The deacons of our parish -- there are eight of us! -- have been conducting a Divine Mercy Novena in preparation for tomorrow's celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday. Although other demands -- doctors' appointments, soup kitchen commitments, etc. -- have prevented me from attending every day, I have been able to pray the chaplet at home on those days I could not attend. Praying this novena has been a remarkable experience and has led me to ask some serious questions about how I conduct my own life. I expect it's had a similar effect on others who have taken part.In addition to the novena, I've spent some time each day reading from St. Faustina's Diary in which the visionary wrote about her visits from the Lord, as well as her own thoughts, reflections and experiences. In it one encounters Jesus in a unique way as He opens His merciful heart for this young saint and for us, patiently explaining the depth of His mercy and how our God expects us, as Christians, to respond. I could probably spend pages and pages writing about some of these messages from our Lord, but one in particular struck a significant chord today: “You are to show mercy to your neighbors always and everywhere. You must not shrink from this or try to absolve yourself from it" [Diary, 742].
There's nothing new about this command; indeed if it were new we would have every right to suspect the validity of the visions and private revelations experienced by St. Faustina. True private revelation can do nothing but confirm and reinforce divine revelation as found in sacred scripture and apostolic tradition. And, of course, this same plea to mercy is stated explicitly in the Gospel: "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy" [Mt 5:7]. And we encounter it in greater detail when Jesus depicts the final judgment that we will all experience [Mt 25:31-46], a judgment focused on the mercy we have extended to each other.
As I reflected on Jesus' command, and on my own failure to obey it fully, I came to realize how grateful I am that we have a merciful, forgiving God, one who willingly forgives and forgets the sins of the repentant. In other words, our personal failure to extend mercy to others can be overcome by God's infinite mercy when we come to Him in true repentance. Without this gift of mercy and forgiveness none of us would be saved.
Of course, the temptation, then, is to become a bit presumptuous and assume that God's mercy will come through for us in the end, regardless of how we have lived our lives -- a very dangerous presumption. For the Christian, indeed for every human, life shouldn't be viewed as a gamble during which one lives as one likes and hopes for the opportunity to repent and receive forgiveness at the end. No, the Christian life should be seen and lived as an ongoing conversion, a journey in which we come ever closer to Christ allowing Him to conform every aspect of our being to His perfection.
We see this manifested most explicitly in the lives of the saints. Not long ago, while reading St. Bonaventure's The Life of St. Francis of Assisi, I came across a passage that describes one of those typical Franciscan events in which the saint fuses mercy and poverty and thereby teaches us how to live the Gospel, as Catherine Doherty urged, "without compromise."
Francis, you see, knew that because everything comes from God, nothing really belongs to us. And because we own nothing, our lives as creatures of God are essentially lives of poverty. Most of us simply haven't yet come to the point where we can accept this, at least not fully. We might accept it intellectually, but that's a far cry from living it. Francis also took Jesus seriously when He said, "...whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me" [Mt 25:40]. And so he believed that anything he had actually belonged to those in greater need, those "least brothers." In the incident described by St. Bonaventure, Francis had been ill and was wearing a cloak over his habit as he and a companion traveled home. When they met a poor man along the way, Francis, neglecting his own need, gave his cloak to the man. "It is fitting," he said to his companion, "that we should restore this cloak to this poor man, for it is his, and I accepted it only until I should find someone poorer than myself." When his companion objected that Francis was neglecting his own health, the saint responded, "I should be accounted a thief by the great Almsgiver were I to withhold that which I wear from him who has greater need of it than I."
This, of course, was typical of Francis who, as St. Bonaventure wrote, "spared nothing, neither cloak, nor tunic, nor books, nor even the ornaments of the altar, but would give all these things to the poor to fulfill the office of mercy."
All of this reflecting has led me to question how I am called to "fulfill the office of mercy" in my life. Are we all called to be perfect imitators of Christ in the style of a St. Francis? Are we all called to live "the Gospel without compromise"? As I look around me here in my cozy den, I find I am surrounded by "things." They are things that give me pleasure, or make my life easier, or remind me of past accomplishments, but they are still just things. Are these and the other things of my life keeping me from following Jesus' call to mercy? Can I approach poverty in spirit without accepting material poverty? God does, after all, call us to perfection -- "...be perfect, just as your Heavenly Father is perfect" [Mt 5:48] -- but just how far does He want you and me to take this?
And so I am left with questions only God can answer. But I do know that the call to conversion is a call to abandonment. And abandonment to God's will demands that I first remove my own will from the equation. Only then can God work in my life and lead me on the path He has planned for me. Fortunately, God never stops calling and will continue calling me to conversion until I take my last breath.
Praised be Jesus Christ!
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