Matthew 24, 42-51 + CSDC and CV   

(CV 38b) In the global era, economic activity cannot prescind from gratuitousness, which fosters and disseminates solidarity and responsibility for justice and the common good among the different economic players. It is clearly a specific and profound form of economic democracy. Solidarity is first and foremost a sense of responsibility on the part of everyone with regard to everyone [93], and it cannot therefore be merely delegated to the State. While in the past it was possible to argue that justice had to come first and gratuitousness could follow afterwards, as a complement, today it is clear that without gratuitousness, there can be no justice in the first place.

Notes: [93] Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 38: loc. cit., 565-566. 

Demands of the times and continuous developments of social life

CSDC 160c. In the course of history and with the light of the Spirit, the Church has wisely reflected within her own tradition of faith and has been able to provide an ever more accurate foundation and shape to these principles, progressively explaining them in the attempt to respond coherently to the demands of the times and to the continuous developments of social life.

(Mt 24, 42-51) Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come

[42] Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. [43] Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. [44] So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come. [45] "Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household to distribute to them their food at the proper time? [46] Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so. [47] Amen, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property. [48] But if that wicked servant says to himself, 'My master is long delayed,' [49] and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eat and drink with drunkards, [50] the servant's master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour [51] and will punish him severely and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. 

CSDC 266. By his work and industriousness, man — who has a share in the divine art and wisdom — makes creation, the cosmos already ordered by the Father, more beautiful[580]. He summons the social and community energies that increase the common good[581], above all to the benefit of those who are neediest. Human work, directed to charity as its final goal, becomes an occasion for contemplation, it becomes devout prayer, vigilantly rising towards and in anxious hope of the day that will not end. “In this superior vision, work, a punishment and at the same time a reward of human activity, involves another relationship, the essentially religious one, which has been happily expressed in the Benedictine formula: ora et labora! The religious fact confers on human work an enlivening and redeeming spirituality. Such a connection between work and religion reflects the mysterious but real alliance, which intervenes between human action and the providential action of God”[582].

  Notes: [580] Cf. Saint Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 5, 32, 2: PL 7, 1210-1211. [581] Cf. Theodoret of Cyr, On Providence, Orationes 5-7: PG 83, 625-686. [582] John Paul II, Address during his Pastoral Visit to Pomezia, Italy (14 September 1979), 3: L'Osservatore Romano, English edition, 1 October 1979, p. 4.

[Initials and Abbreviations.- CSDC: Pontifical Council for Justice And Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church; -  SDC: Social Doctrine of the Church; - CV: Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in truth)]