This Sunday we will listen to the parable of the widow who did not faint until an indolent judge did her justice (Lk 18: 1-8). In it, Jesus praises the faith of this tenacious woman who did not accept injustice, who did not despair, who never stopped claiming for justice until she obtained what she was looking for.
Certainly, the fight for justice demands perseverance. It has always been this way: it took centuries for the privileges of the nobility to be eliminated, for slavery to be abolished, it is taking centuries for women to enjoy the same treatment as men. And we still have a long road ahead of us until we live in a world where wealth begins to be distributed in a better way, and the vast distances that exist today between very rich and the extremely poor diminish and disappear.
Perhaps the most important points in this reading are to be found at the beginning and at the end. Luke begins by saying that Jesus told the parable “to teach the disciples that it is necessary to pray always, without fainting,” and at the end Jesus asks himself, even though God wants justice to be done without delay, “will God find in the world the faith of the widow?”.
The question is not whether God wants justice to be done. The question is if we are like the widow: if the injustices hurt us, if we have the tenacity and perseverance she had and the determination to make the world we live a more just place.
It is not an easy task, to be determined like the widow. Injustice seems so entrenched, so constitutive of the political and economic system in which we live, so chronic, so impossible to remove, that sometimes raising our voice against it may seem like a futile effort. In certain latitudes nobody ignores that the criminal money of the drug trafficking business removes and puts presidents, buys judges and decides the fate of entire countries. The corruption of the political class has become so common that one comes to think that if a politician does not have pending cases with the judicial system it is only because they have not yet exposed him. And, meanwhile, the distance between those who live in unimaginable luxury and those who suffer the most distressing poverty increases every year.
Against this background, it is hard to be like the widow. Jesus, however, tells us with his parable that nothing would be worse than getting used to injustice. To normalize it would be our worst mistake. We should never become like the sick person who has grown so used to pain and stops going to the doctor, because he has convinced himself that suffering “is normal.” “It is normal for a man to hit his wife”; “It's normal for politicians to steal”; “It is normal for workers to be underpaid”; “Our healthcare is a disaster, that’s normal too”; “It’s normal that no rich person ever goes to jail.” We stick to this “it is normal” and we shrug our shoulders, because normal things don't need to be changed.
To fight such a normalization of injustice, it would be worthwhile to do an exercise of imagination from time to time, and ask ourselves: When God dreams, how does God see things? How does God dream about the world?
Certainly, God looks at us and yearns for a humanity without violence, without abuse, with the resources of the earth distributed more evenly, without privileged or excluded.
What we have today is not normal. Understanding this is the first step so that the brave spirit of the tenacious widow awakens in us.
