“The justice of God has been manifested through faith in Jesus Christ,” (cf. Rm 3, 21-22). This biblical connection between justice and the person of Jesus is the passage on which Pope Benedict bases his 2010 Lenten message. He notes that the purpose of Lent is “review” and reform of one’s life “in light of the teachings of the Gospel.”

Pope Benedict begins by analyzing the term “justice”, as it is understood in the everyday vernacular.

He observes that Ulpian, a Roman jurist from the third century, largely influenced this understanding, which is “to render every man his due.” Pope Benedict conveys one aspect of justice: that which concerns itself with material needs. Jesus Himself worked to render this justice through His healing of the sick. However, Pope Benedict notes that most peoples’ conception of justice stops there, and they fail to recognize a deeper need that is so often overlooked, namely people’s spiritual need for God.

In his next topic, Pope Benedict examines the nature of injustice. Again, he exposes the weakness and inaccuracy of the common perception of what injustice actually is. He explains that most see injustice as an external force. The consequence of this is that society must remove those external forces which they deem impediments to justice.

Pope Benedict reminds us of Jesus’ message on this point, “This way of thinking – Jesus warns – is ingenuous and shortsighted. Injustice, the fruit of evil, does not have exclusively external roots; its origin lies in the human heart, where the seeds are found of a mysterious cooperation with evil.”

Pope Benedict proceeds to a discussion of “sedaqah”—the Hebrew word for justice that aptly encapsulates the Lenten message Pope Benedict means to communicate.

It means both and right relations with one’s neighbor and accepting the will of God. Pope Benedict’s reflections say that these are not mutually exclusive definitions. On the contrary, the two “are linked because giving to the poor for the Israelites is none other than restoring what is owed to God, who had pity on the misery of His people.”

Pope Benedict’s Lenten reflection on justice culminates with a discussion of “Christ, the Justice of God.” This necessarily involves the justice rendered by Christ on the Cross. There, the ultimately Innocent One paid the price of the guilty so that the guilty might “receive in return the blessing due to the just one.” This seems contrary to Ulpian’s interpretation of the meaning of justice, in that God’s justice—at the least—appears to render the opposite of one’s due.

Pope Benedict explains that the meaning of the Cross for justice is a need for the other, and the revelation of man’s sense of “self-sufficiency” for what it truly is—smoke and mirrors.

Pope Benedict articulates, “Humility is required to accept that I need Another to free me from ‘what is mine,’ to give me gratuitously ‘what is His.’ This happens especially in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. Thanks to Christ’s action, we may enter into the “greatest” justice, which is that of love (cf. Rm 13, 8-10).”

The full text of Pope Benedict’s Lenten message can be found at http://www.vatican.va.

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