“Jesus Christ, the Fulfillment of the Father’s Plan of Love”. This title says it all. Jesus, the Word made flesh, came not only to fulfill what was promised and what was awaited by
Our social justice mandate comes from Luke 4:18-19;cf Is 61:1-2 when Jesus describes his “messianic ministry” with the words of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Jesus invites all to follow Him “because he is the first to obey God’s plan of love, and He does so in a most singular way, as God’s envoy in the world”. Jesus’ followers are called “to live like Him and, after His Passover of death and resurrection, to live also in Him and by Him, thanks to the superabundant gift of the Holy Spirit, the Consoler, who internalises Christ’s own style of life in human hearts.” Jesus’ Passover reveals Trinitarian love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The ultimate meaning of the Incarnation of the Son and his mission among us can be found in the New Testament e.g.
We are told that the Apostle John grasps the “profound meaning” and the most logical consequence of the “gratuitousness and superabundance of the Father’s divine gift of the Son, which Jesus taught and bore witness to by giving His life for us”. In 1 Jn 4:11-12 we read: “Beloved, if God so loves us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.”
The section ends with some powerful words: “The commandment of mutual love, which represents the law of life for God’s people, must inspire, purify and elevate all human relationships in society and in politics. …To be human means to be called to interpersonal communion”, because the image and the likeness of the Trinitarian God are the basis of the whole of “human ‘ethos’, which reaches its apex in the commandment of love”.
The modern cultural, social, economic and political phenomenon of interdependence, which intensifies and makes particularly evident the bonds that unite the human family, accentuates once more, in the light of Revelation, “a new model of the unity of the human race, which must ultimately inspire our solidarity. This supreme model of unity, which is a reflection of the intimate life of God, one God in three Persons, is what we Christians mean by the word ‘communion.’”
The section draws from a number of Church documents e.g. Lumen Gentium (1965), Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes (1966), Dei Verbum (1966), Mulieris Dignitatem (1988), Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1988).
