Happy Mercy Sunday! Also, the 2nd
Sunday of Easter, Thomas Sunday, Low Sunday, White Sunday, Quasimodo Sunday…
did I leave any out? It is one of the most ‘named’ days of the liturgical year.
But Mercy Sunday it is, the Divine Mercy
devotion of St. Faustina growing exponentially in recent years. And as I said
yesterday, I sometimes wonder about that ‘devotional’ habit in Catholicism. As
much as it can enrich and make alive the mysteries and beauty of our faith, I
think it can sometimes keep those mysteries at a distance, somewhat, keep them
codified in set forms of prayers, novenas, images, and vocabulary.
God’s mercy is our all-in-all, not simply a devotion. And so here
below the jump is the rest of the chapter I began yesterday from my book Going
Home, which finds lots to say about the divine mercy without ever
broaching the devotional horizon of the Divine Mercy:
So those are a few of my thoughts on the mercy of God for this mercy Sunday. I have lots more to say: you can buy the rest of the book at the link.
If we think of mercy as a kind of cosmic ‘get
out of jail free’ card, then it would indeed have a corrosive effect on our
character. It would lead us into just such a feckless irresponsibility, a life
of lax permissiveness where we could turn around at the end of whatever vice we
are engaged in and casually murmur, ‘oh, sorry God!’ Forgiven, then we could
return to our pleasures. This is not the way God’s mercy is, though. Rather,
God’s mercy does something to us, more than just letting us off the hook:
It seems to me
that this land of North America
Mercy, really
believing in the mercy of God, takes away our excuses – if God truly comes to
us in our sin and truly embraces and loves and cleanses us, then we have no
real reason not to surrender ourselves to him and follow him wherever. So often
we can use the (true!) fact that we’re not really very nice people as a way of
justifying our not becoming saints. Mercy eliminates that excuse. Mercy, far
from being a quick fix, throws us into a life that asks everything of us. And
we resist this:
But, as the Old Testament says, There was a
man who sold his birthright for some pottage, a plate of pottage. And there are
men today who have done so again and again; The Germans sold it to Hitler; the
Russians to Stalin. Men will sell their birthright for strange securities even
though the security might, at any moment, threaten them with insecurity. They
still will accept it for little moments of some sort of a numbing security, in
which you don’t really live, but just exist. And that what happens to people
who hold onto their guilt forever. For those who do not wish to believe in
God’s mercy, consciously or unconsciously, their guilt for past years is a
shield that they want to lift against surrendering themselves to the Lord as
they know they have to, if they’re going to be Christians.[2]
The Father does not simply meet the son on the road, embrace him,
and then leave him in his wretched state. He enfolds him into his own life. The
son is dressed in a robe and given a ring – signs of his being brought back
into the family and its ways. He is brought into the house, and this house is
not simply a new base of operations for his prodigal ways, a place for him to
throw raucous prodigal parties with all his little prodigal friends, now that
he’s back in the money.
It is the house of mercy, the house of love. Mercy changes us. It
changes us into the merciful, and blessed are we once this change happens.
In the book Molchanie Catherine describes symbolically this
challenge of mercy, the piercing, transforming dynamic of the free gift of
God’s mercy. She writes of moving through different scenes from the Gospel, and
at one point coming upon “a group of men screaming, yelling, and gesticulating.
Two or three of them were dragging a half–naked woman to where Christ was
standing.”[3]
She witnesses the whole scene from John 8, the adulterous woman, the
silence of Christ, the writing on the ground, the words about casting the first
stone, his words of forgiveness to the woman. And then, “The quality of silence
changed. Flashes of lightning seemed to explode around me. Kneeling on the
sharp stones, I knew, with a knowledge no one could ever take from me, the mercy
of God.”[4] The story ends and
all, including the woman, have left:
but I remained. Christ ceased writing on the sand. He
sat down on a large stone and looked at me. I looked at him. Breaking my
silence, I said, “Lord, I have just witnessed the immense mercy of God. Will I
die for having seen it?” For I was absolutely sure that no one could behold
this outpouring of mercy that flashed like lightning, and remain alive. The
Lord shook his head and smiled and said, “No, Catherine. That is not what you
are here for. You are here to become a silent witness to this mercy. Now that you
have had it burnt into your soul, now that you know what mercy is, go and be
merciful.”[5]
From there she moves through the passion of Christ, witnessing the
betrayal of Judas in the garden: “I leaned against a tree, for I felt too weak
to stand up without support. I was beholding the betrayal of God by man. It was
not the betrayal of a nation by a nation. It was not the betrayal of one family
member by another. Oh, no! It was the betrayal of God by man.”[6]
She continues to follow Christ until she is at the Cross with him:
I looked at Christ and it seemed as if I had grown
taller, so that when he lifted his head and looked at me, our eyes were on the
same level. I was going to say something, but his voice broke the silence
first. It was strong, even though coming from a crucified man. He said,
“Catherine, yesterday you witnessed the mercy of God. You saw Our mercy and you
thought that was the whole of it. No, child, the mercy of God is infinite. I
shall pray to my Father.” He cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they do not
know what they are doing.” Then he looked at me and for a split second I
thought I saw a smile on his face.
Then he went on: “Now, Catherine, you have seen the
immensity, the infinity, of God’s mercy. Go and be merciful to everyone, but
above all, be merciful to your enemies.”[7]
Mercy – true
mercy, truly given, truly received – pulls us into a depth of encounter with
God that changes everything in us. God died for mercy’s sake. This is no ‘get
out of jail free’ card, although it certainly does get us out of the jail of
our selfish selves. There is nothing ‘free’ about it, even though it is freely
given. A free gift the price of which staggers our imagination, staggers our
puny minds and hearts and their ability to absorb it. A free gift that, when we
receive it, calls us inevitably and inexorably into giving that same gift to others,
even to the point of death.
Entering the
father’s house means entering the Father’s business, and his business is to
love to end of love, to the fullest measure of gift and grace. To receive mercy
pulls us into this business, even to the point of death with Christ through to
the point of rising with Christ.
And this
entering of mercy is not a simplistic or childish ‘oops, sorry God’, affair,
either. It is:
to go into
this abyss or cavern and darkness that is I, and from there to cry to the abyss
of God’s mercy. No matter how dark, how deep, how terrible I am, his mercy is
greater. You begin in truth to know who you are and despair cannot enter into
your life, because the abyss of his mercy is always greater… then we are in
poverty.”[8]
Mercy always
calls us to deeper and deeper self-knowledge, and hence to deeper knowledge of
our need for mercy, and so on, until knowledge of self and knowledge of God
meet – abyss to abyss, void to void.
And yet this
mercy of God remains just that – mercy. It is our joy, our consolation, our
hope. It is laughter and delight. The last word is not the abyss or
wretchedness or even the knowledge of our blessed poverty.
The last word
is happiness. The last word is home. The last word is ‘Father’.
So those are a few of my thoughts on the mercy of God for this mercy Sunday. I have lots more to say: you can buy the rest of the book at the link.
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