Category: Justice

Greetings on this the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Exodus 22:20-26; Psalm 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51; 1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10; Matthew 22:34-40

Summary

The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments (Mt 22:40).

1. You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind (Mt 22:37).
2. You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:39).

And YOU became imitators of us and of the Lord, receiving the word in great affliction, with joy from the holy Spirit (1 Thes 1:6).

Reflection

When I write a blog reflection I try to remember the two types of people who may be reading this. One group needs reassurance. They have been through a lot (health, work, family, enemies) and need some sort of reassurance the Lord loves them and hears their cry and attends to their needs (sometimes completely, sometimes in unexpected ways). The other group are those who are certain of their ways but live as the blind leading the blind and need a bit of a wakeup call. Additionally, to break through, for the benefit of any and all human souls, I try to provide a rich diversity of citations and perspectives converging on the greatest truths.

Jesus is working within a Jewish interpretive tradition of summarizing the Torah around a central principle in describing the greatest truth. In the generation before Jesus, we have this ancient story which brings one to the same conclusion, albeit in the negative form of the same goal.

One Footed Answer (abbreviated)

From a legendary story in the Talmud (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a) involving the great 1st-century BCE sage Rabbi Hillel. A man offering to convert would do so if the entirety of the law could be recited while standing on one foot. Hillel accepted the challenge and famously replied: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it.”

Personal Reflection

Do you have a favorite bible verse?

I have two sets that mean the most to me.

How to Love

“You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

The Strength of my Love

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”

If you need reassurance then know this, these are the guiding principles of my life and I am glad for it.
If you need correction, pay attention to what the Lord said in the Exodus selection today. https://bible.usccb.org/bible/exodus/22?20 … You shall not oppress or afflict a resident alien, for you were once aliens residing in the land of Egypt. You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me, I will surely listen to their cry.

Sacred Readings full text: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102526.cfm

Peace be with you,
Deacon Gerry

Greetings on this the Friday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Readings: Ephesians 4:1-6; Psalm 24:1-2, 3-4ab, 5-6; Luke 12:54-59

Summary

Live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Eph 4:1b-6).

Reflection

• Why do you not know how to interpret the present time? (Lk 12:56)
• Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? (Lk 12:57)

For Jesus, the ‘present times’ is the demand since memorialized in the saying: Justice for Me, None for Thee.

For Paul what is right is the Seven Unities.

1. Church (the One Body)
2. Spirit (Holy Spirit)
3. Hope
4. One Lord (Jesus)
5. Faith
6. Baptism
7. and the one God (Father of All)

Jesus is critiquing the self-righteous attitude by describing a situation that is most revealing. We march headlong into conflict and crisis (sometimes of our own making) and find ourselves the one being served penal justice.

1. You go with your opponent before a magistrate.
2. Your opponent will turn you over to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the constable, and the constable throw you into prison.

Paul describes a worldview that brings peace: with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love.

Personal Reflection

Who can ascend the mountain of the LORD?
or who may stand in his holy place?
He whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean,
who desires not what is vain.
(Ps 24:3-4ab)

My Brothers and Sisters, we need to get out of the trap of seeking justice for ourselves with exclusivity and to extremes. We must discern justice severed from love versus justice ordered toward communion.

We live in a world of Fiat justitia, ruat caelum and Summum jus, summa injuria.

Meanings

• Let justice be done though the heavens fall.
• The highest law is the highest injury.

These are the LOCKS to the door of the prison Jesus describes.
The Seven Unities UNLOCK the door.

Sacred Readings full text: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102326.cfm

Peace be with you,
Deacon Gerry

Greetings on this the Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Readings: Galatians 1:6-12; Psalm 111:1b-2, 7-8, 9, 10c; Luke 10:25-37

Summary

I am amazed that you are so quickly forsaking the one who called you by [the] grace [of Christ] for a different gospel (not that there is another). But there are some who are disturbing you and wish to pervert the gospel of Christ. [Jesus said] I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you. (Gal 1:6-7; Jn 13:34).

The scholar of the law needed to take a journey: from the head to the heart, to the hands.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

1. Know the Goal: Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
2. Understand The Law: What is written in the law? How do you read it?
3. Application of the Law: And who is my neighbor?
4. Analysis: Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?

Reflection

My teacher-superintendent friend educator, I think, will enjoy this reflection.
The Gospel portion today is a classic application of Bloom’s taxonomy of learning.
Bloom’s taxonomy (see diagram) or go to: https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/catalogs/tip-sheets/blooms-taxonomy

Jesus takes us through the first four of the Cognitive hierarchy.
The Church offers an opening to the last two.

• Evaluate – How do you understand Jesus’ rationale in presenting the story of the Good Samaritan?
• Create – How can you create the goodness of the Samaritan within yourself?

He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.”
Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Personal Reflection

So how do I become a good Samaritan?

The first answer is the strongest (opinion): Gratitude. Let us not forsake gratitude.
Let’s let the psalmist frame our gratitude and help us on the path of eternal life.

Bloom’s Affective domain has:

• Receiving – listen.
• Responding – to God and each other.
• Valuing – exposes, changes or adds new values to your value system.
• Organization – integrating change or reinforcing the value already present.
• Characterization – how do we ‘good’ together?

But expanding these are for another day.

I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart
in the company and assembly of the just.
Great are the works of the LORD,
exquisite in all their delights.

The works of his hands are faithful and just;
sure are all his precepts,
Reliable forever and ever,
wrought in truth and equity.

He has sent deliverance to his people;
he has ratified his covenant forever;
holy and awesome is his name.
His praise endures forever.

Finally,

The lawyer begins by asking for information sufficient to inherit eternal life. Jesus educates him until information becomes mercy—and then sends him out to practice what he has learned.

Reference using today’s gospel portion: https://deacongerrypalermo.blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/samaritan-all.pdf

Sacred Readings full text: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/100526.cfm

Peace be with you,
Deacon Gerry

Formation: https://www.usccb.org/resources/forming-consciences-faithful-citizenship-pdf

Voting Guidance

https://aleteia.org/2026/09/16/us-bishops-issue-guidelines-to-help-people-vote-with-faith

Here the bishops list key points of Catholic teaching with which we should evaluate candidates and issues, including:

• Addressing the preeminent requirement to protect the weakest in our midst
• Keeping our nation from turning to violence to address fundamental problems
• Promoting family as the foundation of society, and providing better support for family life morally, socially, and economically
• Achieving comprehensive immigration reform
• Helping families and children overcome poverty
• Providing health care while respecting human life, human dignity, and religious freedom in our health care system
• Continuing to oppose policies that reflect prejudice, hostility toward immigrants, religious bigotry, and other forms of unjust discrimination
• Joining with others around the world to pursue peace, protect human rights and religious liberty, and advance economic justice and care for creation

Greetings on this the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows
Readings: 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, 27-31a; Psalm 100:1b-2, 3, 4, 5; John 19:25-27

Summary

Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts (1 Cor 12:31).

Our Lady of Sorrows comes immediately after the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross as there is no greater sorrow for a mother. There is no greater Son than Jesus. In love, Mary has Sorrow. She is sorrowful for us, too. The misery we propagate through the ages in war and endless wars. Jesus is our Brother who entered the tomb we all share.

Reflection

Sorrow is universal.
It is reasonable to say that sorrow should bind together even the greatest of enemies in peace and silence before this great mystery.

Marmion; A Tale of Flodden Field

Nor yet suppress the generous sigh,
Because his rival slumbers nigh;
Nor be thy requiescat dumb,
Lest it be said o’er FOX’S tomb.
For talents mourn, untimely lost
When best employed, and wanted most;
Mourn genius high, and lore profound,
And wit that loved to play, not wound;
And all the reasoning powers divine,
To penetrate, resolve, combine;
And feelings keen, and fancy’s glow—
They sleep with him who sleeps below:
And if thou mourn’st they could not save
From error him who owns this grave,
Be every harsher thought suppressed,
And sacred be the last long rest.
.
.
.
The solemn echo seems to cry—
“Here let their discord with them die.
“Speak not for those a separate doom,
“Whom Fate made brothers in the tomb;
“But search the land of living men,
“Where wilt thou find their like again?”

(https://telelib.com/authors/S/ScottWalter/verse/marmion/marmion010.html)

Personal Reflection

We cannot lose sight of the horror of war. No battle video, toxic proclamations, lionizing war-making and warrior worship (beyond citizen-soldier) can match the perfect Sorrow of Mary. It is but a mirage and menagerie.

Sacred Readings full text: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091526.cfm

Peace be with you,
Deacon Gerry

Peace be with you,

Deacon Gerry