Paying Attention To The Sky

Fr. Guardini examines the theme of Justice as presented in two popular Biblical parables. The first comes from the Prodigal Son, the second from the Parable of the Day Laborers.

Rembrandt's The Prodigal Son

Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”
Luke 15:11-32

Justice And The Elder Son In The Return Of The Prodigal Son
It was the elder son who had to bear responsibility and the main burden of the estate. The father had probably never thought of pleasing this undemonstrative, sober offspring who seemed so entirely absorbed by his work, and he never would have asked for favors, whereas the younger one took everything that came his way as light-heartedly as he scattered gifts. How otherwise are we to explain the bitterness of the complaint that not even the smallest animal was ever slaughtered for his pleasure or that of his friends? When his younger brother set out into the world with half of their heritage, he left behind him one heart filled with rancor and disdain. Now the spoiled profligate is back, penniless only to be received like a prince! The father’s reply to his eldest objections fails to impress.

But what if the father had agreed with him? If he had said to the home comer: Go your way! You’ve had what you wanted! Then justice would have been restored. The older brother would have been satisfied. Or would he? Completely? If he was a good man, certainly not. The sight of his brother would have robbed his peace. Contrary to all feeling of “justice” a not to be stifled small voice would have insisted that somehow he had missed a sacred opportunity.

Justice is good. It is the foundation of existence. But there is something higher than justice, the bountiful widening of the heart to mercy.  Justice is clear, but one step further and it becomes cold. Mercy is genuine, heartfelt; when backed by character, it warms and redeems. Justice regulates, orders existence; mercy creates. Justice satisfies the mind that all is as it should be, but from mercy leaps the joy of creative life. That is why it is written that heaven rejoices more over one sinner who does penance than over a hundred who have no need of it. High above all the stupidity and evil mankind arches the spacious dome of mercy. When justice enters here insisting on its narrow rights it becomes repugnant. We catch the undertone in the gently disdainful words about the ninety-nine “just”; that heap of righteousness so excellent and respectable, is incomparably less than one penitent over whom the angels can rejoice (Luke 15:7).

If we look closely we begin to wonder whether perhaps justice’s protest isn’t in reality directed against penance. Does the person stiff with justice really want the sinner converted? Doesn’t he somehow feel that he is thus escaping his just deserts, endangering the existent order? Wouldn’t he prefer to see him remain locked in sin and forced bear the consequences? Perhaps he considers the return to grace a more or less underhanded trick played at the expense of justice. What would things come to if everyone like that scamp there, after wasting half a fortune, extricated himself from the affair by turning virtuous! And actually, the true conversion does break the bounds of mere justice. It is a creative new beginning—in God, as theology teaches us, since the sinner alone and unaided is incapable of true repentance. According to the logic of evil, sin produces blindness, which leads to fresh sin, which in turn leads to deeper blindness, ultimately ending in complete darkness and death. Conversion breaks this vicious circle of cause and effect, and is thus already grace. If there is seraphic joy in heaven over the conversion of a single sinner, it is because that conversion is a victory of grace. To the so-called pure sense of justice, conversion is a scandal. For justice runs the risk not being able to see beyond its borders to the realm of love and creative liberty where the renascent forces of the human heart and divine grace are at home. Woe to him who insists on living in mere justice. Woe to the world in which justice alone reigned!

Jacob Willemszoon de Wet's The Parable of the Workers in the Vinyard

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o”clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o”clock, he did the same. And about five o”clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o”clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
Matthew 20:1-15 

Justice And The Parable Of The Day Laborers
For if those who have worked but a few hours receive the same as those who have toiled all day, their wage is devaluated. And the landowner’s answer is anything but placating: Can’t I do with my money as I please? No, you cannot! There is a law concerning your money and your power, the law of justice. You and your property are subject to this higher law and we accuse you before it!

Nevertheless, the proprietor’s unwelcome reply hits the nail on head. We begin to understand when we realize that he represents God. The parable means simply this: He who distributes work and wage and the various destinies of men is the Lord of all existence, God. He is the Creator, the Omnipotent, the Primal One.

Everything that is, is his. There is no law higher than he. His decision is always valid. Do we agree? Sincerely? No. Even from God we demand justice. We expect his omnipotence to be curbed by his justiceThis expectation is not irreligious. There is a whole book in Bible on the self-assertion of justice in the face of God: the Book of Job. Job knows he has not sinned, at least not so as to have deserved anything like the terrible afflictions that have been sent him. Therefore he sees himself a victim of injustice. Job’s friends appoint themselves his judges and declare that he must have sinned, for such misfortune can only be punishment.  However, the palaver comes to a sudden end; they are disdainfully silenced by God himself, who personally appears to Job, wrapped in the mantle of living mystery. Whereupon all discussion ceases. What does this mean?  That we attempt to call God to order in the name of justice only as long as we are intrinsicalliy ignorant of who he is.  As soon as the essence of his holy being even begins to dawn on us, our objections wither away. For everything comes from God, has its roots in God.  Justice is  not a law superior to everything, God included, God is Justice.  As soon as justice ceases to be considered a thing in itself, it becomes a crystallization of the living, divine essence. Never can it be an isolated platform from which man can confront his God; he who stands on its stands ‘within’ God, and must learn from him who is more than justice what living justice means….

The parable of the day laborers culminates in the words: “Or art thou envious  because I am generous?” Divine liberty surpassing all judgment, that there is no higher instance to invoke; the whole is the mysteryof God’s goodness, of his bounty and love. The New Testament another word for it: grace. Man is warned against locking himself in justice rather than opening his heart to the goodness of divine reason and action; he is told to surrender to grace, which is higher than justice, if he would be free.

A curious thing happens to the spokesman of justice in this parable. He is accused of envy. What a reply to one convinced that he has suffered an injustice! Instead of hearing as he expected, that untamperable right will be restored, he must learn that his real motive for intervening was inferior! Yet if we accept Scripture as holy word, we learn a strange rule about human nature: that when it becomes necessary to invoke justice, that irreproachable value and crystalline motive, almost always something is rotten in Denmark. Too often ‘justice’ is used as a mask for quite different things.

Human justice is highly problematical. It is something man should strive for but not lean upon. Perhaps we come closest to the true sense of the New Testament if we say that genuine justice is not the beginning but the end, and that the other justice so pompously displayed as the fundament of morality is a dubious thing. True justice is the fruit of bounty, and practicable by man only after he has been initiated into the school of divine love where he has learned to see people as they really are, himself included. Before one can be just, one must learn to love.