Today the United Nations celebrates the first World Day of Social Justice, intended to become an annual event. The day offers all of us an opportunity to reflect on our role in promoting the social justice so necessary to secure a lasting peace. In the words of Pope Paul VI in Octogesiam Adveniens, “It is too easy to throw back on others responsibility for injustices, if at the same time one does not realize how each one shares in it personally, and how personal conversion is needed first.”
All of us who call ourselves Christians are called to share a transformation process with God – to be agents of social change. We can, by our individual actions, make a difference. We can contribute to peace and justice in the world. In the words of Dean Brackley: “Responding to massive injustice according to each one’s calling is the price of being human, and Christian, today. Those looking for a privatized spirituality to shelter them from a violent world have come to the wrong place.”
Today offers us an invitation to ask: how am I called to respond to injustice? How am I called to be an agent of social change?
Creo en Dios! 