The Name of God Is Mercy (7 page)

I used to carry a pastoral staff made of olive wood that was created in a woodworking shop that is part of a rehabilitation project for prisoners and recovering drug addicts. I know of several positive work initiatives that take place within prisons. Divine mercy contaminates humanity. Jesus was God but he was also a man, and we see human mercy in his person. When there is mercy, justice is more just, and it fulfills its true essence. This does not mean that we should throw open the doors of the prisons and let those who have committed serious crimes loose. It means that we have to help those who have fallen to get back up. It is difficult to put this into practice, and sometimes we prefer to shut a person in prison for his whole life rather than trying to rehabilitate him and helping him find his place in society.

God forgives everyone, he offers new possibilities to everyone, he showers his mercy on everyone who asks for it. We are the ones who do not know how to forgive.

D
URING
one of your daily homilies at Saint Martha’s House you said, “Sinners yes, corrupt no!” What difference is there between sin and corruption?

Corruption is the sin which, rather than being recognized as such and making us humble, is elevated to a system, it becomes a mental habit, a way of living. We no longer feel the need for forgiveness and mercy, but we justify ourselves and our behaviors. Jesus says to his disciples: Even if your brother offends you seven times a day and seven times a day he returns to you to ask for forgiveness, forgive him. The repentant sinner, who sins again and again because of his weakness, will find forgiveness if he acknowledges his need for mercy. The corrupt man is the one who sins but does not repent, who sins and pretends to be Christian, and it is this double life that is scandalous.

The corrupt man does not know humility, he does not consider himself in need of help, he leads a double life. In 1991, I addressed this theme in a long article that was published as a small book called
Corrupción y pecado
(in the English version:
The Way of Humility: Corruption and Sin
). We must not accept the state of corruption
as if it were just another sin: even though corruption is often identified with sin, in fact they are two distinct realities, albeit interconnected. Sin, especially if repeated, can lead to corruption, not quantitatively—in the sense that a certain number of sins makes a person corrupt—but rather qualitatively: habits are formed that limit one’s capacity for love and create a false sense of self-sufficiency. The corrupt man tires of asking for forgiveness and ends up believing that he doesn’t need to ask for it anymore. We don’t become corrupt people overnight, it is a long, slippery slope that cannot be identified simply as a series of sins. One may be a great sinner and never fall into corruption. Looking at the Gospels, I think for example of the figures of Zacchaeus, of Matthew, of the Samaritan women, of Nicodemus, and of the good thief: their sinful hearts all had something that saved them from corruption. They were open to forgiveness, their hearts felt their own weakness, and that small opening allowed the strength of God to enter. When a sinner recognizes himself as such, he admits in some way that what he was attached to, or clings to, is false. The corrupt man hides what he considers
his true treasure, but which really makes him a slave and masks his vice with good manners, always managing to keep up appearances.

E
VEN
more than sin, corruption has social implications: all you have to do is read the stories in the newspapers….

Corruption is not an act but a condition, a personal and social state in which we become accustomed to living. The corrupt man is so closed off and contented in the complacency of his self-sufficiency that he does not allow himself to be called into question by anything or anyone. The self-confidence he has built up is based on a fraudulent behavior: he spends his life taking opportunistic shortcuts at the cost of his own and others’ dignity. The corrupt man always has the gall to say: “It wasn’t me!”—my grandmother would have said that “butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.” The corrupt man gets angry because his wallet is stolen and so he complains about the lack of safety on the streets, but then he is the one who cheats the state by evading taxes, or else he fires his
employees every three months so he doesn’t have to hire them with a permanent contract, or else he has them work off the books. And then he boasts to his friends about his cunning ways. He is the one who goes to Mass every Sunday but has no problem using his powerful position to demand kickbacks. Corruption leads people to lose the modesty that safeguards truth, goodness, and beauty. The corrupt man often doesn’t realize his own condition, much as a person with bad breath does not know they have it. And it’s not easy for the corrupt man to get out of this state by feeling inner remorse. Generally, the Lord saves him through life’s great ordeals, situations that he cannot avoid and which crack open the shell that he has gradually built up, thus allowing the Grace of God to enter.

We need to repeat it: sinners yes, corrupt no! Sinners, yes. Like the tax collector in the temple of God who did not even have the courage to raise his eyes toward heaven. Sinners, yes, like Peter, who recognized himself as one, weeping bitterly after betraying Jesus. Sinners, yes, the way the Church wisely helps us see ourselves at the beginning of every Mass, when we
are invited to beat our chests and acknowledge our need for salvation and mercy. We need to pray especially now, in this Holy Year of Mercy, so that God can find his way into the hearts of the corrupt and grant them the grace of shame, the grace to recognize themselves as sinners in need of his forgiveness.

Y
OU
have said many times, “God never tires of forgiving, it is we who get tired of asking him for forgiveness.” Why does God never tire of forgiving us?

Because he is God, because he is mercy, and because mercy is the first attribute of God. The name of God is mercy.

There are no situations we cannot get out of, we are not condemned to sink into quicksand, in which the more we move the deeper we sink. Jesus is there, his hand extended, ready to reach out to us and pull us out of the mud, out of sin, out of the abyss of evil into which we have fallen. We need only be conscious of our state, be honest with ourselves, and not lick our wounds. We need to ask for the grace to recognize ourselves as sinners. The more we acknowledge that
we are in need, the more shame and humility we feel, the sooner we will feel his embrace of grace. Jesus waits for us, he goes ahead of us, he extends his hand to us, he is patient with us. God is faithful.

Mercy will always be greater than any sin, no one can put a limit on the love of the all-forgiving God. Just by looking at him, just by raising our eyes from our selves and our wounds, we leave an opening for the action of his grace. Jesus performs miracles with our sins, with what we are, with our nothingness, with our wretchedness.

I think of the miracle at the “Wedding at Cana,” the first miracle, which was literally “dragged” from Jesus by his mother. Jesus transforms water into wine, into fine wine, the best wine. He does it using water from the urns that were needed for ritual purification, for the washing away of one’s spiritual impurities. The Lord does not produce the wine out of nothing, he uses the water that “washed away” sins, water that contains impurities. He performs this miracle with something that to us appears impure. He transforms it, making it clear that “where sin increased,
grace overflowed all the more,” as Paul says in the Letter to the Romans (5:20).

The Church Fathers speak of this, and Saint Ambrose in particular says: “The offense did us more good than harm, because it gave divine mercy the opportunity to redeem us” (
De institutione virginis
, 104). And later: “God preferred that there should be more men to save and whose sense he could forgive, rather than have only Adam remaining free from fault” (
De paradiso
, 47).

H
OW
can mercy be taught to children?

By getting them used to the stories of the Gospel and to the parables. By talking with them, and above all by having them experience mercy. By helping them understand that in life we sometimes make mistakes and fall but that the important thing is to always get back up. The family is the hospital closest to us: when someone is sick, they are cared for there, where possible. The family is the first school for children, it is the unwavering reference point for the young, it is the
best home for the elderly. It is the first school of mercy, because it is there that we have been loved and learned to love, have been forgiven and learned to forgive.

I think of the weary eyes of a mother exhausting herself with work to bring food home to her drug-addicted son. She loves him, in spite of his mistakes.

W
HAT
are some similarities and differences between mercy and compassion?

Mercy is divine and has to do with the judgment of sin. Compassion has a more human face. It means to suffer with, to suffer together, to not remain indifferent to the pain and the suffering of others. It is what Jesus felt when he saw the crowds who followed him. As Mark writes in the Gospel, he had asked the apostles to come away to a secluded place. The crowd saw them leave by boat, they understood where they were going, and they headed there by foot, arriving ahead of them. “When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things” (6:34).

Let us reflect on the beautiful pages that describe
the resurrection of the son of the widow from Nain: When Jesus arrived in this village on the Galilee, he was moved by the tears of the widow, who was devastated by the loss of her only son. He says to her, “Woman, do not weep.” As Luke writes in the Gospel: “When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her” (7:13). God Incarnate let himself be moved by human wretchedness, by our need, by our suffering. The Greek verb that indicates this compassion is
σπλaγχνίζομaι
[
splanchnízomai
, ed.], which derives from the word that indicates internal organs or the mother’s womb. It is similar to the love of a father and mother who are profoundly moved by their own son; it is a visceral love. God loves us in this way, with compassion and mercy. Jesus does not look at reality from the outside, without letting himself be moved, as if he were taking a picture. He lets himself get involved. This kind of compassion is needed today to conquer the globalization of indifference. This kind of regard is needed when we find ourselves in front of a poor person, an outcast, or a sinner. This is the compassion that nourishes the awareness that we, too, are sinners.

W
HAT
similarities and differences exist between the mercy of God and the mercy of man?

This comparison can be made for every virtue and attribute of God. To walk down the path of holiness means living in the presence of God, being irreproachable, turning the other cheek, and imitating his infinite mercy. “Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two” (Matthew 5:41). “From the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic” (Luke 6:29). “Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow” (Matthew 5:42). And finally: “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). So many teachings from the Gospel, all of which help us understand the overabundance of mercy, God’s logic.

Jesus sends forth his disciples not as holders of power or as masters of a law. He sends them forth into the world asking them to live in the logic of love and selflessness. The Christian message is transmitted by embracing those in difficulty, by embracing the outcast, the marginalized, and the sinner. In the Gospels
we read the parable of the king and the guests that are invited to his son’s marriage (Matthew 22:1–14; Luke 14:15–24). What happens is that the people who are invited, the best subjects, do not come to the banquet, they ignore the invitation because they are too absorbed in their own affairs. So the king orders his servants to go out into the streets, to the crossroads, and gather together all the people they can, good and bad, and have them come to the banquet.