“For his mercy endures forever.” (Ps136)
Pope Francis in his Papal Bull Misericordiae Vultus gives us Psalm 136 as of understanding God’s mercy through the experience of the people of Israel. God is a God of salvation. This refrain “for his mercy endures forever” is repeated again and again as sign of hopefulness and grace in our Lord Jesus. When I first read the Papal Bull I was interested in this quote because in English it is often translated “for his love endures forever.”
In our understanding of mercy and love our Holy Father invites us to recognize that love is an essential part of mercy and mercy without love is empty and without hope. In our understanding of God’s love for us we recognize that he who is love offers us the gift of Mercy full of love. Through his son Jesus Christ who comes to us this Christmas, the face in the light of mercy shines forth in our lives and the lives of the world.
Throughout the Papal Bull we are challenged to see how mercy and love, intertwined through our relationship with God and how mercy calls us to the grace of the movement towards the great other in our lives. The call to mercy is to a deeper understanding of how we live in relationship with God and with our brothers and sisters. Mercy, in the lives of the Church, is not simply an abstract idea but concrete realities that are lived out in relationships of love. Mercy shines forth in brokenness and comes to completion in the healing grace our heavenly Father extends through the cross of Jesus Christ.
A simple example of how we can understand the gift of mercy is to look within families. A child, while throwing a ball in the house…a big no no…breaks a lamp. There must be some justice, the child needs to be punished but also shown mercy and forgiveness. The act justice, tied to mercy, shows forth an action in proportion to the hurt caused…you will go to your room and loose this months allowance…but in love the child is invited back into the grace of the family through forgiveness and mercy. This action of life giving mercy and love reminds the child that their dignity as a child of God, as a member of that particular family, is much greater and can never be lost through any one act of sin.
This is why mercy and justice must always be tied together as Pope Francis reminds us, “God’s justice is his mercy.” (20) All this can be very theoretical until we step forward and embrace the work of mercy and it is a blessing to have within the tradition of our faith the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy that lead and guide us in the active participation in the life of the family of God. (more on that later)
God Bless
Fr. Mark