“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” (Phil 2:12) writes the Apostle Paul to the community with whom he has perhaps his strongest personal attachment.  And while “Fear and trembling” occur quite frequently in the Hebrew Scriptures connoting a sense of dread, here the sense of awe in God’s presence is in view as Paul has dispelled the need for fear earlier on in the letter (1:28)  It is this sense of this formidable paring of terms that grasps the reader of Micah Kiel’s seminal work on the correlation of scripture and Catholic Social Teaching, Be Transformed:  A Biblical Journey Toward a More Just World.

From the Onset, Kiel invites the reader into a world where justice, rightly understood as a balance between rights and responsibilities in relationships, holds sway, challenging the reader to embrace the righteous teachings of some of the most demanding Hebrew and Christan texts in a way that is both novel and faithful to modern Catholic social teaching.  From the introduction, with great humility he sets forth an agenda:  “Be transformed…and don’t think about becoming comfortable.”  Commanding a voice not unlike that of an ancient Israelite prophet, he speaks of non-negotiable modern realities: the need for a non-racist world that exists without prisons; fields of dreams where the playing of sports sows seeds of solidarity and empathy; where realtors post signs showcasing homes as “just enough;”  meeting the needs of the poor serves as the litmus test for “fairness,” and abusive and selfish power structures are devoured like candy by a genuine understanding of the common good.  With the assistance of Saint Paul, the ancient world’s preeminent evangelist, he equates solidarity with membership in the Body of Christ, human dignity with the universal right to use of the earth’s goods and Christian identity with the obliteration of the illusion of power and control.

Kiel does critique the failure of Catholic social teaching to utilize the insights of scripture; however, he does not fail to draw the connections himself.  From Rerum Novarum to Laudato Si’, he weaves a relatively seamless garment of practical insights that connects the words of modern popes to ancient prophets and the writings of evangelists to those of the Second Vatican Council.  For example, John Paul II’s call for solidarity takes on new meaning when it lies beside Luke’s poor beggar Lazarus, as does the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church’s call “to seek the good of others as if it were one’s own” (no. 167) against the resolution called for by St. Paul between Philemon and his former slave Onesimus.  Again, he asserts that John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra could have benefited from appeal to Jeremiah’s critique of the vulnerable who “work for nothing.” (Jerr 22:13).  These insights are far from caustic, but rather are caring enjoinders to follow the vocation to personal and societal transformation.

The concluding chapter “Attending to Transformation,” sums everything up quite nicely with a reflection on both the Lord’s Prayer and the Eucharist.  Christ’s perfect prayer which displaces current realities; surrenders one’s own will to God’s as evidenced in Catholic social teaching and in scripture; asks for fulfillment of our most immediate needs; and manifests solidarity in its collective address of God as Father, teaches us that we must be transformed if we are to be truly just.  For Kiel, in the Eucharist we receive, we become selflessly integrated, “life for the world (cf. John 6:51) and bread broken open for others to do the work “for the building of a more just and fraternal world” (Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, 88).

I have been a priest for nearly thirty years and a Catholic moral theologian for more than two and a half decades and I would be hard-pressed to say that I have found a text on the wedding of Catholic Social teaching and scripture more engaging and motivational than Kiel’s.  I personally have had to adjust my moral compass to a certain degree because of it.  Not that I needed to be rescued from the badlands as it were; however, I realized that some mountains needed to be made low, and some paths laid straight.   How appropriate as I pen this review in Advent, hoping for the Coming Lord, he who appears to announce a profound change for the world and those who live in it.