The world looks for strength in power, the ability to control others. It looks for strength in wealth, the ability to own and accumulate possessions. It looks for strength in developing advantages over others, such as superior education and prestigious positions.

Revelation presents a different picture. It introduces us to a messiah who is “meek, and riding on an ass.” It wants us to believe that our strength is in a man whose boast is that “I am gentle and humble of heart.” It praises God for contradicting the wisdom of the world: “for what you have hidden from the learned and the clever you have revealed to the merest children.”

Maybe we continue to suffer so many miseries because we look for answers in the wrong places. We look “up” at the rich and powerful, expecting to find strength and security, and we are disillusioned with “empty promises of passing joy.”

Perhaps we should look “down” at the meek and humble, the little people, the sick and dying, the poor and hungry. For it is among them that we will find our just savior, the God whose “right hand is filled with justice.”

The power of the Spirit, who raised Christ from the dead, is continuously at work in the world. Through the generous sons and daughters of the Church likewise, the people of God is present in the midst of the poor and of those who suffer oppression and persecution; it lives in its own flesh and its own heart the Passion of Christ and bears witness to his resurrection.

Synod of Bishops, Justice in the World, 1971: 74.

Gerald Darring        https://liturgy.slu.edu