Category: Divine Mercy

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Perfect and Astonishing Divine Mercy

In the afterglow of Divine Mercy Sunday it seems opportune to make a few observations about the glorious mercy of our Lord. As a prelude we ought to set aside some mistaken notions of mercy.

We live in times in which mercy, like so many other things, has become a detached concept in people’s minds,separated from the things that really help us to understand it. For indeed, mercy makes sense and is necessary because we are sinners in desperate shape. Yet many today think it unkind and unmerciful to speak of sin and to refer to people sinners. Many think that mercy is a declaration that God doesn’t really care about sin, or that sin is not a relevant concept. Too many conceive of mercy as God’s approval of what they are doing. But of course, if God did approve of everything we do, including our sin, there would be no need for mercy. Mercy exists and is glorious because God does not approve of our sin; he sees how it harms us and others and extends a merciful call to return to him.

One of the chief errors of our time is the proclamation of God’s mercy without any reference to repentance. But repentance is the key that unlocks the floodgates of mercy. It is through repentance that we come to see our sin and the harm it has caused us and others. Through repentance we hear God’s call to return to him and we come humbly before the Lord, admit our wrong-doing and in this way receive the beautiful gift of his mercy.

I wonder too if any of us can ever really know how much we need God’s mercy? It is too easy to think that it’s that other person over there who really needs it more than I. But this bespeaks a spiritual blindness wherein we fail to realize just how awful our true condition is. Consider something that the Lord said to Sister Faustina and, as you read this recall that she was a consecrated religious living in a monastery! The Lord said to Sr. Faustina:

You see what you are of yourself, but do not be frightened at this. If I were to reveal to you the whole misery that you are, you would die of terror. … But because you are such a great misery I have revealed to you the whole ocean of my mercy(Diary II. 718).

Wow, just wow!What does this say of us who live far more immersed daily in a fallen, sin-soaked world. We deeply underestimate our true condition. Our biggest sin is likely our unawareness of our sin.

And perhaps there is a mercy in this for us as the Lord says when he declares to her: If I were to reveal to you the whole misery that you are, you would die of terror. But, hopefully this realization of our blindness can be the beginning of a deeper and deeper gratitude for the glorious, wonderful, and awesome gift of God’s mercy. If you don’t know the bad news, the good news is no news. The bad news is, we are in terrible, desperate shape. Though there is goodness in us, there are also very deep drives and wounds of sin; so deep and sometimes subtle that we barely know they are there. But thanks be to God for his rich beautiful and costly mercy.

Yes, the Lord’s mercy for us cost him dearly. And, as a conclusion to this brief essay I would like to quote from a work by Antonin Gilbert Sertillanges (1863-1948) entitled What Jesus Saw From the Cross.

Jesus is He who “beholds the Depths,” and the greatest depth of all is the depth of moral evil. He feels himself weighed down beneath the sin of all the ages…This hideous burden saps his strength…

Jesus is the physician who heals our ills with his own pain, but the greatest pain of all is his diagnosis [his vision] of man’s sin. He has a power of vision denied to us; our infirmities close our eyes to the spectacle that meets his gaze. Jesus sees wickedness and misery in this world which is hidden from our sight. If each one of us could see all the agony and all the atrocities that fill the earth, who could live? If we could each see our own self face to face, who would dare look on himself?

Finally, multiply this suffering by another, a heart stricken by his children’s refusal to love him. (pp. 90-91)

Do we see how precious and how costly is the Divine Mercy of Jesus? Yes and no. Our vision is too poor and we could never endure what we would have to see. But Jesus looked on it all and felt its full weight. I say to you what I say to myself, “Get on your knees poor sinner and realize the glorious gift of Divine Mercy. Remember the physical and mental anguish it caused our Lord. Realize that your need for it is far greater than you could ever imagine and be grateful and astonished at the beautiful and costly gift of God’s perfect and divine mercy.

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A Plea From Moses for Mercy Is Needed for Us As Well.

The first reading from Thursday’s Mass (of the 4thWeek of Lent) features the golden calf incident. God, likely trying to draw mercy from Moses, threatens to destroy the people for their infidelity. But as the text says,

But Moses implored the LORD, his God, saying, “Why, O LORD, should your wrath blaze up against your own people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with such great power and with so strong a hand? …Let your blazing wrath die down; relent in punishing your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, and how you swore to them by your own self, saying, ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky… (EX 32:7-14)

The Responsorial Psalm (106) for Thursday summarizes things well.

Our fathers made a calf in Horeb
and adored a molten image;
They exchanged their glory
for the image of a grass-eating bullock.

 They forgot the God who had saved them,
who had done great deeds in Egypt,
Wondrous deeds in the land of Ham,
terrible things at the Red Sea.

 Then he spoke of exterminating them,
but Moses, his chosen one,
Withstood him in the breach
to turn back his destructive wrath.

And all this, in our current crisis inspires also a model for prayer. I want to be clear that I am not concluding that God is directly punishing us, but he has permitted this. And, as we know, the people of Bible used times like these to repent and call on God. As I prayed these readings today at a private Mass the following prayerful thoughts came to mind:

Lord God we are in a great crisis, a worldwide crisis. I am going to guess we probably had this coming. For, we have collectively forgotten you, we have been ungrateful and done every sort of wicked deed. We have been greedy, wasteful, worldly, unchaste, unfaithful to marriage and family life, and have aborted our own children by the tens of millions. Yes Lord we have sinned and been stubbornly unrepentant. But Lord, I am, like Moses, asking your mercy. Even though we may not deserve it, I ask it anyway. Please Lord spare us from this disease and the economic collapse that will cause additional lives and harm. A miracle Lord, yes, we need a miracle. Please Lord, as you once did for King David and stopped the pestilence of that day at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, please do this now for us. Save us also from our excessive fears which have so seized many of us. For the sake of Christ’s sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world;  Have mercy.

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Seeing More as God Does

Today I’d like to reflect further on the Gospel reading from today’s Mass (Thursday of the 13th week of the year). It tells the story of the paralyzed man whom Jesus tells to have courage because his sins are forgiven.

In one sense this is a rather peculiar response to a paralyzed man: Jesus looks at him and says, “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.” Now we might be tempted to tap Jesus on the shoulder and say, “Excuse me, Lord, but this man is paralyzed. His problem is paralysis; that’s what he needs healing for!” (The Pharisees and scribes get all worked up for a different reason: they don’t think that Jesus has the authority to forgive sins.)

Of course, Jesus is neither blind nor lacking in intelligence. Unlike us, however, when Jesus looks at the man he does not consider paralysis to be the most serious problem. To Jesus, the man’s biggest issue is his sin.

Living as we do in this world, most of us have the world’s priorities. The Lord sees something more serious than paralysis, while we wonder what could possibly be more serious than paralysis! But not as man sees does God see. For God, the most serious problem we have is our sin. We don’t think like this even if we are told we should think like this.

Influenced by the flesh as we are, most of us are far more devastated by the thought of losing our health, or our money, or our job, than we are by the fact that we have sin. Threaten our health, well-being, or finances, and we’re on our knees begging God for help. Yet most people are far less concerned for their spiritual well-being. Most of us are not nearly so devastated by our sin (which can deprive us of eternal life) as we are by the loss of our health or some worldly possession.

Even many of us who have some sense of the spiritual life still struggle with this obtuseness and with misplaced priorities. Even in our so-called spiritual life, our prayers are often dominated by requests that God fix our health, improve our finances, or help us to find a job. It is not wrong to pray for these things, but how often do we pray to be freed of our sins? Do we earnestly pray to grow in holiness and to be prepared to see God face-to-face? Sometimes it almost sounds as if we are asking God to make this world more comfortable so that we can just stay here forever. This attitude is an affront to the truer gifts that God offers us.

So it is that Jesus, looking at the paralyzed man, says to him, Your sins are forgiven. In so doing, Jesus addresses the man’s most serious problem first. Only secondarily does He speak to the man’s paralysis, which He almost seems to have overlooked in comparison to the issue of his sin.

We have much to learn about how God sees and about what are the most crucial issues in our life.

Joseph and Mary were told to call the child “Jesus” because He would save the people from their sins. In his book Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, Pope Benedict XVI writes,

… Joseph is entrusted with a further task: “Mary will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). … On the one hand, a lofty theological task is assigned to the child, for only God can forgive sins. So this child is immediately associated with God, directly linked with God’s holy and saving power. On the other hand, though, this definition of the Messiah’s mission could appear disappointing. The prevailing expectations of salvation were primarily focused upon Israel’s concrete sufferings—on the reestablishment of the kingdom of David, on Israel’s freedom and independence, and naturally that included material prosperity for this largely impoverished people. The promise of forgiveness of sins seems both too little and too much: too much, because it trespasses upon God’s exclusive sphere; too little, because there seems to be no thought of Israel’s concrete suffering or its true need for salvation.

Benedict then cites the story of the paralytic and comments,

Jesus responded [to the presence of the paralyzed man] in a way that was quite contrary to the expectation of the bearers and the sick man himself, saying: “My son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5). This was the last thing anyone was expecting; this was the last thing they were concerned about.

The Pope Emeritus concludes,

Man is a relational being. And if his first, fundamental relationship is disturbed—his relationship with God—then nothing else can be truly in order. This is where the priority lies in Jesus’ message and ministry: before all else he wants to point man toward the essence of his malady.

Yes, God sees things rather differently than we do. There is much to ponder about the fact that Jesus said to the paralyzed man, Your sins are forgiven.

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On Jesus’ Merciful Call of St. Matthew, a Great Sinner

On this Feast Day of St. Matthew, we must acknowledge a great mercy in Jesus’ call. As a tax collector, Matthew was considered a great sinner. In fact, the term “tax collector” was a biblical euphemism for great sinner. Yet despite this, Jesus called him to be an Apostle.

In our times, many set mercy and the fact that we are sinners in opposition to each other, but the Lord Jesus unites these realities together. For the Lord, mercy is necessary because there is sin, not because sin is “no big deal.” It is because sin is a big deal that mercy is needed and is glorious.

Bishop Robert Barron aptly states, Many receive the message of divine mercy as tantamount to a denial of the reality of sin, as though sin no longer matters. But just the contrary is the case. To speak of mercy is to be intensely aware of sin and its peculiar form of destructiveness (Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism, p. 1).

Mercy does not deny sin; it acknowledges it and supplies an often-challenging remedy. Jesus shows mercy by calling us from our sin and healing us from its effects.

This understanding is evident in the Gospel for the Feast of St. Matthew:

As Jesus passed by,
he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.
He said to him, “Follow me.”
And he got up and followed him.
While he was at table in his house,
many tax collectors and sinners came
and sat with Jesus and his disciples.
The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples,
“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
He heard this and said,
“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words,
I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Matt. 9:9-13).

Notice three things from this Gospel about the relationship between mercy and sin:

I.  In His mercy, Jesus reckons us as sinners and regards us as sick. Jesus states plainly, “I have come to call sinners” (this means us). He also says that those who are well do not need a doctor, but the sick (this means us) do.

Many people today have been deceived. Some even call their sin good and something of which to be proud. They say, “God made me this way,” or “God likes me just the way I am.” No! To those such as these the Lord Jesus says, “You are sick. You are a sinner.” An antiphon in the Breviary says, God sees all men as sinners, that he might show them his mercy.

So in His mercy Jesus does not overlook sin or call it something good; he calls it what it is: sin and sickness.

II.  In His mercy, Jesus summons us to change. In this Gospel, Jesus calls Matthew away from his tax post, saying, “Follow me.” In other words, stop what you are doing; come away from it and follow me out of here. To the woman caught in adultery He says, “Do not sin again.” Jesus began His ministry by saying, “Repent and believe the Gospel.” To repent (metanoiete) means to change, to come to a new and different mind.

The changes Jesus insists upon are too numerous to list in their entirety, but among them are that we become free of lust, vengeful anger, greed, and unforgiveness, and that we become more generous, loving, serene, faithful, and trusting.

Thus in His mercy Jesus does not confirm us in our sin; He summons us away from it. He calls us to change and equips us to do so. His merciful call is this: “Come away from here. Enough of this; follow me.”

III.  In His mercy, Jesus heals sinners of their sin. Jesus uses the image of a doctor and states plainly that sick people (sinners) need a doctor. Jesus is that doctor. A doctor does not look at a sick patient and say, “You’re fine the way you are” or “I affirm you.” That would be malpractice. Jesus sees sin for what it is. He calls it such and prescribes the necessary medicines. He will also likely speak to a person’s lifestyle and recommend needed changes. This is how a doctor heals.

Jesus invokes the image of a doctor with what He does. He diagnoses and says, “This is bad. This is sickness. This is sin.” He then applies healing remedies such as the sacraments, the Holy Liturgy, His Word, the carrying of the cross, active and passive purifications, punishments due to sin, solid moral teaching, and holy fellowship. Like a doctor, Jesus summons us from a bad and unhealthy life to a good and healthy one.

Thus, in His mercy, Jesus heals our sins. He does not ignore them or approve of them—and He certainly does not call them good or something to celebrate. In His mercy, He heals them. He ends them.

So mercy is not a bland kindness. It is not mere flattery that pretends that sin does not exist or that it doesn’t matter. Beware of fake, flattering mercy. True mercy says, “Sin is awful. Let’s get out of here and go to a far better place.”

Matthew got up and followed Jesus. How about us?