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| Are these men beyond the 'Mercy Line'? |
(Second Sunday
of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday, Year A): This homily was given on April 23,
2017 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Acts 2: 42-47; Psalm 118; 1 Peter 1:
3-9; John 20: 19-31.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Divine Mercy Sunday 2017]
Where do you
draw the line—the “mercy line”?
The mercy line
marks the point beyond which, in your view, mercy should NOT be offered to a
person: If you do such-and-such a thing—if you cross this particular line in your
behavior—you should not be offered any mercy by God. None whatsoever! Justice—yes; vengeance—perhaps; but mercy—no.
Where do you,
personally, draw the “mercy line”? One
way to answer that question is to identify some of the people who, from your
perspective, have actually crossed the line.
No doubt many men
and women nowadays would have at least a few world leaders on their list: people
like the communist dictator of North Korea, who reportedly has had his
half-brother and hundreds of other people murdered in recent years to secure
his power; and the current President of Syria, who used chemical weapons on his
own citizens recently—including young children.
Or how about
the guy from Cleveland who took a video of himself killing a 74-year-old man on
the street the other day, and then posted the video of the murder on Facebook?
Would he be on
the bad side of your “mercy line”?
Today, of
course, is the Second Sunday of Easter, which means it’s “Divine Mercy Sunday”. It’s officially been such since Pope John
Paul II put this feast on the Church’s liturgical calendar in the year
2,000—although it was celebrated unofficially even before that. Actually, you could say that we celebrate and
focus on divine mercy every single day in the Catholic Church, since the primary
reason that Jesus Christ came to this earth 2,000 years ago—and suffered, and died,
and rose again from the dead—was to bring us the mercy and forgiveness of God!
This was a core
part of “the teaching of the apostles” that the early Christians were devoted
to, as we heard they were in today’s first reading from Acts 2. It’s summarized beautifully in our second
reading from 1 Peter 1, where our first pope says:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hopethrough the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading,kept in heaven for you who by the power of God are safeguarded through faith.
And
this mercy of God—which “endures forever” (as our responsorial psalm today
reminds us)—was extended by Jesus to Thomas in this famous gospel story from
John 20. Thomas had refused to believe
in the resurrection of Jesus after the other apostles told him they had seen
our Lord on Easter Sunday night. But
Jesus gave Thomas a second chance a week later.
In his tremendous mercy, our Lord gave Thomas the opportunity to repent,
and believe—and change! Please note: Jesus
didn’t have to give him that
opportunity; he didn’t “owe it” to Thomas (if he had owed it to him, it would
have been an act of justice to give
him a second chance). It’s precisely
because Jesus did not owe Thomas
anything that his act became an act of mercy.
The Lord did
not draw a “mercy line” with Thomas when Thomas doubted his resurrection. Nor does he draw a “mercy line” with us when
we sin. That’s good news. Of course, the corollary to all this is that
if God doesn’t draw a mercy line with you or with me, then neither does he draw
that line with anyone else—including people like the totalitarian leaders of
North Korea and Syria, and the Cleveland Facebook murderer.
Mercy is
available to us, as long as we have breath within us. The key is to reach out for it and to receive
it like Thomas did—which is something that we Catholics do in a powerful way
whenever we go to confession.
And then we
have to show mercy to others—which is the hard part, as you are all well aware. But it’s also absolutely necessary, if we
want to go to heaven someday! Remember,
in the Lord’s Prayer we tell God that we want him to have mercy on us just like we have mercy on others:
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive
those who trespass against us.” I
hope you realize, if we’re not willing to make at least an attempt to forgive
other people, then every time we pray the Our Father we’re actually telling
Almighty God not to forgive us!
And that’s not
a very good idea!
In this regard,
I was so impressed when I read some of the comments made by the children of
Robert Godwin the other day. (Godwin is the
74-year-old man who was killed by the Facebook murderer.) In an interview with CNN his daughter Tonya
said, “Each one of us forgives the killer, the murderer. We just want him to know that God loves him,
we love him. Yes, we’re hurt, but we
have to forgive him because the Bible says if we don’t then the heavenly Father
won’t forgive us.” Another daughter
said, “I honestly can say right now I hold no animosity towards this man
because I know he is a sick individual….I promise you I could not do that
[forgive] if I did not know God, if I didn’t know him as my God and
Savior. I could not forgive that
man. And I feel no animosity against him
at all. I actually feel sadness in my
heart for this man.” Finally, his son,
Robert, Jr. said, “One thing I do want to say is I forgive him, because we are
all sinners. Steve, I forgive you man. I’m not happy with what you did, but I forgive
you.”
Those are three
extraordinary responses to an extraordinarily evil act. I share them with you today because I think they
show us that extending mercy to another person is possible, even in the most
horrific of circumstances. Yes, it’s
difficult—extremely difficult—but it’s still possible by the grace of God.
I’ll end now
with the question I began with: Where do you
draw the “mercy line”?
The Lord never
draws one—even for the most evil person on the planet—on this side of the
grave. Robert Godwin’s children,
amazingly, haven’t drawn one with respect to the man who brutally murdered
their father.
If we have drawn mercy lines for some of the
people in our lives (which is very easy to do!), then I would say that we need
to pray very hard at this Mass for the grace we need to erase them.