On April 18, the Second Sunday of Easter, we celebrated the Feast of Divine Mercy. If we can be honest with ourselves, we can admit that often we do not relish having mercy on others; mainly perhaps because needing to forgive means that someone did wrong, erred, or failed in some way and now we have to have mercy on them. We would probably much rather that things had just gone right in the first place. Still less do we enjoy the prospect of others needing to forgive and have on mercy on us, because that means that WE are the one who messed up! Once again, we would probably prefer to just have done things correctly and not be in the need of any forgiving.
The thing is, I don’t think God’s attitude toward mercy is like that at all that there is nothing reluctant about it for God! I think God loves giving mercy. God is Love. I think that God never gets tired of being God, of being Love and thus never tires, begrudges or regrets being merciful or forgiving. I think for God, things ‘going right; was never of first importance (though we should certainly try our best), but love is of first importance! In fact, I think God even prefers to have mercy, filling up what is lacking with His Love. Scripture even says that, “God delivered all to disobedience, that He might have mercy upon all” (Rm. 11:32). We may think that sounds crazy, that is totally backwards, but maybe it is OUR thinking that is backwards!
Once I realized that God Himself so relishes being merciful to us….,
