A PILGRIM’S NOTES: EASTER IS JOY!

FAUSTO GOMEZ OP

Every Easter I am joyfully surprised by the attitude of Jesus’ disciples after the Pentecost experience. The first Christians are a happy people. Two qualities adorn their lives: the joy of their faith in the Crucified and Risen Lord and the courage to suffer persecution for his sake. When I was a young student I could not understand why some of my teachers appeared to be sad.

Joy is a passion and an emotion of the human person. It stands for true satisfaction and delight, for the gladness produced by goodness, beauty, God. Pope Francis underlines this joy in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, or The Joy of the Gospel (2013). How can Christians not be joyful? We believe that God is our Father, Jesus is our savior and brother, and the Holy Spirit, our advocate and consoler. Christian joy is a shared joy: We are all brothers and sisters. Fraternal/sisterly love increases our personal joy: “When many rejoice together, the joy of each is richer; they warm themselves at each other’s flame” (St. Augustine).

Believers with others rejoice contemplating God’s creation: “The hillsides are wrapped in joy, the meadows are covered with flocks, the valleys clothed with wheat; they shout and sing for joy” (Ps 65: 12-13). Joy is one of the fruits and blessings of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22).

If we go through the main events of the life of Jesus we feel the presence of joy in his life and message. Contemplate the Annunciation to Mary: “The angel came to her and said: ‘Rejoice, full of grace, the Lord is with you’” (Lk 1:28). The Visitation of Mary: How is it, Elizabeth says, “that the mother of the Lord comes to me? The moment your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby within me suddenly moved for joy” (Lk 1:44). The angel announcing to the shepherds the Birth of Jesus: “Don’t be afraid; I am here to give you good news, great joy for all the people. Today a Savior has been born to you” (Lk 2:10-11 and 20).We perceive the joy of Zacchaeus welcoming Jesus to his house (Lk 19:6). The lovely parables of the lost show the joy of the Father in heaven over the found sheep, silver pieces and prodigal son: “Let us rejoice and celebrate for my younger son has come back home” (see Lk 15:6, 9, 32.

The core of Jesus’ preaching is The Beatitudes, which are eight forms of happiness: Happy are the poor in spirit, the merciful, and the peacemakers – and even those who mourn! The path presented to us by Jesus is the path of joy and happiness, and not the path of wealth, of pleasure and power but the path of spiritual poverty. Therefore, Jesus tells us, “Be glad and rejoice!”(Mt 5:12). In truth, the Beatitudes say to us: “O the bliss of being a Christian, the joy of following Christ” (W. Barclay).

Jesus calls sinners to conversion, which causes joy – joy in the sinner, in the community and in heaven: “I tell you, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine upright people who have no need of repentance” (Lk 15:10).

Jesus is conversing with his apostles during the Last Supper. He is going to be crucified and die the next day Good Friday.  He tells them that God loves them, that they are the branches attached to the vine, that is, to him. Jesus adds: “I have told you this so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete” (Jun 15: 11). A little later in the evening, and after announcing to them his departure, He tells them: “You are sad now, but I shall see you again, and your hearts will be full of joy and that joy no one can take away from you” (Jn 16:22).

There is great joy in the presence of the Risen Lord: “They were still incredulous for sheer joy and wonder” (Lk 24:41). There is wonderful joy in the disciples after witnessing the Ascension of Christ: “As he blessed, he left them, and was taken up to heaven, they fell down to do him reverence, then returned to Jerusalem filled with joy” (Lk 24:52).

After the Resurrection of Christ, the apostles preached the Gospel with great courage and joy. They were often persecuted, imprisoned, flogged for doing so. They were “glad for having had the honor of suffering humiliation for the sake of the name” (Ac 5:41). What name? Jesus our Lord! Indeed, the Resurrection of the Lord is joy! The converts of Paul and Barnabas “were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit” (Ac 13:51). The jailer of Paul and Silas in Philippi rejoiced with his whole household at having received the gift of faith in God (cf. Ac 16:34). After baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch, Philip was snatched away by the Spirit and disappeared, “but the eunuch continued on his way rejoicing” (Ac 8:39).

How did the first Christian communities experience Christ’s Resurrection?  By being faithful, joyful and passionately in love with the Crucified and Risen Lord: “They remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to fraternity, to the breaking of the bread, and to prayer… They shared their food gladly and generously; they praised God and were looked up to by everyone”! (Ac, 2:42, 46-47).

Pascal says: “No one is as happy as an authentic Christian” or, we may add, as an authentic believer or an authentic human being! Are there many authentic Christians? Mary Our Lady rejoices: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Lk 1: 46-47). The saints are true Christians and that is why they are all joyful: “The saints rejoiced all their lives long, like men at a feast” (St. Athanasius).

The disciples to Emmaus are sad. They have a reason to be sad: they believe Jesus is dead. What is bad is that those who believe that Jesus rose from the dead are sad (J. L. Martin Descalzo). Christians who are sad, Bonhoeffer says, have not understood the Resurrection, the joy of the resurrection! “It is impossible to be sad in the presence of the Risen Lord” (Schillebeeckx). No wonder, the monk and theologian Evagrius Ponticus (4^th century) added, to the traditional seven capital sins, the eighth capital sin: sadness.

What is the main cause of Christian joy? True love is the source of real happiness and joy. Love is joyful. Indeed charity as love of God and of all neighbors causes real joy: Love is, with peace and mercy, an internal act of charity.  You and I ask: Why should we rejoice always? Life is full of sufferings and pains and violence and injustice! Why should we? Because in spite of our miseries God loves us, and Jesus heals us, and the Holy Spirit consoles and strengthens us! Disciples of Jesus through the centuries even when persecuted and martyred were and are “full of joy” (Ac 5:41).

Life, our life on earth is also visited by suffering. Suffering, however, is not opposed to happiness: “It makes me happy to suffer for you” (Col1:24). There is a time to mourn: “Blessed are those who mourn; they shall be comforted” (Mt 5:4). When we are hurting, Jesus our Savior, brother and friend invites us to come to him: “Come to me all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you” (Mt 11:28). Suffering is part of our life, yes, but suffering is not the word that gives meaning to our life: love is. And love, only love can make suffering light, joyful and hopeful. One of my favorite priest writers is José Luis Martin Descalzo who passed away at sixty after years in dialysis. He wrote: “I confess that I never ask God that he cures my sickness. This would seem to me an abuse of trust. I ask him, yes, that He helps me bear my suffering with joy.” To the Ten Commandments, Descalzo adds the eleventh: “Be joyful.” The poet and mystic Rabindranath Tagore writes: I was sleeping and dreamed that life was joyful; I woke up and saw that life was service; I began to serve and saw that serving was joy.

The virtue of loving hope is permeated by joy: “Be joyful in hope” (Rom 12:12). Hope is the virtue of the pilgrim. We are pilgrims on the way to our Father’s house. We cannot be perfectly joyful here on earth, but we are certainly joyful already because God’s love is in our hearts. Love is hopeful: we believe in heaven, in eternal life as the object of our hope and the end of our longing (cf. 1 Jn 2:25). We strongly believe that we shall be outrageously happy in the life to come – after a happy ending! On the way, we truly rejoice because we believe, love and hope.

We Christians are Easter People and Alleluia is our song! On the journey of life, St. Augustine invites us to sing joyfully with him: “Let us sing now… in order to lighten our labors. Sing but continue your journey, making progress in virtue, faith and right living.” He adds: “Make sure that your life sings the same tune as your mouth.”

We joyfully hope and pray that Jesus will tell us at the end of our earthly pilgrimage: “Come, share your master’s joy” (Mt 25:21-23).

(Published in O Clarim, The Macau Catholic Weekly, April 8, 2016)

 

 

                                                                                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

MERCY PATHWAYS: Forgiving

FAUSTO GOMEZ OP
Pope Francis reminds us often that the Year of Mercy is the Year of Forgiveness, which implies not only individual forgiveness but also social and collective forgiveness. The practice of forgiveness is a very significant pathway of mercy.
St. Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) speaks – like other Fathers of the Church – of two kinds of almsgiving: corporal almsgiving or giving to the needy what we can; and spiritual almsgiving, or forgiving the one who offends us. He adds that the first – corporal work – should be practiced with the indigent, and the second – spiritual work – with sinners. Thus, he ends, “you will always be able to give something: if not money, at least forgiveness.” For St. Augustine forgiving those who wrong us is the highest form of almsgiving.
God’s mercy is a forgiving mercy. Christians are asked to be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive the debts of others to us,” we pray in the Our Father. Jesus asks his followers to forgive others when they start praying: “When you stand to pray, forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance so that your heavenly Father may in turn forgive you your faults” (Mk 11:26).
Following the Way, the true followers of Jesus forgive all and always (Lk 6:37-38). If they do not forgive, they are not forgiven (Mt 6:14-15). They must strive, moreover, to excuse others – like Jesus on the cross (Lk 23:34). We remember the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Mt 18:21-35). Indeed, “unless we forgive, we fight” (P. Kreeft). Words to ponder from St. Augustine: “Men without remedy are those who do not attend to their own sins to fix their attention on the sins of the others. They do not check what they can make right, but what they can bite.” At times, we criticize others just because their sins are different from ours (Kempis).
Forgiving is one of the spiritual works of mercy (cf. CCC 2447), and article 10 of the Creed (cf. CCC 976-983). Jesus gave to the apostles the power to forgive sins and asks all of us in return to forgive one another. Genuine merciful love of neighbor is forgiving. Like mercy, forgiving presupposes justice. Christian forgiveness “is simply the expulsion of hatred, the rejection of wishing evil to the other; it is hope in the conversion of the criminal” (E. Lasarre).
True Christian forgiving implies forgetting – erasing the faults of the neighbor against us. We ought to forget the sins or faults of others – always. How can I forget? I have a good memory! Yes, but it should be a reconciled memory. If one remembers the faults of others against us, he remembers them as he remembers a healed wound – the scar is healed, even unnoticeable.
How about our sins? We recall them only not to commit them again, and in general we forget them too: God forgave and forgot our sins, why remind him of them again? On the other hand, as the saints tell us, remembering them as offenses against God may help us be even sorrier for having committed them.
Let us not forget to forgive ourselves. We have to forgive ourselves for our sins and failures, for our bad past and focus on the present, on today (the only thing in our hands) journeying forward towards the future of hope – towards the all-embracing merciful and forgiving God.
God forgives us if we are sorry. How do we forgive others? Do we only forgive them when they are sorry? Not so: we are not God! We forgive always: “Not seven times, but seventy times seven” (Mt 18:22). God forgives us always, if we are sorry. Jesus continues inviting us to unconditional forgiveness (cf. Mt 18:21-35). It is good and fruitful to forgive others actually every night within our night prayers.
On his way back to Rome after his glorious trips to Cuba and USA (September 19-28, 2015), Pope Francis was told that some pedophile priests are not sorry for what they did to children. The Pope says: There is a difference between forgiving and being forgiven. We have to forgive always, but we shall receive forgiveness if we are sorry, that is, if we do not close the door to receive forgiveness.
On March 12, 2000, first Sunday of Lent of the Jubilee Year, the Day of Forgiveness, St. John Paul II asked God for forgiveness for all the sins the children of the Church have committed through the centuries, and also for the sins Christians commit today. It was beautiful for the Holy Father to ask for this double forgiveness. On April 10, 2014, Pope Francis asked for forgiveness for the damage priests have done “for having sexually abused children.” In July 2015, Pope Francis acknowledged failures and sins in the so called “conquista de América,” and asked for forgiveness to the peoples of Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay.
We are all sinners (cf. Jn 8:7) and need to ask God constantly for his merciful forgiveness. Like the Publican in the Temple (Lk 18:13). Like the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:21). Like Peter after denying Jesus three times (Lk 22:54-62). We are all sinners indeed and are truly sorry for our sins and strive seriously – as Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery and continues telling us – “from now on sin no more” (Jn 8:11). Jesus says: “I have not come to call the just, but sinners, to repentance” (Lk 5:32). God forgives when we are sorry for the sins committed and therefore decided not to commit them gain (cf. CCC 1451). God forgives us and we forgive those who offend us thus imitating our infinitely merciful God One and Triune.
As sinners, and in a particular way in the context of the Holy Year of Mercy, we realize the need of the Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation individually and as members of the Church and concrete communities. Pope Francis invites us all to approach this essential sacrament and channel of God’s grace: Confession is “an encounter with mercy” (The Name of God is Mercy).The Argentinian Pope adds: “Let us place the Sacrament of Reconciliation at the center once more in such a way that it will enable people to touch the grandeur of God’s mercy with their own hands. For every penitent, it will be a source of true interior peace.”
A card I received from a friend shouted at me: “Asking for pardon and forgiving make love new every day.”

A PILGRIM’S NOTES: Called To Be Merciful (4)

Fausto Gomez OP
As human beings always trying to be happy, we need to be compassionate: “If you wish the happiness of the others, be compassionate. If you wish your own happiness, be compassionate” (Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness).
As followers of Christ, we are asked to be compassionate or merciful with all, if we wish to be happy here and hereafter. Faith asks Christians in particular – as Pope Francis urges us – to be instruments of mercy in the world, to imitate God the merciful Father, to follow the way of mercy of Jesus, our only Way, and, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, to answer the constant call of Mother Church to practice merciful love, the works of mercy.
The Beatitude “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Mt 5:7) constitutes in a way “a synthesis of the whole of the Good News” (John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, DM 8). St. Caesarius of Arles (470-543) writes: “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. All wish to receive mercy, few are ready to show mercy to others…” He advises us: “You must show mercy in this life if you hope to receive it in the next.”
The merciful are called blessed “because they imitate God” (J. M. Cabodevilla). They forgive others always (Lk 6:37; Mt 18:21-22); if we do not forgive, we are not forgiven (Mt 6:14-15). Following Jesus’ example on the cross (Lk 23:34), they tend to excuse the sins of others. Jesus forgives and heals at the same time (Mk 2:1-12). The followers of Christ are called then to forgive and also to provide affective and effective help to those in need: the sick and wounded on the roads of life.
Mercy is God’s gift and our task – the task of being merciful to others. There are many merciful souls in our world, thanks God. Today many people are moved to compassion by the miseries and sufferings of others as it is movingly shown when peoples face natural or man-made calamities, such as an earthquake, a terrorist attack and personal miseries. Unfortunately, on the other hand, there are many other people who seem not compassionate but cruel and unjust.
Who are not truly merciful among us? In classical theology, we read that the envious are neither charitable nor merciful: they rejoice over the misfortunes of their neighbors. Neither the proud are merciful: they disrespect the others as inferior, and when misery visits them, the proud think they deserve it. Nor the selfish, who are concerned only with themselves and do not feel any passion when seeing the suffering others. Those who love all, except their enemies are not fully merciful, for mercy to be a sparkle of God’s mercy cannot be selective: we have to love all neighbors, including the enemies (Mt 5:43-48). The unjust and also those who are externally, rigidly, merely judicially just are not merciful. True merciful love purifies mere justice of its coldness, and aids it to go beyond “the eye for an eye” or “tit for tat” or the juridical mentality (J. M. Cabodevilla).
Love is merciful and envy, pride, selfishness are caused by lack of love, which is generous, humble and other-centered (cf. 1 Cor 13:4-7). We are all sinners and inclined to be selfish. Our merciful acts help us conquer our “fat ego” and be sensitive to the needs of others.
Mercy is compassion towards another needy person or group of persons. The mercy-giver, however, is not only a giver but also a mercy-receiver. The receiver of mercy also gives something to the giver: an occasion to practice mercy, an opportunity to love and be loved by a brother or sister. In Christian perspective, a true merciful act then has “a bilateral and reciprocal quality.” When this quality is absent “our actions are not yet true acts of mercy, nor has there yet been fully completed in us that conversion to which Christ has shown us by way of his words and example” (John Paul II, DM 14). The merciful person practices mercy not only because if not tomorrow the next day he or she will likewise be a receiver, but mainly because he or she is imitating Jesus who is particularly present in the receiver of mercy (Mt 25:40). Indeed, God returns mercy to mercy, and moreover merciful people invite others with their works of mercy to be merciful.
To be merciful means in the concrete to do compassionate acts, the works of mercy, that is, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Pope Francis invites us through the Year of Mercy: “It is my burning desire that, during this Jubilee, the Christian people may reflect on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. It will be a way to reawaken our conscience, too often grown dull in the face of poverty. And let us enter more deeply into the heart of the Gospel where the poor have a special experience of God’s mercy. Jesus introduces us to these works of mercy in his preaching so that we can know whether or not we are living as his disciples. Let us rediscover these corporal works of mercy: to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead. And let us not forget the spiritual works of mercy: to counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, admonish sinners, comfort the afflicted, forgive offences, bear patiently those who do us ill, and pray for the living and the dead.” (Cf. CCC 2447).

The Jubilee Year is a “year of grace”(Lk 4:18-19) and a “year of mercy” in which like the fig in the parable of the fig tree (Lk 13:6-9), people are given another year to bear fruit – of love, mercy, and justice. The followers of Jesus the Merciful One are in the world to show the merciful face of God to the people around them. It is time to walk the talk!
May Mary the Mother of Mercy help us all obtain God’s mercy and be merciful!
(Published in O Clarim, Macau Catholic Weekly, February 2016)

A PILGRIM’S NOTES: God Is Mercy and Just (3)

Fausto Gomez OP
The Extraordinary Holy Year Christians are celebrating focuses on mercy, on the virtue of mercy, which is a moral virtue and an effect of the virtue of charity. What happens to the virtue of justice? Does mercy replace justice?
In Sacred Scriptures, justice is justice/love and love is love/justice. The merciful love of Jesus goes beyond and above justice, but it presupposes justice, which is mini-charity, mini-compassion. Justice in Christian perspective is charitable and merciful justice.
“Be merciful as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36), Jesus says. How is the mercy of God our Father? Divine justice is different from human justice; it is a “superior justice” (Mt 5:20), the justice Jesus preaches in the Sermon on the Mount. It is the justice of the father of the prodigal son and not the justice of the elder son (Lk 15:11-32), the justice of the owner of a vineyard who sends workers to his vineyard and at the end of the day, regardless of the number of working hours, pays the same wages to all (Mt 20:1-16). This kind of justice is mercy with justice, merciful justice. “God’s mercy works above his justice, not against it” (St. Thomas Aquinas). His mercy is the root and plenitude of justice. He being just, St. John of the Cross writes, “you feel that He loves you and gives gifts justly.”
In our world everybody talks of justice – of “human justice” – but often many practice it, in a cruel, vengeful and unforgiving way, that is, in an unjust way. The saying “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (Mt 5:38) is a failure of an authentic justice. It is, as St. John Paul II writes, “a distortion of justice in the past, and today’s forms continue to be modelled on it.” In our world, this “alleged justice” continues unabated: “the neighbor is sometimes destroyed, killed, deprived of liberty or stripped of fundamental human rights” (Dives in Misericordia, DM, 12). Justice needs mercy to be purified. One of Dostoevsky’s characters tells another: “You have justice, but you lack compassion, and therefore you are unjust.” St. Thomas Aquinas says that mercy without justice is foolishness and justice without mercy is cruelty.
True human justice is not just giving to another what is his or hers. It is more radically “giving” to others their rights, including the right to life, to freedom, to education, to pursue happiness. True justice is equality and harmony. In Christian perspective, justice demands moreover that all have a share in the goods of creation created by God for all (Vatican II, GS, 69).
Justice needs love to be full and perfect justice. Justice in itself – and its language “I” and “mine” – is cold, while love – and its language “we” and “ours” – is warm. Mercy adds to the cold relationship of justice the warm, open relationship of love. For the Christian, justice – like all other saving virtues – is a mediation of charity or love, which is the “form” of all virtues.
In his wonderful Encyclical Letter Dives in Misericordia, St. John Paul II states that “mercy differs from justice,” “justice serves love,” and love is greater than justice “in the sense that it is primary and fundamental.” He adds: “The relationship between justice and love is manifested in mercy.” Jesus, the Sinless One, took upon himself our sins and died on the Cross for them and thus “paid” for us to God: divine justice is rooted on mercy and flows in merciful love (DM, 4-5, 7-8). Indeed, authentic mercy is “the most profound source of justice.” In a true sense, mercy is “the most perfect incarnation of equality” and therefore of justice, too. Love includes justice and moves to mercy “which in its turn reveals the perfection of justice” (DM 8). “Is justice enough?” It is not: merciful love is needed to shape human life in its different dimensions (DM 12).
In his excellent fist encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est (DCE), Pope Benedict XVI speaks powerfully and clearly on the relationship between justice and charity (and mercy), and the need of having the latter to purify and practice the former. Working for a just social order is the central task of politics. Indirectly, however the Church “cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice” (DCE 28). The central role of the Church in society is caritas as love of neighbor, which means “love and concern for the other” (DCE, 7-8, 15). There will always be “the need for the service of love.” Even the most just State will not be able to provide “loving personal concern.” The Pope Emeritus adds: There is “necessary interplay between love of God and love of neighbor,” as in the loving and merciful life of Christ. Indeed, “Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave” (DCE 18).
In His lovely Bull of Proclamation of the Jubilee of Mercy, Misericordiae Vultus (MV), Pope Francis underlines that mercy is above justice, but there cannot be true mercy without justice, which is the first step – “necessary and indispensable.” He added later: “In a world which all too often is merciless to the sinner and lenient to the sin, we need to cultivate a strong sense of justice, to discern and to do God’s will” (Christmas Eve Homily, December 24, 2015). But justice is not enough to have even a truly just world, mercy that surpasses justice is needed (MV 10, 20-21).
Does mercy replace justice? Certainly not! Mercy and justice meet! The prophet Micah tells us: “This is what the Lord asks of you, only this: ‘To act justly, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with the Lord’” (Mi 6:8).
(Published in O Clarim, February, 2016)