Tag: <span>Mercy</span>

July 27, 2021July 26, 2021

Weeds and Wheat

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

We may unconsciously categorize the depiction of the Lord in the first reading as imperfect, proper to an Old Testament view of God:

“The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God,
slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity,
continuing his kindness for a thousand generations,
and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin;
yet not declaring the guilty guiltless,
but punishing children and grandchildren
to the third and fourth generation for their fathers’ wickedness!”

But in reality, this depiction perfectly describes the reality we live in as Christians, a reality brought to fulfillment with the coming of Jesus.

Jesus does not declare the guilty guiltless, and He has not chosen to remove the devastating effects of original sin from humanity with His coming–punishing effects that continue to pass from generation to generation.

But He is, above all, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, generation after generation; He forgives everyone who comes to Him.

And today’s gospel bears all this out. At the end of time, God does not declare the guilty guiltless; rather, evildoers are gathered like weeds and thrown into the fiery furnace.

Here we see the chasm that exists for eternity between those who have been weak and sinful, but have returned often to the well of God’s mercy, and those who choose willfully to persist in their sin, resisting all God’s invitations to conversion. The first may be confident, full of hope; the second are heading for a terrible destiny. It is confusing these two groups that often leads to a false depiction of mercy in our times. Our job as Christians, through our prayer, sacrifice, and counsel, is to help move others from the second group to the first.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to incorporate you, according to His own plan, into His beautiful drama of salvation, and offer Him your life for the salvation and sanctification of others.

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May 24, 2021May 11, 2021

Only a Mother Can Love That Face

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Today’s readings are chosen for the memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church.

Sometimes it appears that, as Mother of the Church, Mary is nurturing a rag-tag group of unkempt ruffians. As we look at our brothers and sisters in the faith, and even at ourselves, we can become discouraged. Shouldn’t the Church have a higher quotient of perfection? Shouldn’t each of her constituents present a more worthy image of Christ the Master to the world? This discouragement can become particularly poignant when we observe defects in those leading us within the Church.

Today, we do well to look at this rag-tag band through Mary’s eyes. Many are those who seek to follow her Son whose intellects clouded by original sin do not apprehend the fullness of His truth, and whose wills, weakened by original sin, fail at times in their quest to give Him a consistent “yes.”

Judging from her appearances to visionaries throughout the centuries, such as at Lourdes and Fatima, Our Lady can be very demanding. She wants us to pray and sacrifice for sinners, for those estranged from her Son.

But when she looks at each of her Son’s disciples, with all of our imperfections, shortcomings, and sins, her eyes are filled with compassion, as at Cana, when she took pity on the couple who had run out of wine.

As today’s readings show us, and as many saints have reflected, Mary is the “new Eve”–as mother of Jesus, the Word Incarnate, she reverses the disobedience of Eve and gives God her perfect and consistent “yes.” As such, never straying, we see her faithful in today’s gospel, standing under the cross of Jesus, when so many others have fled.

And yet, as rock-solid as her “yes” is, as the Mother given to us by Jesus Himself under the cross, she looks at us, her faltering children, only with eyes of love, understanding, and profound desire for our happiness. She sees when we are lacking spiritual resources, and rushes to aid us. And her all-powerful Son listens to her when she tells Him: “They have no wine.”

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Thank Jesus for the gift of Mary, His Mother, to be our Mother, under the cross. Ask His help to remember to have recourse to her in your need, for she constantly has His ear and thus can deliver swift and effective aid.

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April 26, 2021April 8, 2021

Meat Plate

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

St. John Paul II taught us that the original Covenant between God and the Jewish people has never been revoked. In spite of their on-and-off infidelity in the Old Testament, and the fact that their leaders crucified the Son of God, the original Covenant still stands. He is still their God, and they His people.

Much as we in the Church have a history of on-and-off infidelity, and we with our sins have crucified the Son of God, and yet the New Covenant likewise has never been revoked. God’s fidelity and mercy are endless.

Still, we see God’s Covenant with man broadening before our very eyes in the first reading, as Peter is led by the Spirit to consume unpurified meat with the uncircumcised. St. Peter, the first Vicar of Christ on earth, is led by the Spirit to open God’s Covenant to these uncircumcised. It is the moment when all of us who are not of Jewish ancestry have the door to Christianity and salvation opened to us.

Now, as today’s gospel tells us, we can all enter through the sheep gate that is Jesus, into eternal life. He is the gate. For all of us.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to lead you through the gate that is Himself. Tell Him that you trust Him, even though you are an “unwashed” sinner, to wash you in the blood of the Lamb and make the garment of your soul as white as snow.

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March 23, 2021March 4, 2021

Restored in the Desert

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Do we not sympathize with the Israelites in today’s first reading–even a little?

They were wandering around in the desert, and even though God was providing for them, the food they had to eat was anything but sumptuous. They kept complaining, God kept punishing them, and they had an overall difficult time of it. Even today’s reading simply speaks of “their patience worn out by the journey.”

God loved His people, but He held them to a high standard of trust and obedience. He was not about to accept complaining or disobedience, much less idolatry. Their exile was not a fruit of weakness on His part or any lack of love, but of their own sin.

Yet, God continually sends signs of His love and manifestations of His Providence. Manna, quail, water from a rock, and in today’s reading, a miraculous bronze serpent that heals their wounds.

And ultimately, He sends His Son to save them, and us. As we see in the gospel of today, Jesus, the great I AM, is the one who is ultimately lifted up, like the bronze serpent, for our salvation.

God doesn’t love the Israelites only when they “behave”; He loves them when they sin. He corrects them, but He constantly sends the means to save them from their own gaffes.

And that’s what Jesus is for us. He did not come to save us because for the most part we were good, but made some mistakes along the way. He came because we performed authentic evil, but He loved us and loves us anyway; we degrade ourselves, and He restores our dignity.

Let us cling to Him, and not some belief in our own goodness and virtue, as that which restores and ensures this dignity ongoing.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus that you are deeply sorrowful for offending Him with your sin, and also, yes, for the degradation it has brought you. Tell Him that it is His ongoing, constantly ongoing restoration of your dignity that you trust, even when you are at your lowest. Ask Him never to let you be parted from Him.

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March 22, 2021March 4, 2021

The Price

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

In our readings today, two women were spared from unjust execution by the mercy of God.

One was innocent of the crime of which she was accused, and the other may have been guilty of sin, but not of a crime against society.

In each case, a man of God–a young prophet for the first, the Messiah Himself for the second–averted the injustice by pointing out the inconsistency of the accusation.

There are many examples in the Bible of God coming to the rescue of His just ones. He comes to the aid of Esther, of Abraham; in the New Testament, his angels free St. Peter from chains…

We may ask ourselves why there are exceptions to this, indeed, one particularly glaring exception: God does not spare His own Son, Jesus. It would seem so much tidier and coherent if God at the last moment had swooped in and saved Jesus from death. The story would be so much cleaner, so much less tragic.

How blithely we smooth over the importance of sin and its effects in our minds. We want so desperately to think that, because we are good people, our sin can’t be that serious.

But because it upsets the order designed by the Creator, it is that serious. The evil done by sin had to be reversed; Jesus had to die, if our sin was to be erased.

In this Lent, as we strive to stir our “good” hearts to profound repentance, to recognition of the impact of the evil those hearts have committed, we do well to look upon the crucifix. Jesus did not die for our sins simply to make a point. He suffered unspeakable agony over hours and hours, finally dying in excruciating pain, because this was the price that had to be paid for our disobedience–yours and mine, the sins we committed just today.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus you are deeply sorry for your sins, not for some selfish reason, but because you know your sins caused the need for Him to suffer terribly. Tell Him that now, at least at this moment, you give Him your absolute and unconditional “yes” in obedience, and ask Him to send you His Spirit to keep you faithful to that gift.

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March 18, 2021March 1, 2021

Be Moses

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

In the gospel, to counter the unbelief of His enemies, Jesus cites Moses as His witness–for, He says, “Moses wrote about me.”

Jesus is the Son of the Living God, Himself divine. John the Baptist witnessed to Him, His own miraculous works witnessed to Him. And, reaching forward through the centuries, Moses witnessed to Him.

It is interesting that this Gospel passage falls together with today’s first reading, where we see Moses interceding before a God who is ready to punish His grossly ungrateful and idolatrous people.

Moses intercedes for the great body of the descendants of Abraham, reduced to base adorers of a metal calf, and wins God’s mercy for them.

And thus it is that he points to Jesus Christ. That same Jesus who cites Moses as His witness is the very embodiment of the mercy of God for which Moses interceded.

Consider, for a moment: What if we become nothing other than new Moses, interceding before God’s fallen people, and winning the grace of the Incarnate Word for them? What if we in this way become nothing other than extenders of the impact of His infinitely powerful saving act? We could do worse.

If we look to the great saints, like St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. John Vianney, we can ultimately distill their lives down to this: They won extra doses of Jesus’ saving grace for souls, through their self-offering and intercession. In this way, they were like new Moses.

If we use our entire lives merely to intercede for sinners through prayer and self-offering with Christ in the Eucharist, we are not wasting them.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to send you His Spirit and craft you into the intercessory powerhouse He wants you to be–one that, through prayer and sacrifice, will bring soul after soul, person after person to the grace of Jesus Christ.

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March 9, 2021February 23, 2021

Forgiven Debt

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Although the Old Testament is superficially considered by some to portray God as severe and unyielding, over and over, we see passages like today’s first reading. Azariah–otherwise known as Abednego, one of the three whom Nebuchadnezzar cast into a white-hot furnace–offers God the sacrifice of a contrite heart. He knows that this abundantly merciful God will see his repentance and look with love not only on him, but on his entire people.

The king in Jesus’ parable in the gospel is no other than the God of the Old Testament. He is abundantly merciful to his indebted servant and forgives him the massive amount that he owes. But he expects the same mercy to be mirrored in the servant, who instead treats a fellow servant with a debt to him, a much smaller debt, severely. The king’s reaction is to withdraw his offer to forgive the massive debt of the first servant.

And this king is also none other than the God of the Our Father: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

God conditions our salvation on our acceptance of it, and our willingness to let Him transform us into something purified and exalted–something much greater than our sinful selves. Part of that transformation is our kindness and mercy toward those who fall short in our lives. It is well to remember that our forgiveness of others is cited over and over in the Gospels, and throughout the Bible, as a condition of our forgiveness by God.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to send His Spirit to transform your heart profoundly from one that harbors resentment, momentary or extended, into one that forgives immediately, conscious of what you yourself have been forgiven.

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March 6, 2021February 19, 2021

Can You Spare Some Change

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

There are two sins that are at particular risk of never finding forgiveness. The first is despair; the second, presumption.

When we despair, we determine for ourselves that we are beyond the reach of Jesus’ salvation. We are in such a bad state, we think, that we cannot be saved. Thus, through a lack of trust in the power of God, we effectively reject our salvation.

When we are presumptuous, we believe that any sins on our part will be forgiven even if we do not repent and convert. God is merciful, we think, so we can remain in our sin without concern.

Despair and presumption display a common characteristic–a very nasty one: Attachment to one’s state of sin. He who despairs and he who is presumptuous both spurn Jesus’ invitation to conversion.

Today’s readings are all about what happens when a sinful soul eschews these two tendencies, and returns full of humility and self-awareness, but also hope and trust, to the Lord.

The souls in today’s readings are ready to change. Hoping for something brand new, they detach themselves from their current state of sinfulness.

Lent is all about this detachment, this conversion. Conversion is not an achievement, but rather a grace, one that we do well to request in prayer immersed in self-awareness and trust in God’s ability to change us.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus for the grace of a wholly renewed conversion during this lent. Ask Him to jar you out of your haze of complacency, out of any presumption you may be experiencing, and on to a new level of union with Him.

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February 26, 2021February 10, 2021

Our Just Desserts

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

“If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?” This is what the psalm asks today.

And indeed, Jesus is very demanding in the gospel. Even anger in the heart, even verbal condemnation of another, is enough to incur God’s judgement.

And in the first reading, we learn that this judgement is the difference between eternal life and eternal death.

So what do we do, when we are aware that we sin often? “If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?”

The Protestants decided effectively to give up in this battle, at least as concerns its critical nature for salvation. They yield to the conviction of remaining forever corrupt, but Jesus covers them with His white mantle of salvation, thereby in effect hiding their corruption from the eyes of the Father. Thus it is that God does not “mark” their “iniquities.”

But we need not give up so fast. If we look closer, we also see in the first reading:

“If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed,
if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just,
he shall surely live, he shall not die.
None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him.”

Even if we sin often, if we continually turn back and sincerely repent from that sin, God does not “mark” our “iniquities,” but rather slowly works in us a profound transformation, by which even the tendency to sin is profoundly weakened. This, if we stay close to Him in prayer and in the sacraments.

Indeed, Proverbs tells us, “Though the just fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble from only one mishap.”

So what is your decision? To be just, or to be wicked? If it is to be just, then hold to that with confidence, avoiding sin and returning immediately to God when you have found, like St. Paul, that you have done what you hate. (cf. Rm. 7:15)

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus that your hope is not in your own virtue, but in His power, the power He exercised in saving us on the Cross. Tell Him that you embrace and accept His desire to transform you from the inside out into a profoundly holy person. Invite Him again to take over and transform your life.

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February 16, 2021February 2, 2021

The Ark of the New Covenant

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

It is a relief that people of our age are so much better and more faithful to God than in Noah’s time; that there is no evil running rampant in our day.

Said no one, in any age, ever.

We observe the evil and misplacement of values in our time, and it is hard not to despair. We look at the punishment God meted out in Noah’s time, and we realize that it was perfectly just. Sometimes, perhaps, we even wish that God would enact a similar purge in our time.

But then, Jesus came. God, for all time, took a different tack–a tack of mercy. Evildoers will reap their just reward in eternity, but God exhibits an impossible amount of patience and mercy during the sojourn here on earth.

It is hard not to focus on faults–not only the faults of others, but also our own, as if these were the essence of the story. But they are not. Jesus’ power and love are the essence of the story. When we strive to give our “yes” to Him daily, even haltingly, in the midst of our many sins and shortcomings, He rushes in with His mercy and power to supplement our weakness, and transform us into His new creation.

The Noah story, where most of humanity got wiped out, makes sense. The introduction of Jesus into history, on the other hand, is forever surprising, unexpected–a gratuitous and definitive act of mercy on the part of God.

So it is that in today’s gospel, Jesus reproves the disciples for focusing on what is no longer relevant: their shortcomings. They neglected to bring bread. This was a gross lack of planning, responsibility, and consideration on their part, one might say. How could they forget to feed their Lord and Master, God Incarnate! And each other!

But then Jesus puts things in perspective, by reminding them of the multiplication of the loaves. “Do you still not understand?” He asks them, as if in disbelief. Do they still not understand how powerful He is to provide, and how their weaknesses and mistakes are irrelevant?

He may well say the same to us, when we wring our hands concerning our limitations and failures. “Do you still not understand?” Do we still not understand how overwhelmingly powerful this unexpected gift of the Word Made Flesh, and of His love, really is in our lives?

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus that at least now, at this moment, you do understand. Tell Him that you give Him your weaknesses and failures, both on the human and on the spiritual level. Tell Him that you believe in the power of His multiplication of loaves in your life–that you know too that He multiplies the good results of what you do and are, even though you don’t deserve it. Ask Him to increase in you the virtue of trust and hope.

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