Misericordia: Human Misery & God’s Infinite Mercy

So when Pope Francis announced that we were to have a Jubilee Year of Mercy, he began with a very simple truth:

“Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy… Whoever sees Jesus, sees the Father (cf. John 14:9). Jesus of Nazareth, by his words, his actions, and his entire person reveals the mercy of God.”

With only 4 more weeks until the close of the Year of Mercy, I believe it’s a valid question to ask: How have you lived mercy in this year?

There was one day, when I was meeting up a friend for coffee. I got there a bit early and so I ordered my coffee and sat down and waited. Then, of course I get a text message saying that she was running about 10 minutes late. But what was 10 minutes late, soon turned to 20 minutes and the 30 minutes… So of course, I was getting impatient and frustrated… I mean, because I had gotten there early, I had been there for 40 minutes already! So when she finally arrived, I was ready to give her a piece of my mind. But before I could do so, she said: “I’m so sorry I’m late, I was on the way here and encountered a guy on the street hungry, so I went back home and made a sandwich to give to him.”

So just like that, my anger was gone. “I mean how can I be mad at that?!” In fact, when I thought about it, I probably passed up a few hungry people on the streets on my way to café myself.

In that moment, I came face to face to my own lack of mercy for others and my own need for God’s mercy.

In Latin, the word for mercy is “misericordia”. It’s made of two main words, “miseriae” which means misery or miserable and “cor” meaning heart. Thus, misericordia, or mercy, means to give, to extend one’s heart to the misery of others.

God’s heart extends into our misery, into our suffering in Jesus Christ. This is the mystery of the Incarnation, of God becoming man. As we heard in the first reading and in the psalm, “The Lord hears the cry of the poor,” the cry of the weak and gives his mercy. Jesus Christ is the answer to this cry. God himself comes into our poverty and into our misery and draws all of it into himself on the cross to redeem it. It is on the cross that Jesus reveals the Father’s mercy.

In our Gospel today, Jesus gives a parable about the Pharisee and the tax-collector. Now you have to remember that in those times, Pharisees were for the most part seen as good people and tax-collectors on the other hand seen as people who took advantage of others. In the parable the Pharisee says, “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity – greedy, dishonest, adulterous – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.”

Now I think it’s perfectly fine to assume that the Pharisee in fact did all of this. He knew the law of God and he followed it to the best of his ability. So what’s the problem?

Well, after the parable, Jesus says, “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” And then immediately following this section of the Gospel, He then goes on to talk about children and how the kingdom of God belongs to them.

The problem with the Pharisee was not on doing wrong things, he acted justly and his actions were good. But he did these things with the wrong attitude. His sin was thinking that he didn’t need God, that he was independent of the Lord.

You notice that the Gospel said that the Pharisee “spoke this prayer TO HIMSELF.” It is the humble, it is those who are childlike who are aware of their radical dependency on God. I think in our lives we can miss the point of God’s great mercy in our lives. Like the Pharisee we forget about God’s mercy or even our own need for God.

Instead, it is the tax-collector whom Jesus calls to imitate. The tax collector “stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.'”

I often say how impressed I was, when in one of Pope Francis’ first interviews, when asked who he said he was, “who is Jorge Bergolio,” Pope Francis simply said, “I am a sinner.” He didn’t say, I’m the pope, or I’m a priest or a servant of God, but rather simply “I am a sinner.”

This, I believe, is the first step of mercy. To echo the words of the tax collector, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” If we do not realize our sinfulness and our need for mercy, then in some sense we don’t recognize our need for Jesus Christ. Jesus came for the miserable, for those who suffer in sin. He came for US. He came to show the heart of the Father and to extend the Father’s mercy to us.

My brothers and sisters, in recognizing our own need for God’s mercy, our need for Jesus Christ, then we can recognize the need for mercy in others. If we cannot recognize our own poverty, we will not see the poverty of others.

In this year of mercy, we need to make good use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Sacrament of mercy. In Reconciliation, in confession, we acknowledge our own sinfulness and God’s mercy and grace pours out upon us.

I would like to end with a quote from St. Faustina’s diary:

“Today the Lord said to me, ‘Daughter, when you go to confession, to this fountain of My mercy, the Blood and Water which came forth from My Heart always flows down upon your soul and ennobles it.  Every time you go to confession, immerse yourself entirely in My mercy, with great trust, so that I may pour the bounty of My grace upon your soul.  When you approach the confessional, know this, that I Myself am waiting there for you.  I am only hidden by the priest, but I Myself act in your soul.  Here the misery of the soul meets the God of Mercy.  Tell souls that from this fount of mercy souls draw graces solely with the vessel of trust.  If their trust is great, there is no limit to My generosity.  The torrent of grace inundate humble souls.”