The Church of Mercy (12 page)

As leaders of different religions we can do a lot. Peace is the responsibility of everyone—to pray for peace, to work for peace! A religious
leader
is always a man or woman of peace, for the commandment of peace is inscribed in the depths of the religious traditions that we represent. But what can we do? Your annual meeting suggests the way forward: the courage of dialogue. This courage, this dialogue, gives us hope. It has nothing to do with optimism; it is entirely different. Hope!

In the world, in society, there is little peace because dialogue is missing; we find it difficult to go beyond the narrow horizon of our own interests in order to open ourselves to a true and sincere comparison. Peace requires a persistent, patient, strong, intelligent dialogue by which nothing is lost. Dialogue can overcome war. Dialogue can bring people of different generations who often ignore one another to live together; it makes citizens of different ethnic backgrounds and of different beliefs coexist. Dialogue is the way of peace. For dialogue fosters understanding, harmony, concord, and peace. For this reason, it is vital that it grow and expand between people of every condition and belief, like a net of peace that protects the world and especially protects the weakest members.

As religious
leaders
, we are called to be true “people of dialogue,” to cooperate in building peace not as intermediaries but as authentic mediators. Intermediaries seek to give everyone a discount ultimately in order to gain something for themselves. However, the mediator is one who retains nothing for himself but rather spends himself generously until he is consumed, knowing that the only gain is peace. Each one of us is called to be an artisan of peace, by uniting and not dividing, by extinguishing hatred and not holding on to it, by opening paths to dialogue and not by constructing new walls! Let us dialogue and meet one another in order to establish a culture of dialogue in the world, a culture of encounter.

What does “rethinking solidarity” mean? It does not of course mean calling into question the recent magisterium, which, on the contrary, is increasingly showing how farsighted and up-to-date it is. Rather . . . it seems to me to mean two things. First of all, this rethinking combines the magisterium with social and economic development because it is constant and rapid, revealing ever new aspects. Second, “rethinking” means deepening knowledge, reflecting further to enhance all the fruitfulness of a value—solidarity in this case—which draws in depth from the Gospel, that is, from Jesus Christ, and so as such contains an inexhaustible potential.

Today’s economic and social crisis makes this rethinking ever more urgent and highlights even more clearly the truth and timeliness of affirmations of the social magisterium such as the one we read in
Laborem exercens
: “As we view the whole human family . . . we cannot fail to be struck by a disconcerting fact of immense proportions: the fact that, while conspicuous natural resources remain unused, there are huge numbers of people who are unemployed or underemployed and countless multitudes of people suffering from hunger. This is a fact that without any doubt demonstrates that . . . there is something wrong” (no. 18). Unemployment—the lack or loss of work—is a phenomenon that is spreading like an oil slick in vast areas of the West and is alarmingly widening the boundaries of poverty. Moreover, there is no worse material poverty, I am keen to stress, than the poverty that prevents people from earning their bread and deprives them of the dignity of work. Well, this “something wrong” no longer relates only to the South of the world but also to the entire planet. Hence the need to rethink solidarity no longer as simply assistance for the poorest, but as a global rethinking of the whole system, as a quest for ways to reform it and correct it in a way consistent with the fundamental rights of all human beings.

It is essential to restore to this word
solidarity
, viewed askance by the world of economics—as if it were a bad word—the social citizenship that it deserves. Solidarity is not an additional attitude; it is not a form of social almsgiving but, rather, a social value, and it asks us for its citizenship.

The current crisis is not only economic and financial but is rooted in an ethical and anthropological crisis. Concern with the idols of power, profit, and money, rather than with the value of the human person, has become a basic norm for functioning and a crucial criterion for organization. We have forgotten and are still forgetting that over and above business, logic, and the parameters of the market is the human being; and that “something” is men and women, inasmuch as they are human beings by virtue of their profound dignity: to offer them the possibility of living a dignified life and of actively participating in the common good.

Three words sum up Mary’s attitude: listening, decision, and action. They are words that point out a way for us too as we face what the Lord asks of us in life. Listening, decision, action.

1. 
Listening
. What gave rise to Mary’s act of going to visit her relative Elizabeth? A word of God’s angel: “Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son” (Luke 1:36). Mary knew how to listen to God. Be careful: it was not merely
hearing
, a superficial word, but it was
listening
, which consists of attention, acceptance, and availability to God. It was not in the distracted way with which we sometimes face the Lord or others: we hear their words, but we do not really listen. Mary is attentive to God. She listens to God.

However, Mary also listens to the events—that is, she interprets the events of her life; she is attentive to reality itself and does not stop on the surface but goes to the depths to grasp its meaning. Her kinswoman Elizabeth, who is already elderly, is expecting a child; this is the event. But Mary is attentive to the meaning. She can understand it: “with God nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1:37).

This is also true in our life: listening to God who speaks to us, and listening also to daily reality, paying attention to people, to events, because the Lord is at the door of our life and knocks in many ways; he puts signs on our path, and he gives us the ability to see them. Mary is the mother of listening, of attentive listening to God and of equally attentive listening to the events of life.

2. The second word:
decision
. Mary did not live “with haste,” with breathlessness, but, as St. Luke emphasizes, she “kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (see Luke 2:19, 51). Moreover, at the crucial moment of the angel’s annunciation, she also asks, “How shall this be?” (Luke 1:34). Yet she does not stop at the moment of reflection either. She goes a step further: she decides. She does not live in haste but “goes with haste” only when necessary. Mary does not let herself be dragged along by events; she does not avoid the effort of making a decision. And this happens both in the fundamental decision that was to change her life—“I am the handmaid of the Lord . . .” (see Luke 1:38)—and in her daily decisions, routine but also full of meaning. The episode of the wedding of Cana springs to my mind (see John 2:1–11): here too one sees the realism, humanity, and practicality of Mary, who is attentive to events, to problems. She sees and understands the difficulty of the young married couple at whose wedding feast the wine runs out; she thinks about it; she knows that Jesus can do something and decides to address her Son so that he may intervene: “they have no more wine” (John 2:3). She decides.

It is difficult in life to make decisions. We often tend to put them off, to let others decide instead; we frequently prefer to let ourselves be dragged along by events, to follow the current fashion. At times we know what we ought to do, but we do not have the courage to do it, or it seems to us too difficult because it means swimming against the tide. In the Annunciation, in the Visitation, and at the wedding of Cana, Mary goes against the tide. Mary goes against the tide; she listens to God, she reflects and seeks to understand reality, and she decides to entrust herself totally to God. Although she is with child, she decides to visit her elderly relative, and [years later] she decides to entrust herself to her Son with insistence so as to preserve the joy of the wedding feast.

3. The third word:
action
. Mary set out on a journey and “went with haste” (see Luke 1:39). Last Sunday I underlined Mary’s way of acting: in spite of the difficulties, the criticism she would have met with because of her decision to go, nothing could stop her. And here she leaves “with haste.” In prayer, before God who speaks, in thinking and meditating on the facts of her life, Mary is not in a hurry: she does not let herself be swept away by the moment; she does not let herself be dragged along by events. However, when she has clearly understood what God is asking of her, what she has to do, she does not loiter, she does not delay, but she goes “with haste.” St. Ambrose commented, “There is nothing slow about the Holy Spirit” (
Expos. Evang. sec. Lucam
, II, 19:
PL
15, 1560). Mary’s action was a consequence of her obedience to the angel’s words but was combined with charity: she went to Elizabeth to make herself useful; and in going out of her home, of herself, for love, she takes with her the most precious thing she has: Jesus. She takes her Son.

We likewise sometimes stop at listening, at thinking about what we must do; we may even be clear about the decision we have to make, but we do not move on to action. And above all we do not put ourselves at stake by moving toward others “with haste” so as to bring them our help, our understanding, our love—to bring them, as Mary did, the most precious thing we have received, Jesus and his Gospel, with words, and above all with the tangible witness of what we do.

Mary, the woman of listening, of decision, of action.

We can ask: what was Mary’s faith like?

1. The first aspect of her faith is this: Mary’s faith unties the knot of sin (see
Lumen gentium
, 56). What does that mean? The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council took up a phrase of St. Irenaeus, who states that “the knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by the obedience of Mary; what the virgin Eve bound by her unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosened by her faith” (
Adversus haereses
, III, 22, 4).

The “knot” of disobedience, the “knot” of unbelief. When children disobey their parents, we can say that a little “knot” is created. This happens if the child acts with an awareness of what he or she is doing, especially if there is a lie involved. At that moment, children break trust with their parents. You know how frequently this happens! Then the relationship with their parents needs to be purified of this fault; the child has to ask forgiveness so that harmony and trust can be restored. Something of the same sort happens in our relationship with God. When we do not listen to him, when we do not follow his will, we do concrete things that demonstrate our lack of trust in him—for that is what sin is—and a kind of knot is created deep within us. These knots take away our peace and serenity. They are dangerous, since many knots can form a tangle that gets more and more painful and difficult to undo.

But we know one thing: nothing is impossible for God’s mercy! Even the most tangled knots are loosened by his grace. And Mary, whose “yes” opened the door for God to undo the knot of the ancient disobedience, is the Mother who patiently and lovingly brings us to God, so that he can untangle the knots of our soul by his fatherly mercy. We all have some of these knots, and we can ask in our heart of hearts: what are the knots in my life? “Father, my knots cannot be undone!” It is a mistake to say anything of the sort! All the knots of our heart, every knot of our conscience, can be undone. Do I ask Mary to help me trust in God’s mercy, to undo those knots, to change? She, as a woman of faith, will surely tell you, “Get up, go to the Lord: he understands you.” And she leads us by the hand as a mother, our Mother, to the embrace of our Father, the Father of mercies.

2. A second aspect is that Mary’s faith gave human flesh to Jesus. As the Second Vatican Council says: “Through her faith and obedience, she gave birth on earth to the very Son of the Father, without knowing man but by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit” (
Lumen gentium
, no. 63). This was a point on which the Fathers of the Church greatly insisted: Mary first conceived Jesus in faith and then in the flesh, when she said yes to the message God gave her through the angel. What does this mean? It means that God did not want to become human by bypassing our freedom; he wanted to pass through Mary’s free assent, through her “yes.” He asked her, “Are you prepared to do this?” And she replied, “Yes.”

But what took place most singularly in the Virgin Mary also takes place within us, spiritually, when we receive the word of God with a good and sincere heart and put it into practice. It is as if God takes flesh within us; he comes to dwell in us, for he dwells in all who love him and keep his word. It is not easy to understand this, but really, it is easy to feel it in our heart.

Do we think that Jesus’ incarnation is simply a past event that has nothing to do with us personally? Believing in Jesus means giving him our flesh with the humility and courage of Mary, so that he can continue to dwell in our midst. It means giving him our hands, to caress the little ones and the poor; our feet, to go forth and meet our brothers and sisters; our arms, to hold up the weak and to work in the Lord’s vineyard; our minds, to think and act in the light of the Gospel; and especially to offer our hearts to love and to make choices in accordance with God’s will. All this happens thanks to the working of the Holy Spirit. And in this way we become instruments in God’s hands, so that Jesus can act in the world through us.

3. The third aspect is Mary’s faith as a journey. The Council says that Mary “advanced in her pilgrimage of faith” (
Lumen gentium
, no. 58). In this way she precedes us on this pilgrimage; she accompanies and sustains us.

How was Mary’s faith a journey? In the sense that her entire life was to follow her Son: he—Jesus—is the way, he is the path! To press forward in faith, to advance in the spiritual pilgrimage that is faith, is nothing other than to follow Jesus: to listen to him and be guided by his words; to see how he acts and to follow in his footsteps; to have his same sentiments.

And what are these sentiments of Jesus? Humility, mercy, closeness to others, but also a firm rejection of hypocrisy, duplicity, and idolatry. The way of Jesus is the way of a love that is faithful to the end, even to sacrificing one’s life; it is the way of the cross. The journey of faith thus passes through the cross. Mary understood this from the beginning, when Herod sought to kill the newborn Jesus. But then this experience of the cross became deeper when Jesus was rejected. Mary was always with Jesus; she followed Jesus in the midst of the crowds, and she heard all the gossip and the nastiness of those who opposed the Lord. And she carried this cross! Mary’s faith encountered misunderstanding and contempt—when Jesus’ “hour” came, the hour of his Passion, when Mary’s faith was a little flame burning in the night, a little light flickering in the darkness. Through the night of Holy Saturday, Mary kept watch. Her flame, small but bright, remained burning until the dawn of the resurrection. And when she received word that the tomb was empty, her heart was filled with the joy of faith: Christian faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Faith always brings us to joy, and Mary is the Mother of joy! May she teach us to take the path of joy, to experience this joy! That was the high point—this joy, this meeting of Jesus and Mary, and we can imagine what it was like. Their meeting was the high point of Mary’s journey of faith, and that of the whole Church. What is our faith like? Like Mary, do we keep it burning even at times of difficulty, in moments of darkness? Do I feel the joy of faith?