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Christ, the Model of Mercy

Presentation by Fr. David Pignato at the Diocese of Arlington
Men’s Conference, Jubilee Year of Mercy, March 5, 2016.

1. Focus on God’s Mercy

During this Jubilee Year of Mercy, we are all encouraged to
contemplate the mystery of God’s mercy (cf. Francis,
Misericordiae Vultus, 1). Pope Francis hopes that the Church
will experience a spiritual renewal by focusing on the
infinite mercy of God. He wants us to have a renewed
appreciation for God’s mercy, which “endures forever” (Ps
136) and which “knows no bounds” (MV, 22). God’s mercy, Pope
Francis says, “will always be greater than any sin, and no
one can place limits on the love of God who is ever ready to
forgive” (MV, 3).

The mercy of God is like a spring of water that rises up from
the depths of God’s being. “From the heart of the Trinity,
from the depths of the mystery of God, the great river of
mercy wells up and overflows unceasingly. It is a spring that
will never run dry, no matter how many people draw from it.
Every time someone is in need, he or she can approach it,
because the mercy of God never ends” (MV, 25). God, St. Paul
says, is “rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4), and His mercy is
inexhaustible – it is always there in abundance, and it is
always offered to those who need it.

One of the reasons for focusing on God’s mercy is the sad
fact that in many places in the world today, mercy is a
forgotten virtue, and sometimes it’s even disdained or
scorned. Pope Francis has observed with sorrow that “the
practice of mercy is waning in the wider culture. “In some
cases,” he says, “the word seems to have dropped out of use”
(MV, 10). Pope St. John Paul II made the same sad observation
years ago. He said, “The present-day mentality … seems
opposed to a God of mercy, and in fact tends to exclude from
life and to remove from the human heart the very idea of
mercy. The word and the concept of ‘mercy’ seem to cause
uneasiness in man …” (MV, 11, quoting Dives in
Misericordia (1980), 2).

So, modern man is uncomfortable, or uneasy, with the idea of
mercy. But, why? Why is modern man so uneasy about the idea
of mercy? Is this uneasiness a sign of a guilty conscience?
Are men troubled about mercy, because it reminds them of
their sins? Because they know that they need mercy, but don’t
want to ask for it? Or, perhaps mercy is seen as a sign of
weakness? Perhaps the idea of mercy from God reminds us that
we should show mercy to others. And, then, we become afraid
that if we are merciful to others, we might become vulnerable
and be taken advantage of – that others will somehow gain or
benefit, while we suffer or lose.

Whatever the reason, it does seem that people don’t value
mercy anymore. They don’t think it’s important or necessary.
They don’t think they need it, and they don’t think they need
to give it. In fact, many look down on mercy as a quality of
the weak. They think it’s impractical and too risky, maybe
even dangerous.

I’m sorry to say that there are even some in the Church who
have lost their appreciation of God’s mercy. During the
discussions at the synod in Rome last fall, even an
archbishop told a reporter, “Mercy is an important word for
me, but in one way or another it is still somewhat
condescending. I like to take words like respect and esteem
for man as my starting point. And that may be a value that
we, as Christians, share with [the] prevailing culture.”1
Even in the Church, the modern day mentality has begun to
make some think that mercy is somehow insulting, that it
somehow fails to respect our enlightened notions of freedom.

At the same time, some modern men think that they are even
more merciful, because they are so tolerant. But, I hope I
don’t have to convince you that the modern trend of
relativism and tolerance is not mercy. Our modern culture
brags about being tolerant of many things, including some
things that are objectively evil, but this is not mercy.
Societal acceptance of sin and evil is a very different thing
than true mercy. In fact, it’s false mercy, because it denies
the very need for mercy. Modern notions of relativism and
tolerance say that nothing is really wrong or sinful, that
there’s nothing to forgive, and so there’s really no need for
mercy. But there’s nothing merciful about such ideas of
tolerance. So, we have to be on guard about letting others
make us think that tolerance of evil is somehow the same as
mercy.

And we need to do what we can to help our culture and our
society value mercy again. We need to make mercy attractive
and appealing again. We need to remind others how inspiring
mercy is, when we see it and experience it. It’s only a very
cold-hearted person who is not moved by scenes of true mercy.

1 Archbishop Jozef De Kesel, of Mechelen-Brussels, Belgium.

In the popular novel and musical Les Miserables, there’s a
great scene of mercy, when the freed convict Jean Valjean
breaks his parole and is arrested for stealing silver from
the bishop who gave him shelter the night before. When the
police bring Valjean before the bishop, the saintly bishop
pretends that he gave the silver to Valjean, and he gives him
two silver candlesticks, as well, asking why he forgot to
take them with him. After the police leave in shock, the
saintly bishop says to Valjean, “My brother, you no longer
belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from
you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of
perdition, and I give it to God.”

When we witness mercy, or even better, when we receive it, we
sense the presence of goodness in the world, and we feel that
the world has become a better place. That’s because what we
are sensing is the presence of God in the world. Mercy, St.
John Paul II said, is “the most stupendous attribute of the
Creator and of the Redeemer” (DM, 13). So, when we encounter
mercy, we encounter God. And that means that acts of mercy
make the world a holier place.

One of the great reminders to the world of God’s mercy took
place at the end of the 17th century when Christ appeared to
a young religious sister, named Margaret Mary Alacoque, in
France. Her spiritual director, Fr. Claude de la Colombiere,
told her to ask Christ during His next apparition what were
the sins of her last confession, to see if it was truly
Christ appearing to her. The next time she saw Christ, St.
Margaret Mary said, “Lord, please tell me, what were the sins
of my last confession.” And Christ said to her, “I can’t. I
forgot.” And when she reported this answer to her spiritual
director, he knew for sure that it was Our Lord who was
appearing to her. What followed was the revelation to St.
Margaret Mary of the Sacred Heart, which is overflowing with
love and mercy for sinners. As we pray in the Psalms, “As far
as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our sins”
(Ps 103:12). This is the mercy of God: when He forgives our
sins, He blots them out and holds them against us no more.

But the real mystery of God’s mercy is that it is infinite
and inexhaustible. And it is always available. “God is always
ready to forgive, and he never tires of forgiving” (MV, 22),
even though we may get tired of asking for His mercy. “For my
thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,”
says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts higher than
your thoughts” (Is 55:8-9). Although we might get tired of
asking for or showing mercy, God never tires of offering it
to us.

God’s mercy may be difficult for us to understand, because it
is so different from what we typically find in ourselves. But
the world needs to rediscover the mystery of God’s mercy,
because without God’s mercy, “life becomes fruitless and
sterile” (MV, 10); it becomes cold and harsh, and the world
becomes a darker place. So, during this Jubilee Year of
Mercy, we hope and pray that our own contemplation of God’s
mercy will help the world rediscover this great mystery.

2. Focus on Sin, Repentance and Conversion

It is not possible, however, and it is not right, for us to
contemplate God’s mercy, without also contemplating our sins.
It’s not even logical to think of God’s mercy, without also
thinking of our sins, because there’s no need for mercy, if
there’s no sin. Mercy is God’s response and cure for sin.
Mercy is God’s desired response to misery. It’s how He offers
to rescue a soul from self-destruction. So, we really can’t
appreciate and value God’s mercy, if we don’t also think of
our need for it, which is caused by our sins. It just doesn’t
make sense to focus on mercy, without also focusing on sin.

It’s also dangerous to talk about mercy without talking about
the need for conversion. It’s true that God’s mercy is always
there for the asking, and it’s always infinite in supply, but
it’s also true that it’s our repentance and conversion that
unlocks and unleashes God’s mercy and makes it available to
us. Repentance is the proper attitude and disposition that is
needed to approach the topic of God’s mercy. To do otherwise
would be to risk the sin of presumption, by taking God’s
mercy for granted. And for this reason, I’ve heard more than
a few priests say that they think we needed a “Year of
Repentance,” before this Year of Mercy!

I would go even further and say that there are other risks
involved, if we try to think or talk about God’s mercy,
without emphasizing the need for us to ask and beg for it. If
we talk about mercy without talking about conversion, we risk
denying the truth about our very existence as free beings. If
God’s mercy is something we receive and benefit from, without
any movement on our part, then we become something less than
free beings whose actions have real consequences. We start to
look more like robots or puppets who receive a mercy that
doesn’t really change anything about us. Those who trust in
God’s mercy without thinking that they need to repent don’t
even understand who and what they are.

You see, no message of mercy without our need to ask for it
is truly satisfying, because it denies the basic truth of
what and who we are as free moral agents. Mercy without
conversion denies the truth of our free will. And so, any
notion of God’s mercy without the need for conversion is
ultimately insulting. And it starts to look more and more
like the modern notion of tolerance and relativism, which
ultimately denies the need for mercy at all. Mercy is not
insulting, but denying the role of our freedom in asking for
it is.

As Christians, we can never forget the great truth and
mystery of our free will. Human freedom, Pope Benedict XVI
said, is “God’s great gamble,”2 and the “Christian faith
always reckons with [what he calls] the freedom factor.”3 In
other words, we cannot allow ourselves to think of God’s
mercy without also thinking of our freedom. Our freedom is
always somehow part of the mystery of God’s mercy.

And this means that the message of conversion and repentance
must always be part of the message of mercy. Our Lord knew
this. He came to bring God’s mercy to the world – to redeem
the world by making possible the forgiveness of sins. But He
started His work of redemption with the message of
conversion. The very first words of Christ reported in St.
Mark’s Gospel are, “This is the time of fulfillment. The
kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel”
(Mk 1:14). The need for repentance was the opening line in
Christ’s message of mercy.

And the importance of repentance was a major theme in
Christ’s preaching. For example, He told the parable of the
Pharisee and the tax collector to show us how to approach God
properly, with sorrow for our sins.

Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a
Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took
up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘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.’

But 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 tell you, the latter
went home justified, not the former; for

2 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, God and the World (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 55.

3 Ratzinger, God and the World, 58.

everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who
humbles himself will be exalted (Lk 18:10-14).

Honesty about our sins, and using our freedom to express true
sorrow for them, is the only way to approach God’s mercy.

The same lesson was taught in the Psalms, which we pray as a
Church every

Friday in Morning Prayer (Ps 51:3-6):

Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness. In your compassion
blot out my offense.

O wash me more and more from my guilt and cleanse me from my
sin.

My offenses truly I know them;

my sin is always before me.

Against you, you alone, have I sinned;

what is evil in your sight I have done.

This type of repentance requires honesty and humility, to
admit the truth about our lives – including the darker truths
about our sins – so that we can recognize our real need for
God’s mercy. And to see our lives clearly, we need to measure
them against the ideal of perfection found in Christ. Christ,
Vatican II said, is not only true man, He is also the
“perfect man.” And, “[w]hoever follows after Christ, the
perfect man, becomes himself more of a man” (GS, 41). Pope
John Paul II said that Christ is “the perfect realization of
human existence” (Fides et Ratio, 80), and that “Jesus Christ
is the answer to the question posed by every human life.”4 In
other words, Christ reveals the mystery, the meaning and the
purpose of our lives.

And so, Christ is the standard by which we should measure our
lives, even though we know that we can never perfectly
measure up to Him. He is the ideal of perfection for which we
strive. He is the model for all men who strive to grow in
holiness and to discover the more abundant life that Christ
came to bring us (cf. Jn

10:10). And, He is always calling us to persevere in the
lifelong project of conversion.

4 John Paul II, Homily at the Mass in Orioles Park, October
8, 1995.

It may be that our modern society and culture have also lost
an appreciation and respect for conversion. So, we have to do
what we can to remind people just how beautiful the
conversion of a soul is. An experience of conversion is just
as beautiful and attractive and inspiring as an experience of
mercy. Think of any scene of conversion you may have seen in
a movie, or read in a novel; for example, the conversion of
Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
Conversion scenes are very moving. When we watch one, or
better yet, when we experience one in ourselves or in others,
we feel again that some great goodness has burst into the
world, that some great goodness has been restored to the
world, and that the world is suddenly a better place. And
converts, like Mary Magdalen or St. Paul, or St. Augustine,
remind us that goodness and truth can triumph over sin and
evil. They remind us that sin and misery and ruin do not need
to be the end of the story, and that the world always becomes
a better place, when a soul turns back to God.

Forgive me for the spoiler, but I hope that most who are
interested have already seen the new Star Wars movie. When
Han Solo meets his son Kylo Ren on the bridge and begs him to
leave the evil First Order and come home, wasn’t there a
brief moment of great excitement about the possibility of a
dramatic conversion, one that would have signaled a great
triumph of good over evil? You see, when a soul converts and
turns way from evil and sin, and turns back to goodness and
truth, love wins and evil loses ground in the world.

And it is part of our hope for this Year of Mercy that
countless souls will repent of their sins and turn back to
God, so that His infinite mercy will rain down from Heaven,
and so that they can discover the more abundant life that
Christ came to bring us. This is our great hope for the Year
of Mercy.

3. Requirement to Be Merciful

There is another requirement, however, for those who hope to
receive God’s mercy. Sincere conversion is absolutely
necessary, but it is not enough, according to the teaching of
Christ. Christ made it very clear that if we want to receive
mercy from God, we must show mercy to others. He did not
mince words when it came to this important lesson. He said,
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. …
Forgive and you will be forgiven” (Lk 6:36-37); “If you
forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father
will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither
will your Father forgive your transgressions” (Mt 6:14-15);
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Mt
5:7).

And, in case we missed the point from His straightforward
words, He told the shocking parable of the unforgiving
servant, to get our attention to this great truth.

The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to
settle accounts with his servants. When he began the
accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a
huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his
master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his
children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. At
that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be
patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ Moved with
compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave
him the loan.

When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow
servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him
and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’
Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be
patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused.
Instead, he had him put in prison until he paid back the
debt.

Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were
deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the
whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You
wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you
begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow
servant, as I had pity on you?’ Then in anger his master
handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the
whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each
of you forgives his brother from his heart (Mt 18:23-35).

This parable shocks us when we hear it. We find it almost
unimaginable that someone who received so much mercy could
then so quickly hesitate to show mercy to others. We resent
the unforgiving servant, as someone who is cold- hearted and
cruel. But should we be so shocked by this parable? Don’t
most of us have the same reluctance to forgive at times? Our
Lord knew we do, which is why He told the parable. As St.
John said, Christ “did not need anyone to testify about human
nature. He himself understood it well” (Jn 2:25). Christ knew
that one of the effects of the Fall is that we hesitate to
forgive, even after we have begged God to forgive our sins.
If ever we leave the confessional, and then refuse to forgive
another person, we are just as bad as the wicked, unforgiving
servant, and we will not be forgiven by God. Knowing that
might help to motivate us to forgive.

The simple truth is that showing mercy to others is a
condition for asking for God’s mercy for ourselves. Being
merciful is a criterion and a requirement of a true Christian
(cf. MV, 9). Forgiving others, Pope Francis says, “is an
imperative from which we cannot excuse ourselves” (MV, 9). No
one can call himself a Christian, if he does not show mercy
to others. “In short,” Pope Francis says, “we are called to
show mercy because mercy has first been shown to us” (MV, 9).

Many people say that we men are pretty good at forgiving.
They say that we forgive and forget a lot more easily than
women. They say that we let things go pretty quickly. But
others say that women are much better at forgiving and
showing mercy, because mercy requires compassion, and we men
don’t always do so well in the compassion business. From my
own experience, as a man and as a priest, there seems to be
pretty good evidence that we men also hesitate to forgive at
times. We fear that we’ll lose something, maybe some leverage
over the other person, if we just let go and forgive. We
prefer to hold on to the offense. We prefer to hold the
grudge, maybe because we get some unholy pleasure from it.

But we must never forget the words of Christ to St. Peter,
when Peter asked Him,

“Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I
forgive him? As many as seven times?” And Jesus answered, “I
say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times” (Mt
18:21-22). If God’s mercy is infinite, so should be ours. If
God’s mercy is endless and endures forever, so should ours.

So, we need to remind the world of the importance of mercy;
we need to remind the world of the importance of conversion;
and we need to show the world how to show mercy to others.
And a lot is at stake; because if we talk about God’s mercy
without talking about sin, or if we talk about mercy without
emphasizing conversion, or if we talk about God’s mercy
without being merciful to others, well, then, the message of
mercy will be distorted, people will fail to rediscover the
mystery of God’s mercy, and the great hopes of this Year of
Mercy will be in vain. Many great things could happen in the
Church during this Year of Mercy, but it’s also possible that
nothing great will happen, if the Church presents a false or
inaccurate message of what God’s mercy is.

4. Imitation of Christ, the Model of Mercy

And when we go about showing mercy to others, we need to take
our cue from Christ, who is always the model for us, in
everything. He taught us how to live, and He taught us how to
show mercy. Christ said, “This is my commandment: love one
another as I love you” (Jn 15:12).5 And, one way we love
others as Christ did is by showing them mercy. Christ wants
us to love as He loves, and He wants us to show mercy to
others as He showed mercy. So, we have to look carefully at
how Christ showed mercy. He is the model of mercy for us,
because He is the “perfect man” (GS, 22). Pope Francis says
that the motto of this Holy Year is “Merciful like the
Father” (MV, 14), and that “Jesus is the face of the Father’s
mercy” (MV, 1). So, this means that we must be merciful as
Christ was merciful.

And again, a lot is at stake in how we men show mercy to
others. If we do it right, after the model of Christ, people
will think again about their need for mercy. But if we don’t
get it right, if we show mercy in a way different than Christ
did, we will send misleading signals, and people will not
understand the mystery of God’s mercy or their need for it.

When Christ was merciful, He was full of compassion. Pope
Francis says that when Jesus encountered others, He always
had a “merciful gaze” that was full of compassion, especially
for sinners, for the poor, the sick and the suffering (MV,
8). He “read the hearts of those He encountered and responded
to their deepest need” (MV, 8). When He looked out at the
crowds who followed Him and saw that they were “troubled and
abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd,” “his heart was
moved with pity for them” (Mt 9:36). When He saw that the
crowds of the poor were hungry, He performed a miracle to
feed them (cf. Mt 15:32-38). And when He saw the widow of
Nain taking her only son out for burial, He felt compassion
for her and raised her son from the dead (cf. Lk 7:11-15).

Perhaps the greatest example of Christ’s compassionate mercy
is when He looked down from the Cross at those who were
killing Him, and said, “Father, forgive them, they know not
what they do” (Lk 23:34). And when the repentant thief dying
on the cross next to Him said, “Jesus, remember me when you
come into your kingdom,” Jesus replied to him, “Amen, I say
to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23:42-43).

5 See also Jn 13:34: “As I have loved you, so you also should
love one another.”

Christ’s heart was full of compassion. He imagined what other
people were feeling, and He suffered with them. We men have
to be careful about thinking that there is something unmanly
or unmasculine about compassion. Perhaps we think that mercy
is a more womanly virtue, because women are better at showing
compassion. But, we should be careful. Christ is the perfect
man, and He showed a mercy that was full of compassion. He
showed us how a manly heart can be full of compassion. And He
taught us that mercy is a sign of God’s power (cf. MV, 6). It
is not a sign of weakness, as some might think.

And Christ also taught us that any show of mercy must also
affirm the need of it, by recognizing the reality of sin that
is blotted out by mercy. His compassion was always coupled
with a firmness that reminded others of the truth about sin.

For example, before He healed the paralytic man who was
lowered through the roof, He first said to him, “Your sins
are forgiven” (Mk 2:5). And after He healed the sick man at
the pool of Bethesda, He said to him, “Look, you are well; do
not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you”
(Jn 5:14). When He saved the woman caught in adultery, He
said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned
you?” And when she replied, “No one, sir,” Jesus said,
“Neither do I condemn you. Go, from now on do not sin any
more” (Jn 8:10-11).

The lesson here is that the purpose of mercy is to call a
person back from sin, to help a person find the better, more
abundant life that Christ came to bring

us. Acts of mercy should never be content to leave a person
in sin. Our Lord came first and foremost to rescue us from
sin.6 He cared about our earthly lives, for sure, but He
cared much more about our souls and their eternal destiny.
His acts of mercy were always meant to steer us away from sin
and back to the good life with God. He did not hesitate to
show a certain firmness when dealing with sin. In fact, the
Gospel tells us that He was often angered by the attitude of
the Pharisees and He “grieved at their hardness of heart” (Mk
3:5).

This is important, because Christ is the model of mercy. He
is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15) and the
“perfect man” (GS, 22). And when He showed mercy, He always
did it in a way that recognized the truth about sin, the
truth about our freedom, and the need for conversion. He
always emphasized that

6 See 1Tim 1:15: “This saying is trustworthy and deserves
full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners.”

there is a need for a movement on our part, because we are
not puppets or robots, who are doused with God’s mercy, even
if we don’t want it.

I think every father knows the importance of showing this
same firmness when being merciful. Fathers know that if they
show mercy to their children without emphasizing the need for
it, their children will take it for granted. They won’t
appreciate the gift of mercy, and most likely their behavior
won’t change.

A great example of Christ-like mercy is found in the movie
Cinderella Man, with Russell Crowe. Hopefully, many of you
have seen it. The movie is based on the true story of the
champion boxer James Braddock, who was a Catholic, and who
struggled to support his family during the Great Depression.
It’s full of

scenes which show the sacrifices that a good father makes for
his children. In one very powerful scene, Braddock comes home
from looking for work to find out that one of his young sons
has stolen a stick of salami from the local butcher.

Braddock very firmly orders his son to bring the salami back
to the butcher, and Braddock goes with him to make sure he
confesses and apologizes. As they’re leaving the butcher’s
shop, the boy explains that he stole the salami, because he
was afraid he would be sent away, like some of his friends
were, if his family didn’t have enough money to buy food.

Braddock stops his son on the sidewalk, leans down to him and
says, “Just cuz things ain’t easy, that don’t give you the
excuse to take what’s not yours, now does it? That’s
stealing, right? And we don’t steal. No matter what happens,
we don’t steal. Not ever. You got me?” He then makes his son
promise that he will never steal again. “And I promise you,”
Braddock tells his son, “we will never send you away.” When
the boy starts to cry, Braddock picks him up in a big
fatherly hug and says, “It’s ok, kid. You got a little
scared. I understand.” And he carries him home in his arms.

Christ-like mercy is manly, fatherly mercy, because “Christ
is the face of [God] the Father’s mercy” (MV, 1). And
fatherly mercy is expressed with compassion, but also a
certain firmness that recognizes the reality of sin, the
truth of our freedom, and the need for conversion. Christ is
the model of mercy for us, and so when we show mercy, we need
to imitate Christ, so that the world, beginning with our
families and friends, will experience the truth of God’s
mercy, and not some distorted version of it. Only real mercy
is satisfying. False versions of it are insulting, because
they deny our freedom and our need for conversion.

As Christian men, when we try to show mercy to others, we
need to imitate Christ’s compassion and His selfless
willingness to bear with and endure the faults of others. We
can never over-react to the sins and faults of others, and we
need to be joyful when we offer forgiveness to others. But we
also need to affirm the truth about sin and conversion,
without which mercy is pointless and unnecessary. As
Archbishop Chaput has said, “The Church can be truthful
without being merciful, …. But the Church cannot be
merciful without being truthful. And the truth is, we are
called to conversion.”7 Any version of mercy that denies the
truth about sin and our freedom utterly fails to satisfy,
because it does not reflect the reality of who and what we
are. And it would never make a difference in the world.

Christ is true God and true man. He is the model of mercy.
Just as our love for others can never contradict our love for
Christ, so must our efforts at showing mercy always reflect
our love for Christ and our obligation to imitate Him. This
is the challenge for us men during the Year of Mercy. And a
lot is at stake in whether we get it right.

7 Charles J. Chaput, “A Jubilee Year of Mercy,” First Things
(December 2015).

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