JUSTICE and Giving Each One His Due
January 20, 2026
Hello! How is each and every one? We are on our second week of the seminar and personally I am learning new things which I hope to be able to use later on. I guess that is expected. Would you like to share my experiences? I thought it worthwhile to do so. An influencer wrote a book entitled I Wish Someone Had Told Me. It helps to know and learn from somebody’s experiences no matter how little or ordinary they may be. Oftentimes I learn technology by listening to the people when they talk about their discoveries.
From the first day, I was met with some challenges, big or small depending on one’s readiness and make-up towards such scenarios. Just allow me to share the experiences with you. On our way to the venue we received a message informing the group that four rooms in an area of the house would not be available and for those who have chosen those rooms they can instead occupy the rooms available in the other areas. I was one of those and I said to myself I will still stay in the room I chose from the start and paid for. And since I was among those who arrived first, how would I know which rooms are available? How long shall I wait for the ones in charge in order to know which rooms are available? So I started to unpack until the one in charge arrived and I expressed my thoughts to her. “I said I will stay in the same room I chose because where do you find the same situation happening? A lack of professionalism, on the day itself the staff informs of rooms not available when payments have already been done? And besides how would I know the rooms available without any information available?” Then several persons came to echo the message, rooms in blank area not available because no beddings, not clean, occupants are less than full house, and can occupy the other available rooms, etc. Indeed, the rooms were not prepared, there were no beddings, rooms were not cleaned and the doors were labeled not available. In the end, beddings were provided in that room, label was removed and after a day the room was cleaned.
Simultaneously, there was a message from my
own house informing that since five of us are out and there is a scheduled
3-day activity while we are away, would it be possible to occupy the five rooms
of those who will be out for their activity or …. At first reading I was
indifferent because I already heard that before we left and the example given
was when she was in Rome she was given a room of somebody who was out for an
activity. Likewise in the provinces she would go overnight and would be
accommodated in a room of someone out for an activity.
But something inside me tells me to express my thoughts, so I did. I replied: “I am sorry but I don’t think my room is available. I am occupying it and living in it. I hope the convenience of persons are always considered with charity and justice and never apply I.C.E. (Impose, control, expect) on them. I guess it is simply common sense to accommodate persons accordingly and respectively as in any professional institution and family. What do we value more? Quality or quantity? I guess we need to go back to past experiences we ought to have learned from or we haven’t learned at all?
Day 2, my legs were sore. I walk with pain on my legs especially around the ankle. I would usually walk daily at least 30 to 40 minutes. But now my legs are in pain. I think I need a foot massage. Usually that helps. I did not have the chance to do that before the activity and I thought I’d easily find a place that offers the service. To this day, I haven’t found any. What I would be doing from day 2 up to today is to massage my feet with liniment oil before bedtime to soften all the hardened areas as much as I can. So far it has kept me sane and it intensifies my presence of God.
The next night, the flush of the toilet did not settle down, water kept running and then in the morning when I tapped the lever the running water stopped but the water closet did not fill up. Consequently, there was no flush and water closet the whole day. I used the next room’s comfort room.
On the first night when I was just about to take a bath, the shower head was facing the wall instead of directed to the floor where the person usually stands. There and then I had to use my common sense and think how shower heads are installed. I was able to set it right, however, up to today, the 7th day, managing or controlling hot and cold water is hit and miss. The challenge is truly sanctifying. Endless left to right managing the tap; no way to blend cold and hot water to a steady position. Surely it is my ignorance or lack of exposure to new fixtures.
What is next I would ask myself in jest? And
guess who it is who hears my question. I remember words of St. Augustine: “Command what you will and give what you command.” He always does.
Let’s get down to business as usual. Following is the next superhabit Justice
(From
SUPERHABITS, The Universal System
for a Successful Life by Andrew V. Abela, PH.D., Dean, Busch School of
Business, The Catholic University of America, 2024).
I think
the following story is important for you and me to get to know better how the
said superhabit works.
JOHN NEWTON WAS BORN in 1725. His early days were hard. His
mother died when he was seven years old. When he was eleven, his father took
him to sea. When he was eighteen, he was pressed into the Royal Navy. To be
“pressed” was to be captured by a “press-gang” — the official “recruiters” for
the Royal Navy — who grabbed innocent civilians and dragged them aboard ship to
serve in the navy. This was a regular feature of life in England in the
mid-1700s.
Newton hated life in the navy, and attempted to desert. He was caught, flogged, and then expelled from the navy and given to a passing slave-trading ship, in exchange for one of their sailors. He was disrespectful and disobedient to his new captain, and left this new ship to try a land-based slave-trading career on the coast of West Africa, but he was enslaved himself until eventually rescued by another slave-trading ship. Despite his first-hand experience of its gruesomeness, he found the slave trade to be “an easy and creditable way of life” and decided to stay with it.
A re-conversion in 1748 to the Christianity of his childhood didn’t change these views, at least initially. In fact, he went on to become captain of a slave-trading ship and was an active participant in “tearing husbands away from their wives and children, shackling these screaming men in heavy fetters, and chaining them in horrific, overcrowded squalor that would have disgraced the animal pens of an abattoir.”
After several years, illness led to him giving up this career.
His sense of faith growing, he studied for the Anglican ministry and eventually
was ordained.
In 1788, a full forty years after his religious conversion, he got involved in the campaign to abolish the slave trade, and published Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, in which he told, in graphic detail, the story of his earlier experiences and apologized for them. Did it take four decades for Newton to realize the atrocities he had been conducting? The conventional account is that he, like the vast majority of the people of his time, had been blind to this grave injustice. One biographer argues that Newton “can hardly be criticized for failing to trouble his conscience . . . at a time when no one else was much troubled about the morality of trafficking in human slaves.”
Did he just wake up one day, full of regret for what he had done forty years prior, and begin to campaign for abolition? That seems highly unlikely. Each of us knows from experience that we can change our minds quickly, but changing our habits and ways of living tends to take a lot longer. It takes ongoing practice to build new habits.
A recent and remarkable discovery by British historian Professor John Coffey sheds some light on when exactly Newton changed his mind about the slave trade. In 1762, twenty-six years before Newton published Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, and only six years after his final voyage, an anonymous account was published in a book by an American Quaker, Anthony Benezet, about a slave trading voyage from Liverpool to West Africa. In this account, the author describes the terrible tortures inflicted on the captives and explicitly condemns the slave trade.
Professor Coffey, through careful analysis of the records of the thousands of slave trading voyages of that time, matches the description of the ship and its voyage with the one Newton was sailing on at exactly that time, and concludes, convincingly, that the author was none other than Newton himself. So Newton understood, much earlier than has been historically recognized, the gravity of the evil that he had been complicit in. The subsequent years and decades, then, were not about him coming slowly to that realization. Rather, they were about aligning his actions with his beliefs — about growing in the superhabit of Justice.
By all accounts, as a young man Newton was what we might today call “a real piece of work.” He was dishonest, disrespectful, disobedient, unfriendly, and deeply ungrateful to those who tried to help him. A friend of his family gave him a job in a time of need, and he never showed up. He repaid the ship’s captain who rescued him from his captivity on the African coast by disrespecting him and undermining his authority.
Justice, like the other cardinal virtues, has several connected superhabits. Honesty, Respect, Obedience, Friendliness, and Gratitude are some of them. Justice requires giving to every person what is owed to them: we owe truth to those we communicate with; we owe respect to those who are worthy of honor; we owe obedience to legitimate authority; we owe gratitude to those who have done good to us; and we even owe friendliness to those with whom we come in contact. No wonder that Newton was so uncomplainingly involved in such a viciously unjust trade — he was lacking in all the subordinate superhabits of Justice.
It is good to reflect on this: in order to grow in our ability
to exercise Justice, we should try to make progress in the smaller, component
superhabits. You are not likely to be successful in promoting Justice in the
world if you are dishonest, disrespectful, and unfriendly in your daily life.
Or, as Peterson’s rule six says, “Set your house in perfect order before you
criticize the world.”
It took four decades of growth before Newton was strong enough in the superhabit of Justice to play an instrumental role in toppling the slave trade.
If you find that you have difficulty getting along with people,
or building or maintaining relationships — or if you worry that you’re not
pulling your own weight, or behaving like the decent person you want to be —
these are all indications that perhaps you should be working on one or more of
the superhabits connected to Justice.
Our MECE analysis of the superhabit of
Justice begins by recognizing two kinds of Justice: one-to-one, and
many-to-one. “Commutative Justice” (from the word commutation, or “exchange”)
is for justice in any kind of one-to-one interaction, such as in commercial
exchanges. “Distributive
Justice” is for many-to-one justice, or what the community owes to each individual; we’ll discuss that later in this chapter.
COMMUTATIVE JUSTICE
The superhabit of Commutative Justice is the
habit of being fair in our commercial transactions, by paying or charging a
fair price for what we buy or sell. Any kind of cheating, for example by
disguising a material flaw in something we’re selling, is a violation of
Commutative Justice.
Friends of mine bought a house with a home office addition. After they bought the house, they found that the office was always cold (it was winter when they moved in). They removed the heating duct cover and underneath they found . . . nothing. There was no duct. The previous owner had stuck a duct cover on the wall, to pretend that the room was heated. Although you could argue that my friend — or his home inspector — should have done a better job at due diligence, there’s no question that what the seller did was a violation of Commutative Justice.
If you grow in the superhabit of Commutative Justice and do business with others who do the same, then your transactions will be more efficient, because you won’t have to keep double- and triple-checking each transaction to make sure that you’re not getting cheated.
Newton began cultivating the superhabit of Commutative Justice in his first position after he left the slave trade. His appointment was as “surveyor of tides” in the port town of Liverpool. The job had nothing to do with surveying, and little to do with tides: he was a customs officer, responsible for ensuring that customs duties on imported goods were paid. Bribery was common in the “surveying” profession, frequently amounting to half of a surveyor’s total income. Initially Newton went along with this practice. But after much reflection and discussion with trusted advisors, he decided to refuse all such “gratuities.” He was growing in Justice.
One-to-one Justice can be further distinguished into superhabits for two different types of situations: equal situations and unequal situations. Equal situations are when what is owed can (at least theoretically) be repaid — for example, repaying a financial debt. Unequal situations are those where it is impossible to repay what is owed — for example, you can never fully repay your mother for giving you life.
There are two kinds of superhabits for equal
situations: those that are strictly necessary, and those that aren’t. Among
those that are strictly necessary, there is one that is always strictly
necessary, Honesty, because you should always be honest.
For now that will suffice. For further consideration in your quiet moments of conversation with Justice Himself, allow me to share with you the following article from opusdei.org.
Justice
One of the questions we often hear is: what do I owe God? And
the answer is quite simple: we owe Him everything.
The classical definition of justice has been summed up in a
brief phrase: “to give to each his due.” This definition assumes that someone
owes and gives something to someone, that is, that there are people in a
relationship. Therefore, to think of the virtue of justice is to think of
relationships.
The Catechism tell us that “God created man a rational being,
conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own
actions” (Catechism of the Catholic
Church, no. 1730). Only by considering the equal dignity and freedom of
each man and woman is it possible to say that relationships between persons are
just. For example, just relations are impossible if some are slaves of others,
since this implies denying “who the others are”: persons with an intrinsic
human dignity. But “the statement ‘to give to each his due’ does not express
all that is implied in justice, nor make explicit all that is required for a
person to be just” (M. A. Ferrari, Justicia, in J. L. Illanes (ed.), Diccionario de san
Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Monte Carmelo, Pamplona 2013, p. 705. Saint Josemaria said
that “justice means giving to each his due. I would however go further and say
that this is not enough. However much a particular person is due, we must be
ready to give him more, because each single soul is a masterpiece of God’s
making” (Friends of God, no. 83).
We may ask ourselves: What do I owe God? And the answer is quite simple: we owe Him everything. In fact, justice with God, if we can call it that, is different from justice with other men and women. ““The relations between man and God are not relations of justice in the proper sense”” (Á. Rodríguez Luño, Scelti in Cristo per essere santi, III: Morale Speciale, EDUSC, Rome 2008, p. 39). The reason lies in the fact that it is on a totally different level: the relationship is between Creator and creature and not creature and creature. So if we want to know how our relationship with God can be just, we need to ask: who is God for us? What does it mean that he is Creator?
St. John tells us in one of his letters that “God is Love” (1 Jn 4:8). Therefore the right relationship of human beings with God is a path inscribed in our very nature, God, who is love, has created us in his image and likeness out of love, and given us the capacity to respond lovingly through our freedom. God wants us to experience our freedom precisely through the most essential act of the divine nature, which is to love.
It is true that our dignity is due to God the Creator, which creates a bond of strong dependence, because we have not created ourselves. But this total dependence does not mean subjection or slavery, since at the moment God created us he made us free. Human freedom is a manifestation of divine freedom and the capacity to respond freely to God – who is Love – by loving.
Sacred Scripture shows us that the just man is the good and holy
man, that is, the man who, through his life, in the continuous exercise of his
freedom, chooses what is good [”The ‘good man’ is ‘just because he fulfills the
divine law (Prov 10:28; Wis 3:10; etc.); the Messiah will be the ‘just’ man par
excellence (Is 45:8; 53; Wis 2:18); ‘he who is just practices justice and
right’ (Ezek 18:5); justice and holiness are intimately related (cf. Mt 3:15;
5:6-10; 6:1-33, 15:20; 21:32); the man faithful to God is ‘just’ (cf. Mt 23:34;
Lk 1:6; Acts 10:22; 2 Pet 2:8); the ‘just’ man par excellence is Christ (cf. Mt
27:19; Lk 23:47; Acts 3:14)” (Ferrari, Justicia, p. 706)].
Israel is seen as a people that proves its love for God when, throughout
its history, they decided to follow Him as the Highest Good.
Christ was the only truly just man because, being the Son of God, he became man so that we might become children of God (Cf. Athanasius of Alexandria, De Incarnatione, 54, 3).
Christ took on human nature in the mystery of the Incarnation,
thus bringing all created realities to God in the mystery of the Redemption. He
was the only man who was just in the full sense of the word and taught us the
path of the just man: a human and divine path of self-giving and correspondence
to God the Father’s love (Cf. Second Vatican Council, Pastoral
Constitution Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965, “AAS” 58 (1966), no. 22).
“If God is love, and the experience of love is a human experience, then through love we gain access to a truer image of God and of mankind” (I. Adeva Martín, “Caridad-Amor,” in Diccionario de Teología).
Hence the relationship between God (who is Love) and men and women (who are creatures created out of love in the image and likeness of God) will be just to the extent that we become aware of our condition as children of God and act accordingly out of love.
What do I owe to other men and women?
The second question we need to answer is: what do I owe to
others? In this case, when we speak of justice among men, it is easy to confuse
the duties that stem from this virtue with those of charity. A duty of justice
is not the same as a duty of charity. It is different to ask oneself “what do I
owe to a person,” than to ask “why should I care for my neighbor?”
The danger consists in attributing to charity “things that in
reality belong to the strictest duties of justice, thus falsifying the true
nature of social problems. For example, the bonds of charity that exist between
the person who commissions someone’s work and the person who carries it out can
in no way lead to paying less than what is just, or to carrying out the work in
a careless manner” (Rodríguez Luño, Scelti in Cristo, III, p. 43).
Therefore we need to understand very well the nature of this virtue.
The “object of the virtue of justice is, then, to give to each his due, to give or respect what is his and what is due to him: life, liberty, the goods of which he is the legitimate owner, his reputation, etc. More briefly, we can say that the object of the virtue of justice is what is due to others, but understanding by this what is just in itself, and not what is simply legal” (Ibid., p. 37).
This highlights three fundamental characteristics of justice.
The first is otherness. In the most obvious sense it means that justice is
towards others and therefore always requires two or more physical or moral
persons. Obligations and duties with respect to oneself are not the object of
justice.
This “otherness” presents us with an essential question: who is
the other? Justice is often represented as a woman who is blindfolded. This
image highlights the importance of considering that “the other,” whether
someone we know and like or not, whether a brother or a stranger, is also a
person and therefore has the exact same dignity as we do. Hence authority can
never be used arbitrarily, by treating some people different than others or
harming their reputation (Cf. Catechism
of the Catholic Church, nos. 2493-2499).
Rather all men and women need to be treated and considered
as what they are: persons with the exact same dignity. [“Hear the causes of
your brethren, and judge fairly between a man and his brother, or between him
and a stranger. You shall not respect persons in judgment; you shall listen to
the small as well as to the great; you shall not be intimidated by anyone, for
judgment belongs to God. If a case is too difficult for you, send it to me, and
I will deal with it” (Deut 1:16-17)].
The second characteristic is that justice entails a “debt in the strict sense.” Justice demands giving to each one what is strictly his or her own. Some examples of the proper attitude of the just man in the sphere of work consist in striving not to delay the work of others, taking advantage of the hours set for work, paying people punctually, etc. Unjust practices such as withholding due wages from workers, theft, fraud or not paying debts are contrary to the virtue of justice precisely because one does not give what is due to someone (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2240).
“Therefore, ‘the other’ can actively demand the
fulfillment of the duty of justice on our part, and the political community can
legitimately use coercion so that the duty of justice is fulfilled” (Rodríguez
Luño, Scelti in Cristo, III, p. 38).
The third characteristic is equality. This emphasizes that the fulfillment of a duty of justice restores equality between two persons. When work is entrusted to another person and paid for when finished, equality is restored. Justice can only occur between persons who are on a plane of fundamental equality, that is, if the other is truly seen as a person, with the exact same dignity as oneself.
These three characteristics “show that justice fundamentally
implies recognizing that every person, by the fact of being a person, has the
same intrinsic and fundamental dignity” (Ibid.).
The path that St. Josemaría teaches for practicing justice in
its three characteristics implies, in the first place, fulfilling one’s duties (Cf.
Ferrari, Justicia,
p. 706). These duties arise in the course of one’s daily life: contracts
that are agreed upon; caring for one’s family; working as well as possible;
concern for friends and neighbors, etc. This way of living justice has at its
foundation the realization of ‘who others are’ and giving them what is due to
them.
The family setting is a privileged place for living the virtue of justice. For example, concern for the tiredness on the part of one’s spouse at the end of a hard day is part of the virtue of justice. A consequence of this concern will be the practice of some aspects of the virtue of charity, such as kindness in mutual dealings and asking for help. Other examples of the virtue of justice in the family are the respect of children for their parents and grandparents, collaborating in caring for the children and household chores, dedicating to children the time each one needs in accord with their specific circumstances, etc.
Do I owe to the others what I owe to God?
We can ask ourselves one last question: do I owe to others what
I owe to God? The recognition of the intrinsic link between a just relationship
with God and justice in relationships with others leads us to see clearly that
“when love for God is present, a Christian is never indifferent to the fate of
others” (Ibid., p. 67). Hence “we do not love justice
if we do not wish to see it fulfilled in the lives of others” (Christ is Passing By, no. 52).
The inseparability between what we owe to God (to adore, obey and love Him; to give Him all that we are and have, because everything is His) and what justice should be with regard to other men and women (not only giving each person his or her due, but valuing and appreciating them as persons), deeply influences the Christian way of living justice towards others. On the one hand, knowing that God has given us everything and that he loves us, leads us to want to love others as God loves them. This is the measure established by Christ: “even as I have loved you, that you also love one another (Jn 13:34). On the other hand, to be just towards God, to truly love Him, means also to be just towards others and to want a more just world.
The Church’s Magisterium has repeated this on numerous occasions
when it insists that peaceful coexistence is necessarily based on both justice
and charity. One without the other is never enough. As Saint John Paul II said,
“the experience of the past and of our own time makes clear that justice alone
is not enough” (John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Dives in Misericordia (December 20, 1980), AAS 72 (1980), no.
12).
In St. Josemaría’s teaching, work is the place where the practice of justice and charity are harmonized. In work the inseparability between being just with God and just with other men and women shines forth. He summed this up clearly when stating that a basic duty of justice consists in working well: “the work of each one of us, the activities that take up our time and energy, must be an offering worthy of our Creator,” (Friends of God, no. 55).
And our work is also a task that improves the lives of other men and women. Each of us, in reflecting on our daily lives, can find many areas and aspects that can help us to do and grow in the virtue of justice [Ignacio Ramoneda Pérez del Pulgar (07/12/2024)].
Let
us always keep one another in our prayer and conversation with Jesus in those
moments of the day that we have scheduled to talk to Him. Let us also pray for peace and love to reign
in the hearts and minds of each and every person throughout the world. Let us foster in ourselves the same
sentiments of Jesus on the Cross, that is, He gave up His life for each one of
us out of love. He wants each one of us
to become children of God the Father, to be saved and to be happy with Him in
His kingdom after life.
See
you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and
laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us
together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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