Must it be Love and Mercy by Avelino Cortes
'MUST IT BE LOVE AND MERCY?'
For it was out of love and mercy that our Heavenly Father created us. He created us to know him, to love him and to serve him. And from his love and mercy, he gave us our first great gift which is the freedom of choice.
A freedom which allows us to choose between good and evil.
Freedom is not necessarily a good thing as we can see in the predicament of our first parents Adam and Eve. (See Genesis 2.... The second account of creation and the fall of man ). Adam and Eve made a wrong choice after being tempted by the serpent.
That choice resulted in a fallen world and the loss of paradise.
Now, love and mercy cannot exist without the other,
because there cannot be love without mercy and there cannot be mercy without love.
Mercy is not simply leniency and compassion shown toward offenders but mercy
is also an expression of unconditional and compassionate deep love.
God lovingly grants mercy to the most hardened sinners who turn to him with trust.
Hence, could it possibly be, that the word love and the word mercy has the same meaning? It seems that these two words coexist.
Undoubtedly love and mercy is one of God's greatest attributes, because
Jesus, throughout the Gospel, reveals to us the unconditional love and mercy of our Heavenly Father. ( The parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the better known biblical revelations of God's unconditional love and mercy ) see Luke 15: 11-32.
We all work hard, throughout our lifetime, to make a living, to raise a family, to live comfortably and to acquire a home.
Some of us may be more successful than others and some of us may have little,
or even barely enough to survive. Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God. See Luke 6:20-22.
Others may seek great wealth, petty fame, immense power and so on. Life is but a puff of wind and whatever greatness of fame or earthly power we acquire, whether by our own talents or at the expense of others, are merely unnecessary illusions. And when our earthly life is completed, all that we have labored for and have acquired for will remain here on earth.
Nothing with which we have labored for belongs to us. We must acknowledge the fact that everything we have, has been given to us by God or through the kindness of others.
By giving up, without any reservations, all our earthly possessions and completely trusting in our Heavenly Father's unconditional love and mercy, we too will be welcomed back into our heavenly abode, like the unforeseen blessed fate of the younger son in the parable of the 'Prodigal Son'.
Pope Francis did not declare the Jubilee Year of Mercy to promote the devotion to the Divine Mercy. But what importance has the devotion to do with the Jubilee Year of Mercy? Everything, if not more. Some might like to argue that the Divine Mercy devotion is another one of the many Catholic devotions being practiced and that it is less important.
Let us first exam the word devotion. It is somewhat misinterpreted here.
Devotion, here, is not merely a pious practice but rather, it means something more.
It's the complete giving of oneself to someone, for what he means to you.
This is what we must understand here.
Imagine, what else is better than offering oneself completely to Jesus, the Divine Mercy. Most importantly, this devotion which was introduced to us through Sr Faustina, the secretary of Divine Mercy, was a request from our Lord Jesus, the King of Mercy.
Jesus is, in fact, inviting us to have a deeper relationship with him and in response to his invitation we should therefore embrace this special grace. Because of God's great gift of freedom of choice, we have the capacity to choose or to refuse him.
Blessed are they who believe ( Jesus, I trust in you ) in Him.
Therefore to shun and dismiss this special devotion is to reject his special grace.
Since Divine Mercy is the very center of our Christian Faith, let us ask ourselves, "Must it be love and mercy that we seek and give ?"