Fr. Paul D. Scalia: On Divine Mercy Sunday, Christ’s wounds remind us that being merciful requires the willingness to be wounded. To forgive means to cancel a debt.
Thomas knew what to look for. Sure, he shouldn’t have doubted. He should have believed the other Apostles. But for all his skepticism, he knew what to look for. He knew that the risen Lord of Easter Sundaymust have the wounds of Good Friday. Anything less than that would be a counterfeit mercy.
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” (Jn 20:25) This near obsession with our Lord’s wounds indicates their importance for today’s Feast of Divine Mercy. Those wounds guard and express the truth about mercy. Especially in a culture so inclined to counterfeit mercies and false compassion, we need to focus with Thomas on the wounds of Christ.
The wounds defend the integrity of mercy by proclaiming the reality of sin. For mercy to be authentic, for it to have any power or meaning whatsoever, it must take sin seriously. “[H]e was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. . .the Lord laid upon Him the guilt of us all.” (Is 53:5,6) Our Lord’s wounds show that He knows our sins full well, even better than we do. He has suffered their full effect.
The wounds defend the integrity of mercy by proclaiming the reality of sin. For mercy to be authentic, for it to have any power or meaning whatsoever, it must take sin seriously. “[H]e was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. . .the Lord laid upon Him the guilt of us all.” (Is 53:5,6) Our Lord’s wounds show that He knows our sins full well, even better than we do. He has suffered their full effect.
It is no mercy to shrug off guilt or trivialize sin. Man has always tended to do so (e.g., “The woman gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it. . . .Am I my brother’s keeper?”). But today we have an entire philosophical system that seeks to justify that tendency. Moral relativism attracts people precisely because it promises to remove the sting of guilt by banishing all judgment. While it presents itself as mercy, moral relativism is in fact the greatest cruelty: it robs man of the ability to repent.
Mercy depends on the truth about man and his moral choosing. Only when we know that there is evil to reject and good to choose can we turn from one to the other – which is the very meaning of repentance.
No comments:
Post a Comment