Throughout this past Lent, during Holy Week and leading up to and since Divine Mercy Sunday I have been meditating a lot on the mercy of God.
In many respects somewhat incomprehensible for we mere human beings, living in a culture with such an angry, vengeful, punitive mindset, to wit the extreme attitudes people have towards those we presume to be evil incarnate: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Osama,…………yeah and that person/persons/group you are thinking of right now.
“For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” [Mt.7:2}, Jesus tells us – yet how often throughout any given day do we judge?
How about that hat she is wearing, the way he drives, what he looks like, what she says, what the bishop does, what Father said – on and on it goes in miniscule matters and those of truly serious import: like assuming we know who is a sinner and how they sin and what should happen to them.
Gossip is unbridled judging of another.
Listen sometimes to conversations and attitudes during an election campaign or a parish council meeting or a pro-life march, or what we think while watching the news or reading the paper about events in some other nation, culture, religion.
Either we believe Jesus comes to us in every human being, humans being His preferred mode of disguise, or we don’t.
Either we take Him seriously when He bluntly tell us: 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' [cf. all of Matthew 25], or we really don’t believe Him!
Most of us expect tender, divine, mercy when we shall appear before Him – so why do we so blithely wander about the face of the earth, in and amongst our brothers and sisters in such a cranky, judging, rejecting, condemning mode?
Scripture cries out to Him in our own voice: “in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back.” [Is. 38:17”
Have you ever wondered where the back of God is?
What an expression of the infinite of infinite generosity of Divine Mercy!
God Himself promises us, every repentant one: “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."[Hb. 8.12]
Wow!
How is it possible for God to forget?
We hardly, if ever, forget even the most picayune affront, yet here is the Most Holy Trinity, God Himself who is love, promising to forget our sins!
We all know what evil acts Osama did in the public domain in his life on earth, the enormous toll in human lives, the disruption of societies around the world, but we know nothing about what transpired in his heart and soul at the moment of his death.
Indeed we have no idea what transpires during the last moment of any human being, no matter what we might think we know because of what is visible to our eyes – we only see surface.
Standing on the shore of the ocean we think we see the ocean, when it truth all we are able to see is the agitation of the waves, that is, what is happening on the surface of the ocean, and even then we only see a tiny bit of the whole surface, most of it is hidden to our gaze beyond the horizon.
The human heart is far wider than any ocean, the human soul far deeper.
“This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.” [Jn. 15:12]
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