Mercy from Divine Love

There’s a not-so-ecumenical joke about an Irish Catholic cop who stopped a priest who was exceeding the speed limit. He said, “Father, I stopped you to tell you that there’s a Protestant cop at the next corner.”

It’s a schmaltzy yarn but it provides a humorous way of formulating the principle that mercy can override justice without denying justice, and mercy can also prevent the need for justice to be applied.

Because of God’s love he found a way to show mercy. His hatred of sin will not bring down his wrath as long as his mercy isn’t spurned. The poetic and touching dictum of Charles Sprague says, “Hate shuts her soul when dove-eyed Mercy pleads.”   That is the Lord pleads gently and lovingly, urging us to avoid the tragic choice of our own eternal punishment that we would bring upon ourselves. 

When Saint Rose of Lima suffered doubts about her salvation, Jesus appeared to her and reassured her that he condemns only those who choose to be condemned by refusing to repent. Saint Thomas Aquinas says that only those who refuse God’s forgiving love experience his punishing justice. 4  That’s why we can say that God has never sent anyone to hell; the reprobate ones have chosen hell themselves by simply refusing to say sincerely, “I’m sorry.”  That simple apology to God is called repentance. It is the master switch that open the floodgates of his mercy.

God chooses to “strike” with his pointing and beckoning finger, not with a punishing arm. Sometimes his “pointing finger” directs us to channels of his mercy that we have been neglecting to recognize. “See good and not evil, that you may live, and so the Lord…will be with you” (Amos 5:14).

The Lord stays with us, as he promised (Matthew 28:20). For instance, he is with us by a most loving presence in the Holy Eucharist. Perhaps we avail ourselves frequently the Eucharist. Perhaps we avail ourselves frequently of the Eucharist and yet forget that it is an exquisitely generous and veritable touchable source of his mercy, as well as a manifestation of it  -  both a cause and an effect of his mercy. Just think of the mercy component in the words of consecration: “This is my body…given for you…This is my blood…shed for you.” Or in Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it now a sharing in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16),

The most obvious mercy component of this sacrament is the salvic promise incorporated  in its very reception: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.” (John 6:54). Those words mean that for those who devoutly receive the eucharistic Lord Jesus, with faith in his substantive and real presence, he stakes a “Welcome” sign at the pearly gates. How’s that for the ultimate offer of Divine Mercy?

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.