The Mercy of God

It is His divine love bending down toward our misery to forgive, heal, and elevate it. It is not that God «overlooks» evil by pretending it does not exist: He takes it with absolute seriousness, and even so, never ceases to love the sinner.

In Jesus Christ, «the face of the Father's mercy». It suffices to look at those He sought out: Zacchaeus, an extortionate tax collector; the Samaritan woman, burdened by five failed marriages; the woman caught in adultery; the Good Thief; Peter, who denied Him three times. He transformed each of their lives without first confronting them with the catalog of their crimes. He Himself summarized His mission: «I came not to call the righteous, but sinners» (Jesus, Gospels).

A younger son demands his inheritance while his father is still alive—effectively wishing his father were dead—departs for a distant country, squanders everything, and returns driven by raw hunger with a rehearsed speech. Yet the father does not even let him finish: seeing him from afar (having scanned the horizon daily), he runs, embraces him, and calls for a feast. Such is God: «compassionate and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love», as the Psalms endlessly proclaim.

Because upon the Cross all the moral filth of human history came into contact with the Infinitely Pure, and rather than defiling Him, it was completely absorbed and transformed by His love. Evil is real and cannot be trivialized; yet Redemption demonstrates that divine mercy places an impassable limit on evil and ultimately triumphs over it.

Not fully. Acknowledging one's personal misery without knowing the Redeemer plunges the soul into despair; conversely, speaking of a benevolent God without admitting our desperate need for salvation is an illusion. Sin is only understood rightly when contemplated in the light of the God who forgives (original sin).

None, provided there is genuine repentance. God never tires of forgiving; it is we who grow weary of asking for forgiveness. The only limit is set by the person who stubbornly rejects that mercy and closes his heart to grace.

Always. No past is so broken that it can condemn your future: the Good Thief sanctified his entire life in his dying hour, and great saints were once notorious sinners, like Saint Augustine. Before God, your history does not define you; your identity as His child does. The road home almost always begins with a good, honest Confession, made calmly and without fear.

Above all in sacramental Confession, where forgiveness is heard with one's own ears and becomes concrete reality. It is also received through trusting personal prayer. A simple aspiration captures it: «Jesus, I trust in You».

Yes: to give it. «Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy». Whoever has been forgiven so great a debt cannot afford to be harsh toward his fellow human beings; Jesus taught this in the parable of the unforgiving servant, who had an immense fortune forgiven yet choked a companion over a few coins (charity).

Through the traditional corporal and spiritual works of mercy:

• Corporal: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, welcoming the stranger…
• Spiritual: teaching the uninstructed, counseling the doubtful, comforting the sorrowful, correcting with gentleness, forgiving offenses, bearing patiently with the defects of others.

Most of these can be practiced on any ordinary day without ever leaving home or the office (solidarity).