March 4, 2012: 2nd Sunday of Lent
There are other things in life that we cannot quite capture with mere words or pictures. Take for example, a mother’s love for her child. In my first year as a priest, I was called to Women’s Hospital to baptize a child who had just been born. By the time I arrived there, the child was purple in color and the doctors were doing their best to keep the child alive. I went in the room with the doctor to anxiously awaiting parents. This was the young couple’s first child and the mother, with tears streaming down her face, was holding the dying child in her arms. Only Heaven knows the great love this mother had for her son.
Just as a mother’s love is difficult to capture in words, God’s mercy is even more difficult to describe with mere words. What is mercy? We usually think of the word ‘mercy’ in terms of cancellation of punishment or an act of pardon—e.g. "Let me off, judge; have mercy.” However in Scripture, mercy has a much deeper meaning. Two Hebrew words translate to mercy—hesed and rachamim. Hesed means, "steadfast love, covenant love," while rachamim means, “tender, compassionate love, a love that springs from pity.” The root of the word rachamim means a mother’s womb. If we understand these words, then we can begin to appreciate our petition, “Lord have mercy.” When we pray these words, we invoke Our Lord’s steadfast, tender, and compassionate love for us, a love similar to, but infinitely deeper than, a mother’s steadfast, tender, and compassionate love for her child. Yet still, it is difficult to imagine this kind of love.
A few weeks ago, when I was in a prison room visiting with a 20-yr. old young woman, she described to me her life of selfishness and self-absorption driven by her drug addiction. Every action she took in her day-to-day life, she did so to keep up her drug habit. She stole from her own family and stole from neighbors, all the while lying to them. Her conscience barely bothered her anymore; intellectually, she knew she hurt her family and friends by her deception and theft, but her heart was calloused and hardened. I explained to her that Jesus sent me to tell her that she was precious to Him and that He loved her with His tender, steadfast love and that He did not want her to continue to hurt herself and others by her carelessness. I told her that He wanted her to know that she was His precious daughter and that He had a great mission for her. I concluded with telling her that He had given her the gift she needed the most—His forgiveness—the forgiveness that melts and resuscitates hardened hearts so that they may pump again with faith, hope, and love in her life.
How can we adequately capture the mercy that Our Heavenly Father constantly showers upon us? He tells us that even Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his own beloved son Isaac does not adequately captures it. Only one act can adequately capture the depth, breadth, and grandeur of God’s abundant mercy—Heavenly Father’s sacrifice of His own Son which all of us here at mass are so privileged to witness. Even the Grand Canyon’s grand and imposing panorama cannot compare with the magnitude of His mercy. All of us do harm to one another and many times we feel unworthy of the Father’s love and mercy. What will it take to convince us that Father is merciful? Heavenly Father did not even spare His one and only Beloved Son. Even when our lifetime of sin and failure to love are all combined, it is still only a drop in the Father’s infinite ocean of steadfast, tender, and compassionate love. Only one question remains: Are we changed by His sacrifice?
