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Jesus was beaming as he left the Mother of Perpetual Help Shrine in Baclaran. Noticing this, Father Peter ran after him and asked, "Lord, why do you look so happy?"
"Someone said something beautiful to me," Jesus said.
"Did that person praise you?" asked the priest.
The Lord shook His head.
"Did that person worship you?"
Again, the Lord shook His head.
"I think I know what happened!" the priest exclaimed. "That person thanked you!"
"No," replied Jesus.
Bewildered, Father Peter asked, "Did that person ask you for something?"
"Nope," our Lord smiled.
"Okay, Lord, I give up," said the priest. "What was it that someone said to you that made you happy?"
"Lord," Jesus said with a big smile, "Lord, I'm truly sorry, please forgive me!"
* * *
We are all quite familiar with Murphy's celebrated first law that states: "If something can go wrong, it will!" This rather pessimistic perception of human experience, however, does not hold true in the spiritual life. God's law of mercy states otherwise: "If something can go wrong in man, it will be forgiven!"
This may sound presumptuous and may lead us to casually sin because ?God will forgive them anyway.? We, however, know that only God can forgive sins. And man has no other alternative than to humbly return to God asking for forgiveness. God's mercy is more powerful than all of men's sins put together.
This truth about God's untiring mercy ? only constrained by a proud heart that is closed to grace ? is marvelously taught by our Lord's parables: the Prodigal Son, the Good Shepherd, the wicked servant who was totally forgiven his unpaid debt, etc. There are other episodes in our Lord?s life that reveal His untiring mercy: the woman accused of adultery, the paralytic lowered from the roof, and our all-time favorite good thief in Calvary. All these reveal the power of God's mercy.
But God's compassion for and salvation of man's sinful condition will only be possible if man himself corresponds, as St. Augustine says: "God, who created you without you, will not save you without you." (Sermon 169, 13, PL 38, 923)
Following this idea, John Paul II says: "It is not enough to consider the objective reality of Redemption. Each one of us has to touch Redemption or, perhaps better, Redemption has to touch each one of us. (Address, December 23, 1982, no. 4.)
Thus, man's response to God's mercy is twofold: first, he must himself return to the God, humbly opening himself to grace and asking for mercy. This entails faith in God's power to forgive. But this faith must also be accompanied with the resolve to separate himself from whatever may lead him astray from God.
This first response is achieved when we devotedly and resolutely go to confession. John Paul II adds: "The sacrament of Penance is the sacrament of reconciliation with God, the encounter of the misery of man with the mercy of God personified in Christ the Redeemer and in the power of the Church. Confession is a practical exercise of faith in the event of Redemption. The sacrament of Confession is therefore re-proposed as a testimony of faith in the dynamic sanctity of the Church.... It is re-proposed as a need of the ecclesial community.... It is re-proposed as a purification in view of the Eucharist."(Ibid)
Second, we must be ready to exercise the same merciful and compassionate attitude towards our neighbor. A concrete sign that we are allowing the grace of God's mercy to convert us interiorly is to express it exteriorly when we learn to truly forgive our neighbor from the heart. This isn't limited to simply forgiving a wrong done to us. It also involves having a constant compassion and solicitude for our neighbor's spiritual and material wants.
Our Lord told a parable about a servant who was forgiven a great debt. But he ended in prison for not knowing how to forgive a co-servant who owed him an infinitely lesser amount compared to that of which the master forgave him. ?You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you besought me; and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?? (Mt. 18)
In our desire for a personal and fruitful conversion, let us never fall into the discouragement of remaining in the sad contemplation of our weaknesses and miseries. Jacques Philippe beautifully writes: "It is very hard to accept our weaknesses because we believe that these will deprive us of love: if I fail in this or that, then I don't deserve to be loved. Living and moving under God's gaze makes us realize that this is not so. Love is gratuitous and not 'merited.' Our frailties do not stop God from loving us. Rather, he has freed us of that dreadful burden to be constantly in ?top shape? in order to be loved." (I Choose to be Free, 2006)
