person: Christ himself. And no matter what anyone thinks of me, I prefer to be with that person in need, even if it means I am loathed by others, because I will be in the presence of Christ himself. This is what it means to live in such a way as to hear the Lord say those 5 words: “You did it for me.”
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