by Leela Ramdeen, Chair, CCSJ and Director, CREDI
The CCSJ welcomes Pope Francis’ declaration on March 13 – the second anniversary of his pontificate – of a “Jubilee Year of Mercy”. This “extraordinary Holy Year” will commence with the opening of the Holy Door in St Peter’s on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, and will conclude on November 20, 2016 – the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.
You may recall that I ended last week’s article by praying that God will help me to be more merciful – this was after I was burgled and was feeling angry/frustrated because of my loss. One of my friends, who tried to console me, sent me a link to the old song: “I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold.” If we are to be led by “His nail-pierced hand”; if we recognise that He is all that our “hungering” spirits need, then we must learn to be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful (Luke 6:36).
You will recall Pope Francis’ plea in his 2015 Lenten Message: “How greatly I desire that all those places where the Church is present, especially our parishes and our communities, may become islands of mercy in the midst of the sea of indifference!”
This plea should resonate with us since we are people of the Beatitudes. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ 5th Beatitude states: “Blessed are the merciful; they shall have mercy shown them” (Mt 5:7). God has shown us mercy by sending his only Son, Jesus, to save us. “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:5). And Psalm 103:17 reminds us that: “The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.”
The Old Testament highlights what a Jubilee Year means in the Hebrew tradition. The Vatican document “What is a Holy Year” tells us: “It is a year of forgiveness of sins and also the punishment due to sin, it is a year of reconciliation between adversaries, of conversion and receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and consequently of solidarity, hope, justice, commitment to serve God with joy and in peace with our brothers and sisters. A Jubilee year is above all the year of Christ, who brings life and grace to humanity.”
St Thomas Aquinas defined the virtue of “mercy” as “the compassion in our hearts for another person’s misery, a compassion which drives us to do what we can to help him” (Summa Theologiae).
Sadly, as John Ritenbaugh states: “Mercy is not a quality we expect to see much these days. Instead, our eyes, ears and emotions are assaulted daily, even hourly in the case of radio and TV news items, by violence, injustice, willful stubbornness, intransigence, bigotry, scams, prejudice and intolerance…We need to remind ourselves from time to time that the Beatitudes represent signs of those who are truly Christ’s disciples…
“The world from which we have all come…is unmerciful. The world prefers to insulate itself against the pains and calamities of others. It finds revenge delicious and forgiveness tame and unsatisfying…Recognising God’s mercy is a key element in motivating our expressions of mercy…God is our model of mercy, and we are to reflect His mercy in our actions toward fellow man and woman.”
Robert Moynihan’s insight is noteworthy: “What Pope Francis is doing by calling for this Jubilee Year of Mercy is to offer to all Christians the blessing of obtaining mercy by having and showing mercy to others.”
I end with the words of Pope Francis who urged us, on New Year’s Day 2015, to recognise that: “This is the time of mercy. It is important that the lay faithful live it and bring it into different social environments. Go forth!”
