Miracle Power at Your Fingertips
A department store Santa Claus, trying to be kind and complimentary to a youngster, said “I know everything about you.”
He was taken aback by the kid’s defensive response: “But, Santa, I’ve changed!”
Sincere change for the better is essentially an act of the will. There’s no mental action more demanding of trust than the act of sincere repentance. We trust the Lord to respond to our protestation that we’ve really changes, that we’ve made a “firm purpose of amendment” change as radical as a U-turn, which the early Greek fathers of the church called metanoia. In this personalized repentance-forgiveness dialogue, the restoration of the relationship occurs not as the result of mere shame or morbid remorse but rather from a “godly grief [which] produces a repentance that leads to salvation” (2 Corinthians 7:10).
More than four hundred times the Holy Scriptures directly mention God’s offer of mercy in response to our repentance. The word depicts mercy for us not only in New Testament parables like that of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the Prodigal Son, but also in real-life stories like the forgiveness of the woman taken in adultery and that of the good thief, who “stole heaven” from his gibbet on Calvary. And of course, underscoring all this is the very real life-and-death story of the torturous atoning passion and death of Jesus himself.
If at any time you are crushed with guilt and need an antidote to despair in your anguish, take a moment to meditate on one of the many pertinent Scriptures alerting us to trust in God’s mercy. For example: “Those who trust in him will understand truth, and the faithful will abide with him in love, because grace and mercy are upon his only ones, and he watches over his elect” (Wisdom 3:9).
If you truly love someone, your love is enriched when your beloved reciprocates that love. A mother hugging her tiny child is thrilled the first time the child displays a reciprocal love response by “hugging back.” The Lord revealed to Saint Faustina that nothing gives him greater delight than a soul’s loving surrender to his open arms of mercy. The greatest dialogue of love is mercy-love proffered and mercy-love embraced.
The master bard William Shakespeare formulated and immortalized this sublime insight in one of his most frequently quoted passage:
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest ‘
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown…
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself.*
Shakespeare’s reference to mercy as “an attribute of God” might well incite questions about that very phrase and the theological implications it carries in terms of our respondent spirituality. Theologically considered, there are five so-called primary classical “attributes” or perfections of God: mercy, goodness, generosity, providence and justice. As Saint Thomas Aquinas explains, Divine Mercy, from the human viewpoint, is positioned above all Gods works as the premiere attribute.* Why? Because God’s mercy includes implicitly, and also is manifested through, a number of his “secondary” attributes, such as his kindness, magnanimity, graciousness, clemency, patience and long-suffering.
It is important to note that all of the many attributes of God are really not distinct from each other (or from his very essence) but are differentiated only by human scrutiny and theological analysis. Dissecting his infinite perfection in its multiple portrayals makes it easier for us to gain at least a preliminary understanding of that perfection.
By way of analogy, sunlight is “white” light, but it can be broken down when it is refracted through a prism. It is then “diversified” into the rainbow spectrum of seven visible colors – and some invisible ones like infrared and ultraviolet. Likewise, we can perceive, by divine revelation, only the tiniest glimpse of God’s infinite essential perfection and never its undifferentiated oneness. By applying the “prism” of human intervention (theological analysis), we “artificially” diversify the divine omni-perfection and so can attain a limited grasp of it. That is the way we recognize it in our lives.
Thus, listing the divine attributes is really in some sense a fictional exercise. But the Lord graciously accommodates our human way of thinking about his superhuman status.
*”The Merchant of Venice,” Act IV, Scene 1.
*Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q.21, art. 4 in St. Thomas and the Summa Theologica software (Gervais, Ore.: Harmony, 1998).
This excerpt is from the book The Awesome Mercy of God, by John H. Hampsch,C.M.F., originally published by Servant Books. It and other of Fr. Hampsch's books and audio/visual materials can be purchased from Claretian Teaching Ministry, 20610 Manhattan Pl, #120, Torrance, CA 90501-1863. Phone 1-310-782-6408.