Have Mercy

Ever since I can remember, the phrase "Be merciful, as your Father is merciful" has been a part of my store-of-knowledge-to-be-applied-to-life. You could say it has a place in the stack of Scripture verses that have compiled in my mind and heart over the years, from which I draw the laws by which I live.

Yet, to be earnestly frank, that is one of the hardest statements by Christ to actually practice. I remember being little and hearing, "Be perfect, as my heavenly Father is perfect" and thinking, "Ok, Jesus, you got it!" As if that wasn't impossible. As I grew older, I came to a better understanding of God's perfection and my own imperfection. With the ever-widening gap visible before me, I understood the need for the "bridge" of grace and mercy to assist me in crossing to the side of holiness. To be "perfect" was something I would muse over, pondering exactly what Jesus meant here. He knew our sin - he was Incarnate Word for the sake of saving us from it! So how were we to "be perfect" when he knew how very impossible that was for us? Of course he meant grace, he meant answering the call to holiness that each receives in his life, that we all receive every day. He meant being open to the Holy Spirit and responding to his promptings and striving every day to live the Gospel in our lives.

To bring it full circle, especially during this time of Lent, I think it is fair to say he also meant these two passages to be mirrors of one another, revealing the deeper meaning in each. God's perfection is his very Being, and this Being we have come to know is Love, and this Love means his Mercy on us all. To be perfect as He is perfect is for us to strive to be merciful as he is merciful. This is no easy task when we come to understand his mercy! The Catechism from 1422-1470 discusses the truths of the faith concerning the Sacrament of Reconciliation or Confession. Here we find that the forgiveness God offers each of us as sinners does not contain only a cleansing effect - rather, it also is one of regeneration, and new life. We are not only forgiven, but restored to a proper place of unity and love. If this is how God deals with us, in the cliche phrase of "forgiving and forgetting," certainly our forgiveness and mercy towards others must be the same. Yet, how easy it is to "forgive" someone without making any reparation or reunification attempts! I recently heard Fr. Michael Scanlan on this topic of mercy, and to paraphrase him, he said, "If He has been wounded and persecuted though innocent, and forgiven us from the cross, how can we refuse mercy to those who ask? Have we been through worse that we could judge more harshly?" God's love manifests itself as extreme mercy, the most extreme form of reconciliation of mankind, one that destroyed the original sin and death itself! So our own mercy must imitate this perfection. It must be a mercy that forgets the offense, coniders it justly received because of our sinful lowliness, that loves the other still more for having offended, for it is now an opportunity for us to show our love. That seems almost illogical. In fact, it is illogical... for the logic of sin. Fortunately, Christ brings us the logic of the Word, himself, the Logos, and healing our wounded understanding he teaches us what is perfect, and what true mercy means.

So let us pray that today we can look into the hearts of one another with true mercy, forgetting any moments of offense in the past and reviving the love for our brothers and sisters that the Holy Spirit brings so that we may witness to the peace that is the gift of Christ in our lives.