Reflecting with Pope Benedict

Father, your truth is made known in your Word. Guide us to seek the truth of the human person. Teach us the way to love because you are Love. Jesus, you embody God’s Love and Truth. Help us to recognise your face in the poor. Enable us to live out our vocation To bring love and justice to all people. Holy Spirit, you inspire us to transform our world. Empower us to seek the common good for all people. Give us a spirit of solidarity and make us one human family

Woe to the legislators of infamous laws, to those who issue tyrannical decrees, who refuse justice to the unfortunate and cheat the poor among my people of their rights, who make widows their prey and rob the orphan. What will you do on the day of punishment, when, from far off, destruction comes? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches? Isaiah 10: 1-4

In many cases, poverty results from a violation of the dignity of human work, either because work opportunities are limited, or because a low value is put on work and the rights that flow from it, especially the right to a just wage and to the personal security of the worker and his or her family CIV 43

A link has often been noted between claims to a ‘right to excess,’ and even to transgression and vice, within affluent societies, and the lack of food, drinkable water, basic instruction and elementary health care in areas of the underdeveloped world and on the outskirts of large metropolitan centres.

The link consists in this: individual rights, when detached from a framework of duties which grants them full meaning, can run wild, leading to an escalation of demands which is effectively unlimited and indiscriminate CIV 43

What words from Pope Benedict stay with you? What basic human rights do you believe every human being possesses? What basic rights do you see threatened in your community and in the world?

What words from Pope Benedict stay with you? Where is there excess in your own life, in your community In our world? How are we called to transform this excess into resources that mean others rights are guaranteed?

The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them. Every Christian is called to practice this charity, in a manner corresponding to their vocation. CIV 7.