Last night, my good friend asked me one of the most difficult subjects I can ever reflect upon. She asked me if I could ponder on the relevance of justice and love.
In my mind, it would’ve been easier had she asked about love and mercy, or love and grace, or love and forgiveness. But love and justice? Wasn’t it a question as old as whether God is either loving or just? Or whether there is a hell in the afterlife that will punish the wicked forever and ever into eternal fire?
How do I reconcile these things? Can love and justice exist at the same time?
While I was pondering this, a blessed thought suddenly came upon me:
LOVE would never ever desire anything that is UNJUST, but LOVE can embrace even the UNJUST, and in its power bring forth JUSTICE in all things.
The first premise is clear. Love is good and justice is good. Love only desires that which is good, and justice is good indeed.
The second premise is harder but is still possible to be grasped. Love understands. Love forgives. As God maketh it to rain on both the just and the unjust, love is capable indeed of extending its graces and awesome mysteries, its mercies and its kindness even to the unjust.
But the third premise is indeed difficult, if not impossible to comprehend. How is it possible indeed for love to bring forth justice in all things? How can a love that embraces and forgives even the unjust bring forth goodness from what isn’t good?
And then I realized, that our difficulty lies in how we view justice. What is justice anyway? A tooth for a tooth? Revenge and due punishment for those who have wronged us?
If we look at it more carefully though, if we try to feel what’s inside of an aggrieved and hurting heart, we may catch a better glimpse of understanding to the questions we have asked.
What does a hurting soul desire? How does it define the justice it prays for? In its anger and confusion, the person may believe all she wants is to punish the offender.
Yet if we try to ask further, why the desired punishment? Because such a one deserves it? Because such an act can help alleviate one’s pain?
I would like to believe that there are two kinds of pain. One is the immediate effect of the offender’s sin, which may be a physical wound or another kind of suffering. And the other is the pain of not being justified. Now which of these pains is eradicated by the punishment of the guilty?
If we say the second one, we should try to define that pain further. The pain of not being justified is that pain of a meaningless suffering. And by meaningless we mean not only the absence of good fruit but the absence of the offender’s true understanding of the consequences of his actions.
In truth, deep within us, we desire the offender to be punished so he may know the kind of suffering we went through, so he may understand, so he may repent, so he may finally choose what is JUST!
Now the question that herein remains is, can LOVE do that? By now I am certain you’d have realized the answer, but if you ask me still how it can, I would like to tell you honestly, I have no more words to tell you how.
Check Jocelyn's books:
"Of Waves and Butterflies: Poems on Grief", "Mend My Broken Heart", "Questions to God", "To Love an Invisible God", "Defending My Catholic Faith", and more - click here.
(You may freely quote excerpts from this website as long as due credit is given to author Jocelyn Soriano and the website itakeoffthemask.com)