By Fr. Adolf Washington –
Imagine you hold a ‘privilege’ membership to an elite club with luxuries you are ‘entitled’ to. One evening, you are shocked to see ‘street urchins’ flooding every corner of the club. You rush up to the manager and angrily ask “What’s going on here?” He replies “Sorry sir, the owner has announced free membership to everyone who wants to be here”.
That’s God’s love and mercy. You get it even when others or you yourself think you don’t deserve it. God’s mercy is not based on who we are and what we have done or not done, but based on the very nature of God’s unconditional love. Pope Francis even titled his book “The name of God is Mercy” to drive home a point.
We receive mercy instead of the wrath of God for all the evil we say, do or even think-of, not as a license to continue in evil, but as an example to imitate, turn-around and start being merciful ourselves.
There’s a legend of a mother who begged mercy from Napoleon for her son. He replied “Your son has committed this crime twice and so justice demands he be hanged”. She cried “I am asking for mercy, not justice”. When Napoleon said “Your son does not deserve mercy”, she replied “O King, it wouldn’t be mercy if he deserved it, so mercy is all I ask for”. Napoleon immediately spared her son.
The most fundamental truth of God’s mercy is that there is absolutely nothing we could ever do to merit or earn it.
Mercy is God withdrawing punishment due, pulling us out from the sinking sands of misery, guilt and shame over the things we have done and helping us from sinking again. God chooses to forget our past and wants us to do the same. He speaks through Prophet Isaiah “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland” (Isaiah 43:18-21).
Think of God’s mercy like the Father of the son who left home (parable of the prodigal son). He returned in rags from a piggery, with dirt and stench all over him, yet the father hugs, kisses him and takes him into the house, celebrating his return.