Dominican Sisters of St Cecilia Retreat, Motherhouse Nashville Tn., July 20 2026
It’s one of the most iconic lines in cinematic history. In the 1992 courtroom drama, A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson plays the decorated base-commander Nathan Jessup as he is cross-examined by the callow Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, portrayed by Tom Cruise. Relentlessly questioned on whether he ordered the hazing to death of a young marine, Jessup erupts with: “You can’t handle the truth!”
Hard-to-handle truths are at the heart of today’s first reading (Mic 6:1-8). The setting is a רִיב rîb, a formal legal dispute concerning the covenant. Instead of a military tribunal, the trial takes place before all of creation. The very foundations of the earth are summoned as the jury to hear the case. “Oyez, Oyez, oyez, all persons having business before the court, rise, draw near, give your attention. Let the case begin.”
The divine Prosecutor recounts the charges against Israel, the accused: I created this world for you. Gave you life, intellect and freedom. I blessed you with family, community, opportunity. Made a covenant with you, made you My very own. I brought you out of Egypt, rescuing you from slavery. I sent you Moses to guide you, gave you the Law and the Prophets. How did you repay me? Infidelity and apostasy, lies and hate. Having read out the charge sheet, the prosecutor turns wounded plaintiff: My people, what have I done to you to deserve this treatment? How have I offended you? What did I do to provoke this flagrant rejection of my covenant? Answer me!
Here we Catholics hear the haunting Good Friday Reproaches. Jesus pleads before the Sanhedrin, Pilate, the crowd, all humanity: As Micah adverted to, in Me God gave you His all. His only Son. Heart and soul. Body and blood. Humanity and divinity. Everything. I taught and healed, worked signs and wonders, befriended and consoled. And what was your response? Betraying, accusing, abandoning Me. Baying for My blood. As so, My people, I ask again: what have I done to you, how have I offended you? Speaking not in anger so much as bewilderment and grief, Christ is like the victim of adultery, a lover betrayed…
Humanity, it would seem, has nothing to say in its defense. The prosecutor could well demand the death sentence, the plaintiff a massive pay out. Rivers of blood for sacrifice, torrents of oil as libation, no less could satisfy. But no, God says, it’s enough if you do three things for Me: act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with your God.
Sounds easy…
Act justly. In Hebrew מִשְט mishpat is desiring the right thing internally and doing it externally. St Thomas Aquinas teaches that rendering to each their due, especially the weak, must become a habitus, a settled orientation of soul, always seeking right order.[1] That requires pietas, grateful reverence to God, and religio, proper worship.[2] So, God’s preferencing acting justly over offering rams does not mean renouncing sacrifice altogether, but rather contextualising it: our prayer and worship, our vows and penances, our fidelity to our calling—these are, of course, more than preferences and feel-goods; they are the very sacrifices “the Lord asks of you.”
From such vertical justice flows the horizontal; justice toward God patterns justice towards others. Pietas, for instance, extends from revering God as the source of our being to grateful reverence towards those who mediate that being: ancestors and parents, teachers and authorities. Rendering God His due likewise moulds our rendering people their due through respect, responsiveness, honesty. Not just Supreme Court-sized justice, but small unglamorous acts like returning what is borrowed, keeping promises and confidences, arriving on time and attending to the one before us; like consulting appropriately, sharing responsibility, leading well, serving better; like speaking uncomfortable truths where appropriate, and giving praise always. They might not be headline-grabbers, but such deeds constitute much of justice and cultivate just character.
Act justly and love tenderly. In Hebrew חֶסֶד chesed is loving-kindness or steadfast mercy. It is much sturdier than a fleeting emotion or passion; in fact, it is so unsentimental that God can command it, which you cannot do with sentiments. Writing at length about divine love, St. Catherine of Siena speaks of the kind of affection that reaches the very depths of our being, an intimacy we can’t live without, a power so transforming that God, neighbor and self become the objects of our love, in due proportion and ways, without egotism, obsession, or other flaws.[3]
No fair-weather friendship, this tender loving, not on-again-off-again. It is something constitutive of character. If God is love and we are His likeness, then we must be loving and lovable. Some people need to go to a finishing school for loving. The finishing school for loving, Perfectae Caritatis College, is according to Aquinas and Vatican II religious life.[4] We don’t just love God as an object distinct from ourselves; no, by being united more closely to Him, becoming more like Him, we come to love Him in Himself, in others, in ourselves. We can even love Him in our sometimes-unlovely Church, or superior, or student, or sister! And rather than exhausting itself, this loving stretches the heart to love more and better.
Act justly, love tenderly, and finally walk humbly with your God. In Hebrew עֲנָוָה anavah signifies a profound attitude of lowliness, modesty, dependence. For Aquinas it begins with recognising our creatureliness, deferring to the One who called us into being, appreciating His gifts in others and in ourselves, having a sense of proportion and limits, even as we extend ourselves.[5] It is the modest posture of a lover with their beloved.
St Dominic was famed for his humility. He kept refusing high office, walked barefoot from village to village, and died with nothing to call his own, not even his habit and bed. Nothing to call his own—except of course his Order, us. His final words to his own, to us, as we wept beside his deathbed translated Micah: “Have charity; exemplify humility; observe poverty.”[6]
In today’s Gospel (Mt 12:38-42) the religious authorities demand a sign. They want special effects before taking this Rabbi seriously. Jesus could easily have wowed them with some spectacle that might almost have forced their minds and wills. But He’s not going to play their games or feed their neuroses. If even the pagan Queen of Sheba and Ninevites responded to God’s call, how much more responsive should be the heirs to the Law and covenants, to Wisdom and the Prophets.
Dear sisters, we are all on trial in the courtroom of creation, justly or unjustly accused, but with confidence in our legal team. “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever,” Jesus says, “the very Spirit of truth.” (Jn 14:15-17, 23-26) With the Spirit at our side as our attorney, we can handle the truth, even the most challenging veritas. We can live justly, tenderly, and humbly with our God!
[1] St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae, q. 58, a. 1,
[2] STh IIa-IIae, qq. 81, 101 and 121.
[3] St Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, chs 51 & 60.
[4] STh IIa IIae, qq. 184 , esp. aa. 1 & 5; 186-189; Vatican Council II, Perfectae caritatis: Decree on the Renewal of Religious Life (1965), 1.
[5] STh IIa IIae, qq. 161.
[6] Bld Jordan of Saxony, Libellus de principiis Ordinis Praedicatorum, §§21, 93–97.
