Girl at the Door

Relentless Mercy

In his reflection on God’s mercy, Mike Riddell recommends that we abandon our toxic comparisons and judgements and accept the woundedness around us and give ourselves into God’s love.

In the film Calvary, a villager whose perspective is determined by the fact that a priest sexually abused him as a child, takes his revenge in shooting the current parish incumbent. The climax of the film is not the death, but that the murderer later receives a visit in prison from the slain priest’s daughter. She comes not for retribution, but in brokenness and reconciliation.

Mercy is as rare as it is unexpected. James K. Baxter sees it as evidence of God: 

“God is present wherever mercy is present; wherever the poor continue to love one another. Mercy is God’s manifestation.” 

In this he presages Pope Francis, who proclaims: 

“Mercy is God’s identity card. God of mercy, merciful God. For me, this really is the Lord’s identity.”

These claims are highly contested by the history and the conduct of the Church. It is undeniable that the common perception in the West is that Christianity is the purveyor of judgement, exclusion, condemnation, and punishment. Ask the question among women, the divorced, the LBGT community. Any doubts will be dispelled.

Jubilee Year of Mercy

Remarkable, then, that Francis should declare a Jubilee Year of Mercy. Remarkable, and risky. Defining the identity of God as mercy is controversial. Already the detractors of the Pope have suggested he is a reckless libertine and that the focus on mercy obscures church teachings that keep the faithful in order. They have a point.

Francis, ebullient leader that he is, remains unbowed. He dismisses such “angry mutterings”, comparing them to Pharisaic opposition that Jesus received “from those who are only ever used to having things fit into their preconceived notions and ritual purity instead of letting themselves be surprised by reality, by a greater love or a higher standard.” (The Name of God is Mercy)

Judgement shrivels us

The notion of mercy is an incisive scalpel that divides religion from faith, piety from pity, and judgement from compassion. Theologically it slices deeply into our notions of God. In the most simple terms of all, it asks the question whether God is for us or against us? Are we to live from love or fear? Do we celebrate or cower? Is it joy or shame that motivates us?

We live in an age where judgement shrivels our humanity. Popular opinion declares that we get what we deserve in life, and by that standard most of us seem to deserve little. The mirror hall of media reminds us that compared to our icons, we are clumsy, insignificant, dull, and ordinary. Our lives seem not so much beautiful as broken and disordered, unable to be fixed.

Contemporary culture is punitive and vindictive. One only needs to skim social media to see the vitriol unleashed on anyone regarded as fat, lazy, impaired, stupid, or ugly. A preponderance of television series demonstrate how the raw material of our bodies, lives, and finances can be “fixed” — presumably to make us fit to exist.

Every time a serious crime is committed, an enraged chorus of citizens demands harsher punishments, with some calling for the death penalty. The poor are reviled, considered to be authors of their own misfortune. Our elders are viewed as a “drain on society”, and abused for getting in the way of the “movers and shakers”.

Such a social environment is toxic, and carries a toll. We see it in suicides, addictions, psychiatric disorders, and low self-esteem. Even the apparent “stars” are not free of these ailments of the soul. When we use rigid measuring sticks against our own lives and those of our neighbours, it’s not surprising we reap loneliness and misery in consequence.

In the timeless words of Shakespeare: 

“Though justice be thy plea, consider this: that in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation — we do pray for mercy”. (The Merchant of Venice

The iron rod of consequence and retribution creates control, shame, and fear. For far too long this brittle philosophy has been the outer shell of every religion, including Catholicism.

Mercy is a fresh draft of healing

It is time, then, to relearn the word of mercy. Pope Francis is truly discerning the “signs of the times” in declaring his Jubilee. We have enough punishments in the tribunals of our own hearts without being lashed by canon law. Grant us instead a fresh draft of healing. As Leonard Cohen puts it with his diamond-sharp lyrics:

Behold the gates of mercy
In arbitrary space
And none of us deserving
The cruelty or the grace

It may be that we fear mercy as much as we fear freedom and love. Mercy seems to entail a giving up of both our rights to retribution, and the hope of reward for faithfulness. It shatters the universal law of consequence, leaving good prudent people like us on the same level as those who flout every pretence of decency.

Mercy is the divine face of God

Mercy is inherently anarchic. But then so is love. More to the point, we learn through the life and death of Jesus that mercy is the divine face of God presented to us all. The Pharisees guarantee order; Jesus invites the encounter with mercy. Mercy is the great leveller, before which all of us stand on equal ground.

To repeat a simple story that I’ve used in these pages previously, it seems that every person is connected to God with a string, from heart to heart. When we sin, that string gets broken, and God needs to tie a knot in it. Each knot makes the string shorter. Which is why, it seems, that those who sin greatly are much closer to God.

Whether this little allegory brings you a smile or indignation may be an indicator of how you feel about mercy. Too many of us who inhabit the walls of faith are reluctant subscribers to the notion. Yet by denying mercy to those who transgress, we starve our own souls of it. We become spiritual anorexics, who see the sustenance of mercy as our enemy.

Mercy is acknowledging our brokenness

The deep truth of mercy is that it takes a certain brokenness to receive. Only those who relinquish their own resources for goodness are able to open their hearts to the mercy of God. In so doing, they let the crumbs of self-righteousness fall through their open fingers and find instead the burning divine love that is blind to fault.

Never has there been a more opportune time for Francis to call for a renewal of focus on mercy. “This is a time for mercy,” he says,. “The Church is showing her maternal side, her motherly face, to a humanity that is wounded.” In other words, the Church is called to show the face of God, rather than the face of displeasure.

Let us confess that the history of institutional Christianity has been punitive, exclusive, and demeaning, and that it continues to be so. We exclude those torn by the suffering of divorce from communion. We pry into sexual mechanics in order to regulate the diverse forms of human love. The boundaries of our communion are sealed rather than porous.

The Church is, to the outside world, a symbol of hypocrisy and prissy moralising. It lectures and chides rather than listening and embracing. If mercy be the heart of God, then the Church is the edifice of judgement. It is a scandal for the community of Christ to represent a way of life distant from that of our founder. We need mercy.

The answer to this, individually and communally, is to become aware of our own woundedness. We will never be dispensers of mercy unless we are first recipients of it. It is sometimes said that only the poor can see the face of God, and that is true in a significant way — only those who have given up on their own resources can receive the graceful healing of mercy.

Francis defines mercy in terms of misericordi, “opening one’s heart to wretchedness”. But it is not merely the wretchedness of others, but that of our own hearts. When we find mercy there, the world becomes beautiful, free of fear and shame.

Francis has sounded a call — a reminder of the salve so needed in our age. It is up to us to hear it, find it, and practise it.


Tui Motu InterIslands Magazine. Issue 201, February 2016: 4-5