The Name of God Is Mercy (2 page)

H
OLY
Father, can you tell us how the desire to proclaim a Holy Year of Mercy was born? Where did the inspiration come from?

There was no particular or defining moment. Things come to me by themselves, they are the ways of the Lord, and they are preserved in prayer. I am inclined never to trust my first reaction to an idea or to a proposal that is made to me. I never trust myself in part because my first reaction is usually wrong. I have learned to wait, to trust in the Lord, to ask for his help, so I can discern better and receive guidance.

I can say that the centrality of mercy, which for me is Jesus’ most important message, has slowly evolved over the years in my work as a priest, as a consequence of my experience as a confessor, and thanks
to the many positive and beautiful stories that I have known.

A
S
early as July 2013, only a few months after being named Pope, when you were returning from Rio de Janeiro, where the World Day of Youth had been celebrated, you said that ours is a time of mercy.

Yes, I believe that this is a time for mercy. The Church is showing her maternal side, her motherly face, to a humanity that is wounded. She does not wait for the wounded to knock on her doors, she looks for them on the streets, she gathers them in, she embraces them, she takes care of them, she makes them feel loved. And so, as I said, and I am ever more convinced of it, this is a
kairós
, our era is a
kairós
of mercy, an opportune time. When John XXIII solemnly opened the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, he said, “The Bride of Christ prefers to use the medicine of mercy rather than arm herself with the weapons of rigor.” In his meditation “Thoughts on Death,” the blessed Paul VI revealed the essence of his spiritual life in the synthesis proposed by Saint Augustine: poverty and
mercy. “My poverty—Pope Montini wrote—the mercy of God. That I may at least honor who you are, God of infinite bounty, invoking, accepting, and celebrating your sweet mercy.” Saint John Paul II took the notion further with his encyclical
Dives in Misericordia
, in which he affirmed that the Church lives an authentic life when it professes and proclaims mercy, the most amazing attribute of the Creator and Redemptor, and when it leads humanity to the font of mercy. In addition, he instituted the festivity of Holy Mercy, endorsed the figure of Saint Faustina Kowalska, and focused on Jesus’ words on mercy. Pope Benedict XVI also spoke of this in his teachings: “Mercy is in reality the core of the Gospel message; it is the name of God himself, the face with which he revealed himself in the Old Testament and fully in Jesus Christ, incarnation of Creative and Redemptive Love. This love of mercy also illuminates the face of the Church, and is manifested through the Sacraments, in particular that of the Reconciliation, as well as in works of charity, both of community and individuals. Everything that the Church says and does shows that God has mercy for man.”

I also have many personal memories of other episodes. For example, before coming here, when I was in Buenos Aires, I specifically recall a roundtable discussion with theologians. The topic was what the Pope could do to bring people closer together; we were faced with so many problems that there seemed to be no solution. One of the participants suggested “a Holy Year of forgiveness.” This idea stayed with me. And therefore, to answer your question, I believe that the decision came through prayer, through reflection on the teachings and declarations of the Popes who preceded me, and by thinking of the Church as a field hospital, where treatment is given above all to those who are most wounded. A Church that warms people’s hearts with its closeness and nearness.

W
HAT
is mercy for you?

Etymologically, “mercy” derives from
misericordis
, which means opening one’s heart to wretchedness. And immediately we go to the Lord: mercy is the divine attitude which embraces, it is God’s giving himself
to us, accepting us, and bowing to forgive. Jesus said he came not for those who were good but for the sinners. He did not come for the healthy, who do not need the doctor, but for the sick. For this reason, we can say that mercy is God’s identity card. God of Mercy, merciful God. For me, this really is the Lord’s identity. I was always impressed by the story of Jerusalem as it is told in chapter 16 of the Book of Ezekiel. The story compares Jerusalem to a little girl whose umbilical cord wasn’t cut, who was left in her blood and was cast out. God saw her wallowing in blood, he washed the blood from her, he anointed her, he dressed her, and when she grew up he adorned her with silk and jewels. But she, infatuated with her own beauty, became a harlot, not for money but paying her lovers herself. God, however, will never forget his covenant and he will place her above her sisters so that Jerusalem will remember and be ashamed (Ezekiel 16:63), when she is forgiven for what she has done.

For me this is one of the most important revelations: you will continue to be the chosen people and all your sins will be forgiven. So mercy is deeply connected
to God’s faithfulness. The Lord is faithful because he cannot deny himself. This is explained well by Saint Paul in the Second Letter to Timothy: “If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.” You can deny God, you can sin against him, but God cannot deny himself. He remains faithful.

W
HAT
place and meaning do mercy have in your heart, life, and personal history? Do you remember your first experience of mercy as a child?

I can read my life in light of chapter 16 of the book of the prophet Ezekiel. I read those pages and I say: everything here seems written just for me. The prophet speaks of shame, and shame is a grace: when one feels the mercy of God, he feels a great shame for himself and for his sin. There is a beautiful essay by a great scholar of spirituality, Father Gaston Fessard, on the subject of shame in his book
The Dialectic of the “Spiritual Exercises” of St. Ignatius
. Shame is one of the graces that Saint Ignatius asks for during his confession of his sins before Christ crucified. That text from Ezekiel teaches us to be ashamed, it shows us how to feel
shame: with all our history of wretchedness and sin, God remains faithful and raises us up. I feel this. I don’t have any particular memories of mercy as a young child. But I do as a young man. I think of Father Carlos Duarte Ibarra, the confessor I met in my parish church on September 21, 1953, the day the Church celebrated Saint Matthew the apostle and Evangelist. I was seventeen years old. On confessing to him, I felt welcomed by the mercy of God. Ibarra was originally from Corrientes but was in Buenos Aires to receive treatment for leukemia. He died the following year. I still remember how when I got home, after his funeral and burial, I felt as though I had been abandoned. And I cried a lot that night, really a lot, and hid in my room. Why? Because I had lost a person who helped me feel the mercy of God, a person who helped me understand the expression
miserando atque eligendo
, an expression I didn’t know at the time but which I would eventually choose as my episcopal motto. I learned about it later, from the homilies of the English monk the Venerable Bede. When describing the calling of Matthew, he writes: “Jesus saw the tax collector, and by having mercy
chose him as an Apostle, saying to him, ‘Follow me.’ ” This is the translation commonly given for the words of Saint Bede. I like to translate
miserando
with a gerund that doesn’t exist:
mercifying
. So, “mercifying and choosing” describes the vision of Jesus, who gives the gift of mercy and chooses, and takes unto himself.

W
HEN
you think of merciful priests whom you have met or who have inspired you, who comes to mind?

There are many. I just mentioned Father Duarte. I can also mention Enrico Pozzoli, the Salesian, who baptized me and who married my parents. He was the confessor, the merciful confessor: everyone went to him, and he went to all the Salesian houses. I met many such confessors. I recall another great confessor who was younger than I, a Capuchin priest with a ministry in Buenos Aires. One day he came to see me and he wanted to talk. He said, “I need your help. I always have so many people at the confessional, people of all walks of life, some humble and some less humble, but many priests too….I forgive a lot and sometimes I have doubts, I wonder if I have forgiven
too much.” We talked about mercy and I asked him what he did when he had those doubts. This is what he said: “I go to our chapel and stand in front of the tabernacle and say to Jesus: ‘Lord, forgive me if I have forgiven too much. But you’re the one who gave me the bad example!’ ” I will never forget that. When a priest experiences giving mercy to himself like that, he can give it to others. I once read a homily by then cardinal Albino Luciani [later Pope John Paul I] about Father Leopold Mandić, who had just been beatified by Pope Paul VI. He described something that was very similar to what I just told you. He said: “You know, we are all sinners,” Luciani said on that occasion. “Father Leopold knew that very well. We must take this sad reality of ours into account: no one can avoid sin, small or great, for very long. ‘But,’ as Saint Francis de Sales said, ‘if you have a little donkey and along the road it falls onto the cobblestones, what should you do? You certainly don’t go there with a stick to beat it, poor little thing, it’s already unfortunate enough. You must take it by the halter and say: ‘Up, let’s take to the road again….Now we will get back on the road, and we will pay more attention next
time.’ This is the system, and Father Leopold applied this system in full. A priest, a friend of mine, who went to confess to him, said: ‘Father, you are too generous. I am glad to have gone to confession to you, but it seems to me that you are too generous.’ And Father Leopold said: ‘But who has been generous, my son? It was the Lord who was generous; I wasn’t the one who died for our sins, it was the Lord who died for our sins. How could he have been more generous with the thief, with others, than this!’ ” This was the homily of then Cardinal Luciani on Leopold Mandić, who was later proclaimed a saint by John Paul II.

Another important figure for me is Father José Ramón Aristi, a Sacramentine, whom I mentioned before when I met the parish priests of Rome. He died in his late nineties in 1996. He, too, was a great confessor; lots of people and many priests went to him. When he heard a confession he gave his rosary to the penitents and made them hold the little cross in their hands, then he used it to absolve them, and last of all he asked them to kiss it. When he died, I was auxiliary bishop in Buenos Aires. It was the evening of Holy Saturday. I went to him the following
day, Easter Sunday, after lunch. I went down into the crypt of the church. I noticed that there were no flowers next to his coffin, so I went to look for a bouquet of flowers. Then I came back and started to put them here and there. I saw the rosary wrapped around his hands: I took the little cross from it and said: “Give me half of your mercy!” From that moment on, that cross has always been with me, I wear it on my chest: when I have a bad thought about someone I touch the cross. It’s good for me. There you have another example of a merciful priest, someone who knew how to be close to people and treat their wounds by giving them mercy.

W
HY
, in your opinion, is humanity so in need of mercy?

Because humanity is wounded, deeply wounded. Either it does not know how to cure its wounds or it believes that it’s not possible to cure them. And it’s not just a question of social ills or people wounded by poverty, social exclusion, or one of the many slaveries of the third millennium. Relativism wounds people
too: all things seem equal, all things appear the same. Humanity needs mercy and compassion. Pius XII, more than half a century ago, said that the tragedy of our age was that it had lost its sense of sin, the awareness of sin. Today we add further to the tragedy by considering our illness, our sins, to be incurable, things that cannot be healed or forgiven. We lack the actual concrete experience of mercy. The fragility of our era is this, too: we don’t believe that there is a chance for redemption; for a hand to raise you up; for an embrace to save you, forgive you, pick you up, flood you with infinite, patient, indulgent love; to put you back on your feet. We need mercy. We need to ask ourselves why today so many people, men and women, young and old, of every social class, go to psychics and fortune-tellers. Cardinal Giacomo Biffi used to quote these words by the English writer G. K. Chesterton: “When Man ceases to worship God he does not worship nothing but worships everything.” Once I heard a person say: In my grandmother’s time a confessor was enough, but today lots of people go to fortune-tellers. Today people try to find salvation wherever they can.