The year of living mercifully

Mercy. According to one author, it is, “the stuff you give to people that don’t deserve it.” The dictionary defines it as, “compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.”  But to Pope Francis, it is simply compassion, forgiveness.

Since he was installed on the throne of Peter, we have heard Pope Francis speak persistently about mercy. The Pope who famously replied, “Who am I to judge?” to a question about gays and lesbians, never tired of reminding everyone — priests and bishops and the faithful — to be kind, compassionate and merciful, especially to people whom the Church has tended to judge harshly such as divorced and re-married Catholics, women who have undergone abortion, single parents and the like.

By so doing, he raised the hackles of conservatives in the church, but won the hearts of most of the faithful who truly appreciate a Pope who preaches and lives the gospel of mercy as Jesus did.

This week, Pope Francis institutionalized his advocacy when he launched the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, which began on the feast of the Immaculate Conception on Dec. 8 and will end on the feast of Christ the King in November next year. At the launch, Pope Francis pushed opened the massive doors of St. Peter’s Basilica, to symbolize Jesus’ act of opening the doors of heaven to salvation.

A lot of ceremony went with the declaration of the jubilee year, including the simultaneous opening of other doors in specially designated churches the world over, where a penitent who passes through supposedly gets a special plenary indulgence which erases all temporal punishment due him for having sinned. “I wish that the Jubilee Indulgence may reach each one as a genuine experience of God’s mercy, which comes to meet each person in the Face of the Father who welcomes and forgives, forgetting completely the sin committed,” Francis wrote on Sept. 1.

The centuries-old tradition of a Jubilee year is a call to the church to recommit to prayer and penance and to one’s relationship with God. It has been observed only 26 times for ordinary jubilees, and three times for extraordinary ones. By declaring this observance an extraordinary jubilee, Pope Francis has committed the  Church to “render more clear her mission to be a witness to mercy; we have to make this journey…which begins with spiritual conversion…We want to live in the light of the word of the Lord: ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful’ (cf. Lk 6:36).”  And he added, “This especially applies to confessors!”

He continued: “I am confident that the whole Church, which is in such need of mercy for we are sinners, will be able to find in this Jubilee the joy of rediscovering and rendering fruitful God’s mercy, with which we are all called to give comfort to every man and every woman of our time.”

He reminded everyone, “Do not forget that God forgives all, and God forgives always.” 

Simply put, with the declaration of the Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis put forgiveness before judgment. This is probably as difficult for ordinary persons to do, as it is for clerics.

Fr. James Keenan, SJ, professor of Theology at Boston College and author of The Works of Mercy: The Heart of Catholicism, says that mercy is best understood as “the willingness to enter into the chaos of others”, which means helping with more than a “quick fix” and actually getting involved in the needs of others. But if that is too difficult, one can start with simpler deeds. Daily life is full of opportunities for simple acts of kindness, such as allowing another car to get ahead of you in traffic even when you’re in a hurry, saying please and thank you to a service provider, listening patiently to a co-worker’s woes, giving a senior citizen your seat in a crowded train.

No act is too simple, too small, too ordinary, or too random. And these little acts of mercy by individuals add up, hopefully to transform the world into a kinder, more caring place. 

 “A little mercy makes the world less cold and more just,” said Pope Francis.

Mercy begets mercy. And as Pope Francis reminds us, God gives it to us in heaps when we ask for it.The least we can do is pay it forward, on this holy year of mercy and every day thereafter.