Reflection For The Fifth Sunday Of Lent (C) The Mercy Of God – The Beating Heart Of The Gospel

My mother died rather suddenly and expectedly on March 8. At her wake, there was a young woman in her early 30s who came to pay her respects. She actually came to the wake twice and seemed to be quite broken-hearted. I knew vaguely who she was but wondered why she seemed almost inconsolable. She told me how Mum had shown her such kindness and how she was so grateful. I sensed she had a story to tell but being overcome with grief, it did not come. When she left, I inquired of a cousin why she might be so broken up by Mum’s death. She explained that this young woman had fallen in with the wrong crowd and gotten herself into drugs, possibly prostitution, run afoul of the law and ended up losing her children. She was sentenced to do community service and Mum, being a leader in her local parish and believing everyone deserved a second chance, found her some odd jobs to do to serve her sentence. But it went further than that, not only did Mum allow her to serve her community service at the church, but Mum also went and helped her to complete her jobs and spent time with her. I don’t know the details of the story. Mum never spoke of it. I sense they may come out some day. But whatever Mum did for that young girl, she was forever grateful, and it changed her in some way. She seems to be getting her life back on track and now sees her children. She was shown mercy and compassion and given a second chance.

In the Old Testament reading today we hear of a compassionate God. No matter how many times the Israelite people turned away, God took them back and gave them a second chance. How could God do anything else? Patient and merciful are words that often go together in the Old Testament to describe God’s nature. His being merciful is concretely demonstrated in many actions throughout the history of salvation where God’s goodness prevails over punishment and destruction. Mercy renders God’s history with Israel a history of salvation. The mission Jesus received from the Father was that of revealing the mystery of divine love in its fullness. The signs he works, especially in favour of sinners, the poor, the marginalized, the sick, and the suffering, are all meant to teach mercy. Everything in him speaks of mercy. Nothing in him is devoid of compassion.

Reading today’s scripture, I couldn’t help but remember the Holy Father’s Bull of Indiction for the 2015 Jubilee Year of Mercy, Misericordiae Vultus. He reminds us that Jesus’ message of mercy shines all throughout the Gospels, challenging society and the law to see the divine justice present in mercy. His greatest parables, many of them we have heard during this Lenten season, tell of an ungrateful steward forgiven of his debts, who tragically fails to show the same forgiveness to his debtors (Matthew 18:21– 35) from March 22nd; or last Sunday’s Gospel of a wasteful son who carelessly spends his father’s inheritance, only to be embraced by his father when he penitently returns home (Luke 15:11–32). In his ministry, the Lord reached out to the hated tax collector (Luke 19:1–10) and rescued the accused adulteress in today’s Gospel from John 8:2–11, reconciling them with society and with God—and with themselves. In these parables devoted to mercy, Jesus reveals the nature of God as that of a Parent who never gives up until he has forgiven the wrong and overcome rejection with compassion and mercy. The woman in the story represents all of us. We are given a second chance. The scribes and the pharisees represent us too. Human beings, whenever we judge, lack compassion. They look no farther than the surface, whereas the Father looks into the very depths of the soul. As Pope Francis has told us time and time again, mercy will always be greater than any sin, and no one can place limits on the love of God who is ever ready to forgive and give people a second chance.

In Philippians, Paul realizes now that it is not a question of becoming a morally perfect person by his own efforts. For him to have a close relationship with Jesus is the most precious thing in life. All the rest is just rubbish. As a Pharisee he thought he was a perfect person by keeping the Law meticulously and hating all those who did not. Now he knows he is a good person because he has become filled with the love of Jesus. Now he hates no one. He loves, he forgives, and, like God, he forgets.

So, to conclude with the words of Pope Francis from his 2015 letter, “The Church is commissioned to announce the mercy of God, the beating heart of the Gospel, which in its own way must penetrate the heart and mind of every person.” Mum knew something about the beating heart of the Gospel. I like to imagine that Mum, like Jesus in today’s encounter with the adulteress, saw a lonely, frightened woman, manipulated by cruel, self-righteous people for their own sinister ends. She saw in her the potential for change and accepted the young woman totally, her wrongdoing and all, showing her mercy and compassion rather than judgment and condemnation. For Mum believed nobody is beyond the love and compassion of God.