"The mercy of God is poured out upon us, making us just
and giving us peace. This is a time for the Church to
rediscover the meaning of the mission entrusted to her by the
Lord on the day of Easter: to be a sign and an instrument of
the Father's mercy." - Pope Francis
The pope has announced a
Jubilee Year of Mercy to encourage the faithful to
"welcome the numerous signs of the tenderness which God
offers to the whole world." He said that these signs of God's
tenderness are especially offered to the suffering, the
alone, the abandoned and those "without hope of being
pardoned or feeling the Father's love."
A Jubilee Year holds special significance in Catholic
tradition as a time of joy, remission or universal pardon.
The "year" will begin Dec. 8, 2015, the solemnity of the
Immaculate Conception, and conclude on the feast of Christ
the King, Nov. 20, 2016. About a year intended to be a
deliberate and joyous celebration of mercy, the pope has said
he is "convinced that the whole church will find in this
jubilee the joy needed to rediscover and make fruitful the
mercy of God, with which all of us are called to give
consolation to every man and woman of our time."
That's a lofty goal - to extend mercy to every man and woman.
We begin at home, because often it is most difficult to
extend genuine mercy within our four walls. As families, we
have the opportunity to live mercy intentionally in the
domestic church. For us, this year of jubilee is an
opportunity to bind wounds and extend pardon in the intimate
corners of our homes and then in the communities outside our
front doors and beyond. Now is the time to better understand
mercy in order to fully appreciate and truly live the Year of
Mercy.
Often, as parents, we see sin in our children as the
opportunity to impart justice. This is just part of the
picture. God actually calls us "to act justly and to love
mercy and to walk humbly with your God" (Mic 6:8). The
occasion of a Jubilee Year focused intently on mercy will
give all of us a chance to refine those movements of justice
and mercy. If we can live mercy at home, we can extend mercy
in the world. Further, we raise children who know mercy well
and who are ambassadors of mercy from a place of intimate
understanding.
We begin to prepare for the jubilee by listening closely as
the Holy Father reminds us that now is "the favorable time to
heal wounds, a time not to be weary of meeting all those who
are waiting to see and to touch with their hands the signs of
the closeness of God, a time to offer everyone the way of
forgiveness and reconciliation." When we consider sin a
wound, everything changes. We allow ourselves to be moved to
alleviate the suffering of the sinner; it's a paradigm shift.
This is to be the year of kindhearted justice. Let us begin
to know it well.
To be truly just and truly merciful at once is to be kind and
to act with genuine goodness. It's an emotional response, to
be sure, a sense of empathy, but we are required to offer so
much more than empathy. We are required to make a decision to
care, to be compassionate, to love with self-sacrifice. Then
we are required to do something. We must act on that
compassion. We have to respond with genuine effort. It's a
simple thing to call a wrong a wrong. It's a simple thing to
point out someone's faults or failings. We are a people who
have been shown God's goodness; we are required to do more.
We are called to act justly and love mercy.
Remember: Every person's shortcoming causes him or her
suffering. It is a wound. Jesus came to tenderly dress the
wounds and to heal the suffering of the sinner. Father
Michael Gaitley writes, "Mercy is love when it encounters
suffering. More specifically, it is two movements that take
place within us when we see someone (or something) suffer.
The first is an emotional movement, a movement of compassion
that we feel in our hearts or even, when the suffering is
particularly intense, deep in our guts. The second is a
movement of action. In other words, as we see someone
suffering and feel compassion for him, we soon find ourselves
reaching out to alleviate his suffering. In sum: Mercy is
love that feels compassion for those who suffer (heart) and
reaches to help them (arm)."
Merciful justice requires us to feel and to alleviate
someone's suffering. That's a very different concept from the
one of judging, scolding, punishing and humiliating. Finally,
we are called to walk humbly with our God. In our humility,
we are not quick to condemn our neighbor. We recognize our
own sinfulness. We recognize that we are nothing without Him
and that we are limited in our own capacity to understand
another person. We respond with genuine humility when we are
gentle, allow ourselves to be infused with the kindness,
goodness, and mercy of Our Lord and become ministers of that
mercy to everyone we meet.
Can you imagine a moment in time when every person in the
universal church is acting with the mercy of Jesus?
It's going to be a very good year.
Foss, whose website is elizabethfoss.com, is a
freelance writer from Northern Virginia.