The other day, as I was preparing for a Word and Communion service at the local nursing home, I stopped off at church to get the consecrated hosts for the service. I routinely loaded the hosts up into the ciborium I use for these services, counting out 60 hosts. I reverenced the tabernacle as I closed it, and as I did so I suddenly became very aware of Christ’s perfect love for me, and how imperfectly I love Christ in return. Audibly, I prayed, “Thank you Jesus for loving me so perfectly. Please know that I love you so very much, even though I love you so imperfectly.”
To be loved so perfectly by God, only to know how imperfectly I love God in return, is very humbling. Yet, it is also a great comfort. As I get older I have found comfort in the God that I use to fear as a child.
The Catholicism I was taught as a child emphasized how severe the consequences were of not following strictly the letter of the law. God was an exact and vindictive Deity, swift to judge, and judge severely. The words, “Lord have mercy,” were more a plea to not be condemned to everlasting damnation and was reflected in the wording of Tridentine Canon (Eucharistic Prayer) of the Mass.
In this Year of Mercy, proclaimed by Pope Francis 1, we encounter not the God who notes down all of our transgressions, but the God who loves us, and our imperfections, perfectly . The context of mercy is no longer a plea to be saved from condemnation, but a word indicative of the overwhelming love and mercy of God. I follow Jesus because I have come to fully realize that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life; the pathway to eternal love.
This Year of Mercy negates all the superfluous embellishments people attach to prayer and religious practices in order to bargain or buy their way into heaven. The overwhelming Mercy of God strips away the false intentions that people attach to such things as indulgences or praying certain prayers on certain days of the month to assure them eternal life. As the Psalmist writes in Psalm 51, “For in sacrifice you take no delight, burnt offering from me you would refuse, my sacrifice, a contrite spirit. A humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn.”
It is out of this well of gratitude that I humbly follow Jesus, like Zacchaeus, imperfectly the rest of my life. I may love God imperfectly, but I am comforted and delighted that God, nonetheless, loves me perfectly.
(picture from the Holy Spirit Retreat Center in Janesville, MN. (c) 2004 by Deacon Bob Wagner OFS)
