by Joe Cady
In the first reading today, the prophet Isaiah invites us to “turn to the Lord to find mercy; to our God, who is generous in forgiving” (Is 55:7). And in the Gospel reading, we hear of a landowner who goes beyond the demands of justice and generously shares his wealth with those who are called to work in his fields. In each of these readings, the Holy Spirit is reminding us of a central truth of Christianity: that our God is a God of abundant, generous love. God IS love. He doesn’t just have love or show love… he IS love! Love is the core of who God is. And his desire is, and has always been, for us to experience and participate in that love. “For this reason,” the Catechism says, “at every time and in every place, God draws close to man” (CCC 1).
The Biblical language most often used to express God’s love is mercy. In the Psalms, King David proclaims, “Merciful and gracious is the Lord, slow to anger and abounding in mercy” (Ps 103:8), and in the book of Sirach we read, “How great is the mercy of the Lord, and his forgiveness for those who return to him!” (Sir 17:29). But here is the amazing thing… we aren’t just told that God is merciful, God doesn’t just tell us that he loves us… he shows us! In the coming of his own Son, Jesus Christ, God demonstrates his great love for us. As St. John says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). And as St. Paul says, “God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ” (Eph 2:4-5).
Jesus is ultimately the mercy of God incarnate. Again, in the words of John Paul II, in Christ “God becomes visible is a particular way as the Father who is rich in mercy” (Dives in Misericordia, 2). In the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the mercy of God becomes visible in a unique and unprecedented way. However, Jesus Christ isn’t the beginning of God’s mercy, but the full manifestation of it. In the Magnificat, Mary’s great prayer of praise after visiting her cousin Elizabeth, the Blessed Mother says of God, “He has mercy from age to age” (or “from generation to generation”). God’s mercy has been present and active throughout all of salvation history. In fact, you could say that salvation history itself is the history of God revealing to us his great mercy, a revelation that reaches its pinnacle in Jesus Christ, who John Paul II says is the final confirmation of the truth that God is truly “rich in mercy”.
The Catechism defines mercy as “The loving kindness, compassion, or forbearance shown to one who offends” (CCC Glossary). Mercy, therefore, has a few different dimensions to it:
(1) Kindness
Mercy means graciously seeking the good of another. When you are kind you seek to care for someone not because they have earned it, but because of your desire for their good. Kindness is not motivated by the goodness of the recipient, but the goodness of the giver.
(2) Compassion
The literal meaning of compassion is “to suffer with”. Compassion is seeing the suffering of others, entering into it, and doing what you can to alleviate it.
(3) Forbearance
Forbearance is patience and forgiveness in the face of some offense. It means releasing your claim on what is owed or refraining from demanding the payment of a debt.
I think God’s mercy, revealed in Jesus Christ, reflects each of these aspects:
(1) God is kind to us in the sense that all he does for us is motivated not by our goodness but by HIS. You see, God is goodness itself. And as St. Thomas Aquinas said, it is of the very nature of goodness to want to share itself. This is why we exist. God had no other purpose in mind in creating us than to enable us to share in his own life, goodness, and love. It is by God’s gracious will that we “live, and move, and have our being”. God, as a loving Father, wants only what is good for us. And he showers us with his goodness out of the deep love he has for us.
(2) God shows his compassion for in the incarnation of his Son. In Christ, God enters into human history and literally “suffers with” us. Jesus takes on our humanity, with all its frailty and limitations, and displays his compassion in his willingness to come into this world as a little baby, born of poor parents in a relatively insignificant part of the world. He shows his compassion in his willingness to stand in line with those being baptized in the Jordan river, and ultimately, in his willingness to enter into death in order to free us from it.
(3) God shows his forbearance at every stage of human history. Our sin, by its very nature, distances us from God. And there is nothing that obligates God to show us mercy. Yet, even when we sin, God continually works within us to draw us back to himself. This is the entire story of the Old Testament, which shouldn't be read as a story of man’s fidelity to God, but of God’s fidelity to man.
God is rich in mercy from generation to generation. And I think convincing us of this has been his primary aim throughout all of history. But we’ve had a problem from the beginning… trust. This was the problem of our first parents. Instead of seeing God’s command to “not eat from the tree of knowledge” as a sign of God’s love and protection, they saw it as a hindrance to their freedom and an obstacle to their happiness. And as a result, they “Let their trust in their Creator die in their heart” (CCC 397). And this lack of trust has remained the fundamental problem for us ever since. In fact, the Catechism says that “every subsequent sin” (think about that, every sin throughout history) is not only disobedience to God’s law, but “a lack of trust in God’s goodness.” But ever since this first sin of humanity, God has been reaching out to us, to remind us that he is a God of life and love, and that, as St. Paul says, “nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39).
Today we are invited to remember the centrality of God’s love. A love that is generous, a love that goes beyond saying “what do I have to give” and instead says “how can I give the most of myself”, a love that has the power to heal, to transform, and to give hope. The invitation to mercy is always there, but it’s up to us to respond; it’s up to us to “seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their way, and sinner their thoughts; let them turn to the Lord to find mercy; to our God who is generous in forgiving” (Is 55:6-7).