This section of the Letter of James may remind us of the prophet Amos in the way James essentially preaches about human rights and justice. In a world where inequality in almost every sector of our human existence keeps growing at an alarming rate, we need to takes James' words, like those of Amos and of the Church's social teaching very seriously.

In his Prayer intention for April, Pope Francis asked us to pray that "economists may have the courage to reject any economy of exclusion". The term "economy of exclusion" is a relatively new one, and so, of course, was unknown to either Amos or James, but the doctrine embedded in the term is part of the Biblical doctrine about our lives in the world and the highly interrelated connection between the world's goods, the promotion of human happiness and the justice that underpins all important human affairs.

Pope Francis has given the notion of exclusion an inspiring theological formulation: "No human condition constitutes grounds for exclusion from the heart of the Father."