The Church of Mercy (2 page)

What a beautiful truth of faith this is for our lives: the mercy of God! God’s love for us is so great, so deep; it is an unfailing love, one that always takes us by the hand and supports us, lifts us up, and leads us on.

In the Gospel of John (20:19–28), the apostle Thomas personally experiences this mercy of God, which has a concrete face: the face of Jesus, the risen Jesus. Thomas does not believe it when the other apostles tell him, “We have seen the Lord.” It isn’t enough for him that Jesus had foretold it, promised it: “On the third day I will rise.” He wants to see, he wants to put his hand in the place of the nails and in Jesus’ side. And how does Jesus react? With
patience
: Jesus does not abandon Thomas in his stubborn unbelief; he gives him a week’s time. He does not close the door; he waits. And Thomas acknowledges his own poverty, his little faith: “My Lord and my God!” With this simple yet faith-filled invocation, he responds to Jesus’ patience. He lets himself be enveloped by divine mercy; he sees it before his eyes, in the wounds of Christ’s hands and feet and in his open side, and he discovers trust. He is a new man, no longer an unbeliever, but a believer.

Let us also remember Peter: three times he denied Jesus, precisely when he should have been closest to him. And when he hits rock bottom, he meets the gaze of Jesus who patiently, wordlessly, says to him, “Peter, don’t be afraid of your weakness, trust in me.” Peter understands, he feels the loving gaze of Jesus, and he weeps. How beautiful is this gaze of Jesus—how much tenderness is there! Brothers and sisters, let us never lose trust in the patience and mercy of God!

Let us think too of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus: their sad faces, their barren journey, their despair. But Jesus does not abandon them: he walks beside them, and not only that! Patiently he explains the Scriptures, which spoke of him, and he stays to share a meal with them. This is God’s way of doing things: he is not impatient like us, who often want everything all at once, even in our dealings with other people. God is patient with us because he loves us, and those who love are able to understand, to hope, and to inspire confidence. They do not give up, they do not burn bridges, they are able to forgive. Let us remember this in our lives as Christians: God always waits for us, even when we have left him behind! He is never far from us, and if we return to him, he is ready to embrace us.

I am always struck when I reread the parable of the merciful father; it impresses me because it always gives me great hope. Think of that younger son who was in the father’s house, who was loved; and yet he wants his part of the inheritance. He goes off, spends everything, hits rock bottom, where he could not be more distant from the father. Yet when he is at his lowest, he misses the warmth of the father’s house and he goes back. And the father? Had he forgotten the son? No, never. He is there, he sees the son from afar; he was waiting for him every hour of every day. The son was always in his father’s heart, even though he had left him, even though he had squandered his whole inheritance, his freedom. The father, with patience, love, hope, and mercy had never for a second stopped thinking about him, and as soon as he sees him still far off, he runs out to meet him and embraces him with tenderness, the tenderness of God, without a word of reproach: his son has returned! And that is the joy of the father. In that embrace for his son is all this joy: he has returned! God is always waiting for us; he never grows tired. Jesus shows us this merciful patience of God so that we can regain confidence, hope—always! A great German theologian, Romano Guardini, said that God responds to our weakness by his patience, and this is the reason for our confidence, our hope (see
Glaubenserkenntnis
[Würzburg, 1949], p. 28). It is like a dialogue between our weakness and the patience of God; it is a dialogue that, if we have it, will grant us hope.

I would like to emphasize one other thing: God’s patience has to call forth in us
the courage to return to him
, however many mistakes and sins there may be in our life. Jesus tells Thomas to put his hand in the wounds of his hands and his feet and in his side. We too can enter the wounds of Jesus; we can actually touch him. This happens every time we receive the sacraments with faith. St. Bernard, in a fine homily, said: “Through the wounds of Jesus I can suck honey from the rock and oil from the flinty rock (see Deut. 32:13), I can taste and see the goodness of the Lord” (
On the Song of Songs
61:4). It is there, in the wounds of Jesus, that we are truly secure; there we encounter the boundless love of his heart. Thomas understood this. St. Bernard goes on to ask: But what can I count on? My own merits? No. “My merit is God’s mercy. I am by no means lacking merits as long as he is rich in mercy. If the mercies of the Lord are manifold, I too will abound in merits” (61:5). This is important: the courage to trust in Jesus’ mercy, to trust in his patience, to seek refuge always in the wounds of his love. St. Bernard even stated, “So what if my conscience gnaws at me for my many sins? ‘Where sin has abounded, there grace has abounded all the more’ (Rom. 5:20)” (61:5).

Maybe someone among us here is thinking,
My sin is so great, I am as far from God as the younger son in the parable; my unbelief is like that of Thomas. I don’t have the courage to go back, to believe that God can welcome me and that he is waiting for me, of all people
. But God is indeed waiting for you; he asks of you only the courage to go to him. How many times in my pastoral ministry have I heard it said, “Father, I have many sins”? And I have always pleaded, “Don’t be afraid, go to him, he is waiting for you, he will take care of everything.” We hear many offers from the world around us; but let us take up God’s offer instead: his is a caress of love. For God, we are not numbers, we are important; indeed we are the most important thing to him. Even if we are sinners, we are what is closest to his heart.

There is an urgent need, then, to see once again that faith is a light, and once the flame of faith dies out, all other lights begin to dim. The light of faith is unique, because it is capable of illuminating
every
aspect of human existence. A light this powerful cannot come from us but from a more primordial source: in a word, it must come from God. Faith is born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals his love, a love that precedes us and upon which we can lean for security and for building our lives. Transformed by this love, we gain fresh vision, new eyes to see; we realize that it contains a great promise of fulfillment, and that a vision of the future opens up before us. Faith, received from God as a supernatural gift, becomes a light for our way, guiding our journey through time. It is a light coming from the past, the light of the foundational memory of the life of Jesus, which revealed his perfectly trustworthy love, a love capable of triumphing over death. Yet because Christ has risen and draws us beyond death, faith is also a light coming from the future and opening before us vast horizons that guide us beyond our isolated selves toward the breadth of communion. We come to see that faith does not dwell in shadow and gloom; it is a light for our darkness.

The light of love proper to faith can illumine the questions of our own time concerning truth. Truth nowadays is often reduced to the subjective authenticity of the individual, valid only to the life of the individual. A common truth intimidates us, for we identify it with the intransigent demands of totalitarian systems. But if truth is a truth of love, if it is a truth disclosed in personal encounter with the Other and with others, then it can be set free from its enclosure in individuals and become part of the common good. As a truth of love, it is not one that can be imposed by force; it is not a truth that stifles the individual. Since it is born of love, it can penetrate to the heart, to the personal core of each man and woman. Clearly, then, faith is not intransigent but grows in respectful coexistence with others. One who believes may not be presumptuous; on the contrary, truth leads to humility, because believers know that, rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth that embraces and possesses us. Far from making us inflexible, the security of faith sets us on a journey; it enables witness and dialogue with all.

In the Gospel of the Easter Vigil, we first meet the women who go to the tomb of Jesus with spices to anoint his body (see Luke 24:1–3). They go to perform an act of compassion, a traditional act of affection and love for a dear departed person, just as we would. They had followed Jesus, they had listened to his words, they had felt understood by him in their dignity, and they had accompanied him to the very end, to Calvary and to the moment when he was taken down from the cross. We can imagine their feelings as they make their way to the tomb: a certain sadness, a sorrow that Jesus has left them, that he died, that his life has come to an end. Life will now go on as before. Yet the women continue to feel love, the love for Jesus that now leads them to his tomb.

But at this point, something completely new and unexpected happens, something that upsets their hearts and their plans, something that will upset their whole life. They see the stone removed from before the tomb; they draw near, and they do not find the Lord’s body. It is an event that leaves them perplexed and hesitant, full of questions: “What happened?” “What is the meaning of all this?” (see Luke 24:4).

Doesn’t the same thing happen to us when something completely new occurs in our everyday life? We stop short, we don’t understand, we don’t know what to do.
Newness
often makes us fearful, including the newness God brings us, the newness God asks of us. We are like the apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God’s surprises. Dear brothers and sisters, we are afraid of God’s surprises! He always surprises us! The Lord is like that.

Brothers and sisters, let us not be closed to the newness that God wants to bring into our lives! Are we often weary, disheartened, and sad? Do we feel weighed down by our sins? Do we think that we won’t be able to cope? Let us not close our hearts, let us not lose confidence, let us never give up. There are no situations that God cannot change; there is no sin that he cannot forgive if only we open ourselves to him.

But let us return to the Gospel, to the women, and take one step further. They find the tomb empty, the body of Jesus is not there, something new has happened, but all of this still doesn’t tell them anything certain. It raises questions; it leaves them confused, without offering an answer. And suddenly there are two men in dazzling clothes who say, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; but has risen” (Luke 24:5–6). What began as a simple act, done surely out of love—going to the tomb—has now turned into an event, a truly life-changing event. Nothing remains as it was before, not only in the lives of those women, but also in our own lives and in the history of humankind. Jesus is not dead, he has risen, he is alive! He does not simply return to life; rather, he is life itself, because he is the Son of God,
the living God
(see Num. 14:21–28; Deut. 5:26; Josh. 3:10).

Jesus no longer belongs to the past but lives in the present and is projected toward the future; Jesus is the everlasting “today” of God. This is how the newness of God appears to the women, the disciples, and all of us: as victory over sin, evil, and death—over everything that crushes life and makes it seem less human. And this is a message meant for me and for you, dear sister, for you, dear brother. How often does Love have to tell us, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Our daily problems and worries can wrap us up in ourselves, in sadness and bitterness . . . and that is where death is. That is not the place to look for the One who is alive!

Let the risen Jesus enter your life—welcome him as a friend, with trust: he is life! If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward. He will receive you with open arms. If you have been indifferent, take a risk; you won’t be disappointed. If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid. Trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you, and he will give you the peace you are looking for and the strength to live as he would have you do.

The apostle Paul ended one passage of his letter to the Romans with these words: “you are no longer under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). And this is our life: walking under grace, because the Lord has loved us, has saved us, has forgiven us. The Lord has done all things, and this is grace, God’s grace. We are on our way under the grace of God who came down to us in Jesus Christ who saved us.

However, this opens us toward a wide horizon, and this is a joy to us. “You are not under law but under grace.” What does this “living under grace” mean? It is our joy; it is our freedom. We are free. Why? Because we live under grace. We are no longer slaves of the Law; we are free, because Jesus Christ liberated us, he gave us freedom, the full freedom of God’s children, in which we live under grace. This is a treasure. I shall try to explain something of this mystery, which is so beautiful and so important: living under grace.

Baptism, this admittance to being “under law,” “under grace,” is a revolution. There have been so many revolutionaries in history, many indeed. Yet none of them has had the force of this revolution that brought Jesus to us: a revolution to transform history, a revolution that changes the human heart in depth. The revolutions of history have changed political and economic systems, but none has really changed the human heart. True revolution, the revolution that radically transforms life, was brought about by Jesus Christ through his resurrection. Benedict XVI said of this revolution that “it is the greatest mutation in the history of humanity.”

Let us think about this: it is the greatest mutation in humanity’s history. It is a true revolution; we are revolutionaries and, what is more, revolutionaries of this revolution. For we have taken this road of the greatest metamorphosis in humanity’s history. In this day and age, unless Christians are revolutionaries, they are not Christians. They must be revolutionaries through grace! Grace itself, which the Father gives us through the crucified, dead, and risen Jesus Christ, makes us revolutionaries because—and once again I cite Benedict XVI—“he is the greatest mutation in the history of humanity” because he changes the heart.

The prophet Ezekiel said, “I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” This is the experience the apostle Paul had after his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. It radically changed his outlook on life, and he received baptism. God transformed his heart! However, only think: a persecutor, a man who hounded out the Church and Christians, a man who became a saint, a Christian to the marrow, a genuine Christian! First he was a violent persecutor, then he became an apostle, a witness of Jesus Christ so brave that he was not afraid of suffering martyrdom. In the end, the Saul who wanted to kill those who proclaimed the Gospel gave his own life to proclaim it.

This is the mutation, the most important mutation about which Pope Benedict spoke to us. He changes your heart, from that of a sinner—a sinner: we are all sinners—he transforms you into a saint. Is there any one of us who is not a sinner? If so, raise your hand! We are all sinners, each and every one. We are all sinners! But the grace of Jesus Christ saves us from sin: it saves us!

If we—all of us—accept the grace of Jesus Christ, he changes our heart and from sinners makes us saints. To become holy we do not need to turn our eyes away and look somewhere else, or have as it were the face on a holy card! No, no, that is not necessary. To become saints only one thing is necessary: to accept the grace that the Father gives us in Jesus Christ. There, this grace changes our heart. We continue to be sinners for we are weak, but with this grace which makes us feel that the Lord is good, that the Lord is merciful, that the Lord waits for us, that the Lord pardons us—this immense grace that changes our heart.