Why is God so merciful?

THE simple answer is that because he loves us. His love does not alter even if we go against him. He will do everything to bring us back to him. He will offer forgiveness. He will bear with us the consequences of our sins. And yes, he not only is willing to be like us in everything except sin, but also to die for our sins. 

This mercy of God is shown in a graphic way in that story of the woman caught in adultery. (Jn 8,1-11) That woman, all covered with shame, did not even explicitly say she was sorry, but Christ did not condemn her. He just told her to sin no more. 

We have to realize that mercy is the ultimate expression of love, and God is love. Love is the very essence of his being which, as we all know, is an eternal being, that is, no beginning and no end. Love can never be measured. It has the character of infinity, no borders, no limits, no walls. 

And since we are supposed to be his image and likeness, then we have to realize also that we have to love and be merciful the way God loves and is merciful to everyone. “Be merciful just as your Father is merciful,” Christ said. (Lk 6,36) Indeed, how God is should also be how we ought to be. It’s a tremendous goal we have to pursue, but God has actually given us everything so we can reach that goal, in spite of our limitations. 

We should just learn how to be forgiving and understanding of others. For this, we should be willing to make sacrifices for others, since to have this God-like attitude of mercy, we cannot help but, like Christ, be willing to suffer for the others. And this is not being unfair with our own selves, inflicting severe injustice on our own selves. We have to realize that given the fact that we are all brothers and sisters, and children of God, object of the constant love of God, mercy becomes the fullness of justice. 

 If Christ can offer forgiveness those who crucified him—and there can be no worse evil than killing Christ who is God—why do we find it hard to offer forgiveness to others? 

 It is presumed that all of us sin one way or another. That’s why St. John said: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 Jn 1,8) I am sure that our personal experience can bear that out easily. 

No matter how saintly we try ourselves to be, sin always manages to come in because of our wounded humanity and the many temptations within and around us. As St. John said, we have to contend with three main enemies: our own wounded flesh, the devil and the world corrupted by sin. 

The awareness of this truth is not meant to depress us but rather to keep us humble and always feeling in need of God. We should be wary when we would just depend solely on our own resources to tackle this predicament. We need God! 

The awareness of this truth should also help us to develop the attitude to forgive one another as quickly as possible, since that is the only way we can be forgiven. When we find it hard to forgive others, it is a clear sign that we are full of ourselves, are self-righteous, proud and vain. It is a clear sign that we are not yet with Christ.

Our sinfulness and God’s mercy

THAT gospel story about the woman caught in adultery (Jn 8,1-11) can teach us many lessons that we can learn. Among them, that we are all sinners, no matter how much we try to be good; that God’s mercy is always available, and thus we should never lose hope because of this lifelong predicament of ours; that we need to have constant conversion, exerting the necessary effort and developing virtues. 

There can still be many other lessons we can learn. Like, instead of being quick to judge and condemn others, let us be quick to help and to bear the burden of the others. That’s because in the end we are all brothers and sisters who are all bound to love each other. 

 Let’s always remember that in the eyes of God, we are a precious treasure in vessels of clay. And that’s simply because among his creatures, we, together with the angels, have been given the highest dignity of being his image and likeness. Yet he knows how fragile we are since we can easily abuse the many tremendous gifts he has given us. One moment we are ok, but in the next, we can crack. But God is always around to help us. 

 We have to realize that we are called to holiness in the way God is holy. The pursuit for holiness will always be marked by constant struggle. In fact, it’s going to be a lifelong warfare for us. A saint, as one holy man said, is a sinner who keeps on struggling. 

We should never forget God’s mercy for us. It’s the ultimate expression of his love for us. We may not even ask for it yet, but he will offer it to us, as he expressed it before he died on the cross. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they are doing,” he said. (Lk 23,34) St. Paul reiterates the same point when he said, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5,8) 

 But we need to learn how to blend God’s mercy and the all-out effort we need to exert to achieve our ultimate goal and win our definitive status as God’s image and likeness, children of his and sharers of his divine nature. Let’s remember that while Christ was merciful to the woman caught in adultery, he told her to sin no more 

What we have to avoid is to rely simply on God’s mercy without exerting any effort, or the other way around—to think that we can achieve our goal with our effort alone without God’s mercy. 

The former position can be described as falling under the heretical belief called ‘gnosticism,’ while the latter can be the expression of another heresy called ‘Pelagianism.’ 

Pope Francis, in his document “Gaudete et exsultate,” exposed the dangers of these two heresies that still hold sway over many good people who want to be holy as they should. 

 It’s true that God is all merciful. He has the last word on how we are to be judged. It’s he who will complete and perfect everything in us, because in the first place he began a good work with us. (cfr. Phil 1,6) 

 But we have to do our part. We need to pray hard and to be generous with our sacrifices. We need to be vigilant, always staying away from any occasion of sin, and preferring to enter by the narrow gate, etc.

Being Christ-like and suffering

“IS he (Christ) not the one they are trying to kill? And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him. Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ?” (Jn 7,25-26) 

 With these words in the gospel of St. John, we are somehow reminded that if we truly want to be like Christ as we should, we have to expect suffering, for which we have to learn to lose the fear of it. 

Christ knew from the start of his redemptive life here on earth that he had to suffer and to die for the sins of men. When it was not yet the time to do so, he managed to escape from the hands of those who tried to do him harm. But when the time to consummate his mission on earth came, he made himself totally available for the culminating redemptive act of his passion and death on the cross. 

We should try to assume the same mind and spirit with respect to the ultimate purpose of our life here on earth. We are not meant only to achieve some earthly and temporal success. Our real success is when we managed to be like Christ all the way, that is, when we would be willing to suffer and die for the sins of men in general, ours and those of everybody else. 

Thus, we need to learn how to lose the fear of suffering and death. In fact, we have to learn to see suffering and death as the ultimate means of our salvation, of achieving the perfection of our humanity, which is to be like Christ (alter Christus), if not Christ himself (ipse Christus). 

 If we believe in Christ and follow what he has taught and shown us, we will realize that there is nothing to be afraid of suffering and death, and all the other negative things that can mark our life. 

He bore them himself and converted them into our way for our own salvation. Yes, even death which is the ultimate evil that can befall us, an evil that is humanly insoluble. With Christ’s death, the curse of death has been removed. “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor 15,54-55) 

So, we just have to be sport and cool about the whole reality of suffering and death. What we need to do is to follow Christ in his attitude toward them. For Christ, embracing suffering and ultimately death, is the expression of his greatest love for us. We have to enter into the dynamic of this divine logic and wisdom so we can lose that fear of suffering and death. 

 Thus, we have to understand this very well. Unless we love the cross, we can never say that we are loving enough. Of course, we have to qualify that assertion. It’s when we love the cross the way God wills it—the way Christ loves it—that we can really say that we are loving as we should, or loving with the fullness of love. 

We have to be wary of our tendency to limit our loving to ways and forms that give us some benefits alone, be it material, moral or spiritual. While they are also a form of love, they are not yet the fullness of love.