Biblespanish.com

Justicia

Did you know that justice in Spanish, “justicia,” is used to translate both righteousness and justice? In Psalm 23 it is written, “Me guiará por sendas de justicia“–you will guide me by paths of justicia. What does it mean as a wealthy white woman to be guided by paths of justicia?

Justicia as righteousness just isn’t gonna cut it without thinking from the holistic, what I like to call integrous, perspective that Jesus embodied and also taught through his life–and not just words.

Justicia in Spanish it encompasses righteousness and justice simultaneously–this cuts to the heart of the matter.

Is there something I’m missing?

Sometimes, as a white woman I feel like I’m missing a soul! Literally. Like my soul needs cleansing. So it can be brown like earth and things can grow from it.

Jesus didn’t come for the those who embodied justicia but came for sinners–and this important to me as a white woman in unique ways.

• “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Lk 5:32)
• “Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mk 2:17)

Jesus’s holistic persuit of justicia is cosmic, encompassing social and planetary and universal–and not just individual–elements. The world justicia shows that the individual and the communal are inseparable. In Hebrew the word is ṣedeq, the common word for “righteousness, justice.”

In English we tend to see righteousness as an individual characteristic. By contrast, justice is a social characteristic. Really they are fused, suggesting that harmony lies in the concentric overlap of self-with-God and society, what theology calls the vertical and horizontal axes.

This is a profoundly therapeutic and restorative sense of integrity administered by Christ through the Holy Spirit. It encompasses self, society, psyche and world/universe.

Justicia: the trait of outsiders

The overlap between outsider status and virtue as embodied by justicia runs deep.

It is visible in the parable of the Good Samaritan: Samaritans were outsiders, but the Samaritan acted with justicia and not the Jewish clergy who walked past the wounded and robbed man.

We see this in the parable of the sheep and the goats: the people who think they’re getting into heaven aren’t, and those who feel they don’t belong will gain entry because of their justicia–feeding the hungry, visiting prisoners, etc..

Finally, it is evident in the story of the woman who sought healing for her daughter (even dogs get scraps from the table!). By studying the Bible in Spanish, we get closer to the justicia that Jesus embodied and demanded, sometimes forcefully, that we embody as well.