Mass Readings Audio
https://bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2021-02-14-usccb-daily-mass-readings

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time – February 14, 2021

Welcome to the one hundred and fifty-first episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.

My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.

In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. (Year B) Our first reading this week from the Book of Leviticus provides instructions for a person with leprosy saying, “The one who bears the sore of leprosy… shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp.” (Lev 13:2, 46)

Leprosy is an infectious disease that left untreated, disfigures, maims, and ultimately kills its host. As there was no cure for leprosy at the time, many of the laws in Leviticus served as measures to help prevent the spread of the disease. In practice, the Law led to a distancing of lepers from the community and they were labeled as “unclean” and lived as outcasts apart from their families and society.

In his homily on this Gospel in February 2015, Pope Francis said, “Imagine how much suffering and shame lepers must have felt: physically, socially, psychologically, and spiritually! They are not only victims of disease, but they feel guilty about it, punished for their sins! Theirs is a living death.”

Christ reversed this sad state of affairs by showing them compassion and healing them. In our Gospel, we heard about the leper who “came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, ‘If you wish, you can make me clean. Moved with pity, [Jesus] stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, ‘I do will it. Be made clean.’” (Mk 1:40-41) Jesus showed him mercy and restored his place in society.

And as Pope Francis pointed out, “The Church’s way… has always been the way of Jesus, the way of mercy and reinstatement. This does not mean underestimating the dangers of letting wolves into the fold but welcoming the repentant prodigal son; healing the wounds of sin with courage and determination; rolling up our sleeves and not standing by and watching passively the suffering of the world. The way of the Church is not to condemn anyone for eternity; [but] to pour out the balm of God’s mercy on all those who ask for it with a sincere heart. The way of the Church is precisely to leave her four walls behind and to go out in search of those who are distant, those essentially on the ‘outskirts’ of life.”

This message is the crux of Catholic Social Teaching about human dignity, human solidarity, and the principles of justice and peace. It enjoins us to go forth and reach out to all people at the margins of society, to show them mercy and bring them into the fold.

Too often we feel like helping those on the margins is the responsibility of governments and non-profits and outside the objectives of a business enterprise. What’s this have to do with me and how I do my job? But who, if not us, is the Church? If you listen to St. Paul in our second reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes, “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10:31) In other words, in the most ordinary things we do each day, eating, drinking, whatever we do, including how we make a living, do it for the glory of God. We are to “be imitators of [St. Paul], as [he is] of Christ.” (1 Cor 11:1)

Reaching People at the Margins

Who are these people at the margins? During a speech in Bolivia in 2015, Pope Francis said, “When we look into the eyes of the suffering,… we see the faces of the endangered campesino, the poor laborer, the downtrodden native, the homeless family, the persecuted migrant, the unemployed young person, the exploited child, the mother who lost her child in a shootout because the barrio was occupied by drug dealers, the father who lost his daughter to enslavement...” In short, people at the margins are our brothers and sisters who are suffering.

The Church doesn’t define the solutions for us. It is up to us to pursue social justice in everything we do. In that same speech, Pope Frances acknowledges “it is not so easy to define the content of change… [of] a social program which can embody this project of fraternity and justice which we are seeking. It is not easy to define it. So, don’t expect a recipe from this Pope. Neither the Pope nor the Church has a monopoly on the interpretation of social reality or the proposal of solutions to contemporary issues. I dare say that no recipe exists. History is made by each generation as it follows in the footsteps of those preceding it, as it seeks its own path, and respects the values which God has placed in the human heart.

The Human Heart of a Business

Greyston Bakery created its own recipe for social justice to go with its special recipe for brownies. For Greyston, business success and social justice are two sides of the same coin. Greyston is a for-profit, world-class, commercial operation, producing 40,000 pounds of award-winning brownies daily for customers like Ben & Jerry’s and Whole Foods Market, and they have been hiring what many people consider the “unemployable” for the last thirty years.

Most companies spend a lot of time and money screening people out because of criminal history, limited education or qualifications, lack of work experience, and/or low or no job skills. Greyston Bakery shifts its investment from the hiring process into training, learning and development, benefits, and employee support. When people say they want to work, they give them a chance – no questions asked, no resumes, no interviews, no background checks. Their philosophy is that it’s not someone’s past that matters — it’s their future.

Greyston’s President and CEO Mike Brady said, “the collapse of communities around the loss of jobs, the decay from drugs, the issues with prisons not being able to recuperate people, costs society around $500 billion a year. Enabling the cycle of poverty to continue just does not make sense. It doesn’t make sense on a humanitarian level and it certainly doesn’t make sense on a business level when at some point almost 50% of our market is just struggling to survive. We cannot build our businesses and our economies on the backs of these collapsing communities. We need to make changes.”

The company is a model for social enterprise using entrepreneurship to address the issues of generational poverty and serves its local neighborhood in Yonkers, New York as a force for personal transformation and community economic renewal. Their underlying principle is “We don’t hire people to bake brownies, we bake brownies to hire people. ”

One of those people Greyston hired was Dion Drew, who had been incarcerated for selling drugs to help his mom and family financially. Drew had four goals when he left prison: get a job, save some money, start his own family, make his mom proud of him again, but he struggled to find work as an ex-convict. Drew is now a supervisor at the bakery, has achieved his four goals, and serves as a witness to how creating opportunities for individuals who face barriers to employment can change lives. He said, “It not only changes lives; it makes your company look good!”

Greyston Bakery is not alone. It is one of 3,790 companies from 150 industries in 74 countries that are using business as a force for good. They are Certified B Corporations that balance purpose and profit and as such, they are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. This is a community of leaders, driving a global movement that recognizes society’s most challenging problems cannot be solved by government and non-profits alone.

The B Corp community works toward reduced inequality, lower levels of poverty, a healthier environment, stronger communities, and the creation of more high-quality jobs with dignity and purpose. By harnessing the power of business, B Corps use profits and growth as a means to a greater end: a positive impact for their employees, communities, and the environment. You can read stories of people using business as a force for good on the B Corporation website.

The B Corp movement has been underway for years, yet there is more to do, especially in light of a global pandemic. This week, in an address to members of the diplomatic corps of the Holy See, the pope encouraged a paradigm shift saying, “There is a need for a kind of new Copernican revolution that can put the economy at the service of men and women, not vice versa.” He said this different kind of economy is “one that brings life not death, one that is inclusive and not exclusive, humane and not dehumanizing, one that cares for the environment and does not despoil it.” This is an economy that is built on Catholic Social Teaching and as companies like the 3,790 Certified B Corporations can testify, is an economy that makes sense.

For some, this kind of talk can make us squirm. It is as if by lifting up the downtrodden we will somehow be harmed. But as Pope Francis said when referring to our Gospel from this Sunday, “In healing the leper, Jesus does not harm the healthy. Rather, he frees them from fear. He does not endanger them but gives them a brother. He does not devalue the law but instead values those for whom God gave the law.”

An economy based on Catholic Social Teaching is not about harming one in favor of another, but rather pursuing the common good. That is, working toward providing every person access to the goods and resources of society so that they can live fulfilling lives. The common good is reached when we work together to improve the well-being of people in our society and the wider world. No one should want to make a profit on the backs of the most vulnerable in society.

The Business Case for Social Justice

Marianne Kulow, a law professor at Bentley University, acknowledges that business and social justice don’t always appear in the same sentence, but they should. When the two come together, positive things can happen. She defined social justice as “fairness in access to necessities, wealth, opportunities and privileges in society.” She notes that it doesn’t mean equal access, just fairness in access.

In her TEDx Talk, she makes the business case for why businesses should be concerned about social justice. She presents the bottom-line benefits from social justice initiatives like hiring workers with disabilities. Companies like Pizza Hut and Walgreens have experienced an increase in employee retention and productivity and a decrease in tardiness, absenteeism, and workplace safety issues. When the worker is a good fit for the job, hiring them is good for the business and the bottom-line. She summarizes her talk saying that “Social justice is not just something that is the right thing, it is also a profitable thing. I see it as a win-win.”

She’s not the only one who sees it as a win-win. Four years after she presented to TEDx, in August of 2019, the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives of almost 200 of America’s largest companies, issued a formal statement on the purpose of a corporation. The purpose statement says, “Americans deserve an economy that allows each person to succeed through hard work and creativity and to lead a life of meaning and dignity.” Although each individual company serves its own corporate purpose, they acknowledge that each of their stakeholders, and not just their shareholders, is essential and they commit to deliver value to all of them. They agreed to commit to delivering value to their customers, investing in their employees, dealing fairly and ethically with their suppliers, supporting the communities in which they work, and generating long-term value for shareholders (and not solely focus on quarterly results).

Starting Small

Creating a socially just economy can seem overwhelming. With so much to be done, where can you begin? In episode 097 of By Your Life, I shared the story of Nehemiah Manufacturing, who like Greyston Bakery has a mission and a business model to change lives by creating jobs in their local neighborhood. But this may be too much for your company to take on. So, start small by hiring one person, or a team of people like the 3,500 Corporate Work Study Program partners of the Cristo Rey Network of high schools. These businesses give the opportunity of a high-quality, career-focused, college preparatory education in the Catholic tradition to students with limited economic resources. To help offset a portion of their tuition, students agree to work one day per week in a job placement organized by the school with their corporate partners.

In a world where the social fabric is fraying, Cristo Rey weaves it back together. Businesses, schools, churches, families, children, and communities all come together in the mutual pursuit of providing quality education to low-income students. As a result, students enjoy a more diverse experience than they would get in a traditional educational setting; co-workers get to meet, mentor, and learn from students who may come from a different background than their own; support for the school is cultivated in the community; and families are able to afford an education that would otherwise be beyond their reach. That’s a win-win-win-win-win that is transforming the lives of 12,300 students and changing the cycle of generational poverty, one student at a time.

Personal Responsibility

What if you don’t own a business? You can begin by educating yourself about the issues by reading the US Conference of Catholic Bishops document titled Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship. Although this document is a “Call to Political Responsibility”, it is also a good resource to educate yourself on the principles of Catholic Social Teaching.

Once educated, you can support businesses that have a purpose beyond profit that is consistent with the guidance of our bishops, and not purchasing products that were made by exploiting the worker or the environment. You can support non-profits that are on the margins every day helping the homeless, disabled, unemployed, unborn, incarcerated, and on death row, victims of trafficking or domestic violence, immigrants, and elderly. You can also call and write your representatives in state and federal government regarding legislation that benefits these causes. And most importantly, you can pray. Let’s do that now.

God our Father, we know that every human being is created in [your] image and redeemed by Jesus Christ and therefore is invaluable and worthy of respect as a member of the human family. Every person, from the moment of conception to natural death, has inherent dignity and a right to life consistent with that dignity. Human dignity comes from [you] God, not from any human quality or accomplishment. Help us to live according to the tenets of Catholic Social Teaching so that in everything we do, we may glorify you by our lives.

May God bless you abundantly this week as you glorify the Lord by your life.

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