 |
| St. Faustina and the Divine Mercy image |
(Second
Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday, Year B): This homily was given on April
8, 2018, at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Acts 4: 32-35; Psalm 118: 2-4, 13-15,
22-24; 1 John 5: 1-6; John 20: 19-31.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Divine Mercy Sunday 2018]
Getting
it is easy;
Giving
it is what’s difficult.
But
if you don’t give it,
In
the end you don’t get it.
I’m
talking here about God’s mercy. (What
else do you talk about on Divine Mercy Sunday?)
Getting God’s mercy is easy—just ask
Thomas the Apostle. Jesus forgave him
for his sin of disbelief the moment he repented and said those famous words,
“My Lord and my God!” Thomas didn’t have
to beg Jesus, or bargain with Jesus, or grovel in the dirt before our Lord agreed
to show him mercy. All Thomas needed to
do was to express his repentance in some way, and forgiveness was his.
This
is the core message of Divine Mercy Sunday: that every sin can be forgiven;
that every sinner can be saved; that God’s mercy (as today’s responsorial psalm
reminds us) “endures forever”. This is
also the message St. Faustina gave to the world through her diary. There she wrote about the private revelations
she received from Jesus about God’s mercy during a seven year period, beginning
in 1931. One of those revelations
included a vision of Jesus with two rays of light coming out of his heart. Jesus asked her to have a painting done
replicating the vision, and to have it signed with the words, “Jesus, I trust
in you.” We, of course, have a copy of
that painting here in our church where the tabernacle used to be.
But
it’s not only important to receive mercy (like Thomas the Apostle did); it’s
also important (and necessary!) to extend
mercy to others—which is the hard part.
As I said at the beginning of my homily, “getting” mercy is easy;
“giving” mercy is much more difficult.
But in spite of the fact that it’s difficult, it’s not optional—at least
according to Jesus. In fact, if we don’t
show mercy to others (or at least make the effort to do so in our lives), we
will cut ourselves off from the mercy God wants to give us. As I said at the beginning, “If you don’t
give it, in the end you don’t get it.”
Jesus himself said as much in Matthew, chapter 6. There, immediately after he gave us the
Lord’s Prayer, he said, “If you forgive others, your heavenly Father will
forgive you. But if you do not forgive
others, neither will your Father forgive you.”
Notice,
out of all the petitions in the Our Father—“Thy kingdom come”; “Thy will be
done”; “Give us this day our daily bread”; etc.—Jesus went back to and
reiterated just one.
The
one about forgiveness: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass
against us.”
That
must mean it’s EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!!
Of
course, it’s also important for us to remember in this context that practicing
forgiveness and mercy does not mean
that we should totally ignore or dispense with justice.
In
fact, sometimes dispensing with justice is the most unmerciful thing you can do for a person—and for the people in that
person’s life. I came across a great
example of this just the other day on the web site of the Washington Post. There was an article there about a 20-year-old
man from Texas named Eric Couch. Maybe
some of you know the story. On June 13,
2013, when he was 16-years-of-age, Eric Couch killed 4 people just outside of
Ft. Worth, Texas, when he plowed his father’s Ford F-350 pickup truck into a
group of men and women on the side of the road who were trying to help a
stranded motorist. He seriously injured
some others who were there, one of whom is now paralyzed and can communicate
only by blinking.
Oh,
and did I mention that Couch was drunk at the time? His lawyers claimed he was
suffering from something they call “affluenza”—supposedly a condition which
made him incapable of telling right from wrong because of his parents’ wealth.
The
judge’s sentence? Probation—a probation
which Couch violated two years later by drinking and then fleeing the country
with his mother! The two fled after a
video appeared online of Couch consuming alcohol. He was eventually caught, taken back to the
United States and sentenced—to just two years in prison (or, as the Washington
Post article put it, 180 days “for each of the four people he killed” in 2013). He was released a couple of days ago.
Only
two years in prison for consuming alcohol as a minor, killing 4 people while
driving recklessly and intoxicated, violating parole, fleeing the country
illegally and causing an international incident.
There
are some who would call that “mercy.”
Personally, I’d call that “stupidity”—in this case, “judicial
stupidity”. Letting this young man off
so easily and not giving him the time or opportunity to work on his addiction
and other personal issues was NOT merciful!
It would have been merciful if, in June of 2013, they had said to Couch,
“Yes, we’ll give you the opportunity to change your life for the better since
you’re a minor, but in your present condition you’re a danger to yourself and
to everyone else in society.
Consequently, we need to remove you from society for an extended period of time so that you can
deal with your demons and give us a valid reason to allow you to return to a
normal way of life. If not, you’ll have
to remain incarcerated.”
That
would have been the most merciful thing they could have done for this troubled
young man—and for the people in his life.
There’s
a beautiful prayer that was written by St. Faustina that has this line in it:
“Help me, O Lord, that my ears may be merciful, so that I give heed to my neighbors’ needs and not be
indifferent to their pains and moanings.”
Sometimes our neighbors need our mercy in the form of compassion, patience
and understanding, but there are other times when our neighbors need our mercy
in the form of “tough love.” Eric Couch
has needed the latter since 2013. I hope
and pray that someday he finally receives it—for his own sake, and for the sake
of everyone else who shares the highway with him in the future.
