Sunday 10 (A -2005): Mercy and Law
Christians,
and Catholics in particular, are often mocked for their obsession with giving things up, renouncing and abstaining. We are
seen, or at least we used to be seen, as sticklers for rules and prohibitions. “Catholic guilt” is joked about
as being the feeling any Catholic should have any time he or she enjoys anything.
Quite apart from the humor, these notions themselves ought to worry us! A joyless Catholicism ought to be
a contradiction in terms. If we believe, and we do, that Catholicism is the depositary of the fullness of the Good News and
of the sacraments of divine love, our joy ought to be evident to everyone.
Discipline is necessary, of course, but it is not an end in itself. Discipline is intended to make us better
disciples. The question is: disciples of what or of whom? Discipline means apprenticeship, a lifelong learning process. Again,
who or what is it that we learn?
The answer is obviously Jesus Christ, but that can be a glib answer, because so many of us first decide for
ourselves how to look at Jesus Christ and then discipline ourselves, but especially others, to learn what we think Jesus is.
Many reduce Jesus to being a social liberator, a kind of divine revolutionary. Others turn him into a divine, masculine version
of Florence Nightingale. Others still conceive of him as a walking book of rules and regulations to suit their own need to
be kept on the straight and narrow.
As regards this last version of Jesus, it is understandable that our weak and sinful nature requires clear
limits and goals to save it from ruining itself. But the danger is that we focus too much on our weaknesses and turn Jesus
into a kind of bogey-man that will come and get us if we don’t keep the rules.
This was the temptation into which the Jewish people had fallen. They turned the law itself into God and thus
ignored the true, living God. The prophet Hosea tries to get them to waken up: what God desires of you is not sacrifice, not
holocausts, but mercy, loving-kindness. God’s frustration and exasperation with his people are expressed by the prophet
in these words: “What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning
cloud, like the dew that goes away early” (Hos. 6:4).
In other words, do you think that the mere externals of obeying rules honors me? By all means, obey the rules,
but first love intensely from the heart, show mercy and loving kindness to one another. Then your rules will have some substance,
some heart, some soul.
For his part, in the same way Jesus takes some Pharisees to task for their mistaken piety. They considered
Jesus as being unclean because he sat and ate with “sinners”, as if they themselves had no sin. Like Hosea, Jesus
responds in terms of mercy. He has come not reward those who observe the rules, but to show mercy to those who do not.
The truth is, of course, that no-one observes the law completely: all sin and therefore all need his mercy.
Jesus was viscerally opposed to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and remains so to all forms of hypocrisy.
There have been periods in the history of the Church in which there has been too much, exclusive emphasis
on rules and regulations. Those unable or unwilling to conform have simply fallen away or decided positively gone away. Rules
and regulations when imposed without genuine love and mercy put yokes on people’s shoulders that are impossible to carry.
At the same time, today, there are, in some quarters, calls to abolish all rules of any kind in the Church.
In the name of some kind of spirituality or freedom, or a false understanding of mercy and forgiveness, some would have the
Church become one big, “easy-osy” free-for-all.
Who needs a Pope, who needs doctrine, who needs structures, etc., etc.? Supporters of this approach might
quote Hosea and Jesus to say that external rules are not important, only mercy. Everyone can do anything they like - indeed
they should do anything they please, because that will give Jesus a chance to show
the greatness of his mercy!
All of this can be quite confusing. Which is it to be? Only rules, or only mercy? The alternative is a false
one. Jesus himself makes it clear in other parts of the Gospel that the law is holy and must be obeyed. He did not come to
abolish the law, but to fulfill it. And how did he fulfill it? By showing God’s merciful love to the end. In other words,
God’s law, as given to us by the prophets, by Jesus and by the apostles, exists so that by obeying it we can learn how
to be merciful, how to love when there is no reason to love.
Law is a tutor, leading us from the immaturity of our need to feel secure because we do things right to the
maturity of not being concerned with ourselves at all because we are wholly given over to loving and being merciful.
The mercy of Jesus is only an abolition of the law in the sense that it fulfils it. When it is fulfilled,
it is not needed any more. In accepting the mercy of Jesus, the sinner is first of all admitting that he has done something
wrong, that is, that he has disobeyed the law. He is then accepting that Jesus has the power to give him the grace which he
lost by being disobedient.
That grace means that the purpose of the law has now been fulfilled, and that purpose is to make the sinner
one again with Jesus.
Jesus certainly calls the sinner, but he calls him to repentance, that is, to admit that he is wrong and that
he is wrong because he failed to obey the law telling him what was right. The mercy of Christ is not a free-for-all: it is,
however, a free gift for those who will repent of the evil they have done. No repentance, no mercy - not because the mercy
is not available, but because the sinner is not available to God.
Jesus comes and sits with sinners, speaks with them and seeks to attract them to himself. But that does not
mean he approves of the sin they commit! Surely he had to die for those sins! No,
he draws close so that they might know that he puts them before their sins and also that, if they wish to stay in his friendship,
they must repent of their sins.
If we live in guilt, and endure the ridicule of others for it, it has nothing to do with genuine Catholicism.
For the Catholic, guilt ought only to be a passing moment leading him to the freedom and joy of the mercy that Jesus wants
for him. Seek mercy and you will fulfill perfectly the law of Christ.
Msgr. Peter
Magee
Sunday, June
5th, 2005 – St. Andrew Apostle, Silver Spring, 8.00 am
