The French poet Paul Claudel coined an original phrase: “God made man, and sin counterfeited him.” As the first pages of Genesis teach us, the harmony of the creature that came from God’s hands was replaced by chaos through human freedom. This is why the biblical Hebrew words by which sin is designated indicate, at an etymological level, a departure from the goal, a deviation from the right path, a failure to hit the mark.
God did not make man perfect, but He created him capable of becoming perfect.
From the moment man’s spirit awakens, man sees that he cannot live like other beings in nature, whether animal or plant. They do not have the task of becoming free. Instead, man must become what he is meant to be. The perfection of man is the perfection of a calling, and not the perfection of a situation already given. That is why Saint Pope John Paul II often repeated: “Man, become what you are.”
The Bible expresses this by saying that man is created in the image and likeness of God. We should say more accurately that man is created in the image of God with a view of his likeness to become like Him, meaning that man is created to be divinized.
Man, however, cannot deify himself alone: it is necessary for him to accept God’s gift because it is God who deifies. Continually, man is tempted to live not for God, nor for his neighbor, but for himself alone. There is in man a double inclination, a double drive:
- A force of heaviness and inertia that invites him to give up being a free man and pushes him to live like all other beings in the world who have no freedom to build but only an instinct to follow.
- An ascending force that invites him to build his own freedom.
God asks man to fulfill himself by reaching out to Him. One can only truly be a man by choosing God as the center.
The entire New Testament shows us that there is only one source of deification – Jesus Christ. Christ is willed by God, and we are created in Him. Our humanity, from its origins is destined to enter into divine filiation in Christ and for Christ.
All of us, none except the Mother of God, are not only finite creatures but also sinful creatures.
Christ saves us not only from finitude but also from the bondage of sin.
Jesus, being God, can do nothing but love. When he relates to us, he relates to forgiven sinners because that is our identity.
Contact with Jesus recreates us, giving us new life; Jesus can only love us, that is, offer us the gift of the ability to create ourselves.
Jesus is approached by various kinds of sinners: Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, tax collectors, prostitutes, repentant sinners and unrepentant sinners, sinners aware of their sin, and sinners unaware of their sin. With all he uses mercy and forgiveness but not all receive it.
His merciful love produces quite disparate effects.
We can explain this with a comparison.
The sun warms, but how different is the effect it has depending on whether it falls on a glacier, a candle or clay: it melts the ice, softens the candle, and hardens the clay.
That is why some, when in contact with Him, immediately turned their lives around, others further hardened their hearts, and still others walked away sad.
The Mercy of God is what characterizes Jesus’ relationship with all of us because all of us are sinners.
Mercy is nothing but God’s love that triumphs and is greater than sin. What does it mean that God is merciful? It means that he takes upon himself our miseries, allowing us to experience his love for us. When we feel loved, we are recreated, a new burst of life and love is produced within us. Emblematic in this regard is the encounter with Zacchaeus, a tax collector in Lk 19:1-10.
At that time, Jesus came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature.
So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” And he came down quickly and received him with joy.
When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.”
And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”
Zacchaeus felt loved and this created in him the capacity to love in turn. This is what mercy does.
What we said about Zacchaeus applies to so many other characters in the gospels including the apostles themselves.
If we had to summarize in one word what Jesus’ relationship with sinners is about, that is, with all of us, the answer would simply be “mercy.”
I am very devoted to Pope St. John Paul II, and I was deeply moved by his pontificate precisely because it began and ended with mercy.
Pope St. John Paul II died on the evening of April 2, 2005. It was the Saturday preceding the Sunday dedicated to Divine Mercy, a new feast instituted by him in 2000. For the Church, feasts begin with vespers on the previous day, so in this case they began on Saturday, April 2. The Mass celebrated at 8 p.m. in Karol W.’s room was precisely that of divine mercy, not a coincidence especially for those, first and foremost Poles, who know the connection between Pope St. John Paul II and St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, a humble nun who died in 1938 in Krakow, whose visions of Jesus inspired the devotion to divine mercy.
The day after Pope St. John Paul II’s death, the Cardinal Secretary of State of Vatican City, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, presided over the first Requiem Mass. At the end of the Mass, Archbishop Sandri read the words Pope St. John Paul II had already prepared for the Angelus of the first Sunday after Easter dedicated precisely to Divine Mercy: “How much the world needs to understand and welcome divine mercy, Lord Jesus who by your death and resurrection reveals the Father’s love we believe in you and with confidence we repeat to you this day – Jesus I trust in you, have mercy on us and on the whole world.” These are Pope St. John Paul II’s last words to the world.
Let us then make the resolution this month to approach with renewed fervor the sacrament of mercy, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where the same kind of encounter experienced by sinners described in the Gospels takes place. We review in the catechism the seven Corporal works of mercy and the seven Spiritual works of mercy so that we can concretely translate God’s mercy toward our neighbor into our daily lives.
The Seven Corporal Works of Mercy:
- Feed the hungry
- Give drink to the thirsty
- Shelter the homeless
- Visit the sick
- Visit the prisoners
- Bury the dead
- Give alms to the poor
The Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy:
- Counsel the doubtful
- Instruct the ignorant
- Admonish the sinner
- Comfort the sorrowful
- Forgive injuries
- Bear wrongs patiently
- Pray for the living and the dead
Suggested concrete resolutions
- Write down in your calendar a time to go to the sacrament of Reconciliation this month, and consider a regular rhythm of confession to stick to throughout the rest of this year.
- Ask the Lord to inspire you with one of the works of mercy listed at the end of this mediation, and collaborate with the Holy Spirit this month to make this desire a reality.
This month’s meditation is by Sr. Tiziana, AVI
