“The more God’s love reigns in a person, the less power injustice will have over him” (St. Augustine).
The more deeply God’s love penetrates our hearts and the more the Holy Spirit takes over, the more we will realise that injustice is incompatible with the way of love. The Book of Wisdom speaks of this: “A holy and disciplined spirit will flee from deceit, and will rise and depart from foolish thoughts, and will be ashamed at the approach of unrighteousness” (Wis 1:5).
Since the Holy Spirit is love poured out in our hearts (Rom 5:5), He will not allow us to act unjustly and will oppose any attempt to do so. He will even admonish us to immediately reject every wrong thought, for “perverse thoughts separate men from God” (Wis 1:3). Their poison must not penetrate us, inflame our emotions and put them at the service of injustice.
And the Holy Spirit will not only teach us to turn away from unrighteous thoughts, but He will also increase our love for our Father through the demonstration of His gifts. Every prayer, every step towards God (and this includes the rejection of evil thoughts) deepens our love for the Father, so that we begin to feel a ‘spiritual pain’ when we discover something in ourselves that is incompatible with His love.
Thus the Lord will work, with our cooperation, to make it increasingly impossible for us to be unrighteous, at least voluntarily and with full awareness.
This process can become even more subtle when God, who knows the hidden, makes us aware of attitudes and habits of which we were unaware or only semi-conscious. As we begin to perceive them and allow God to touch and transform them, we can more quickly curb any movement of unrighteousness in us and continue to overcome it with God’s grace.