The Divine Mercy is a gift of God. It comes
to us from God much like the gifts we give to one another, carefully protected
and packaged, securely wrapped and tied with a ribbon. It is a thing, a
tangible thing. A gift held out to us by the hands of Jesus which we must
accept with our own hands. A gift offered which we need to receive.
And having received it we need to unpack it
– to bring it into the light, examine it and learn to understand, value and
love it. Occasionally people will speak against it and ridicule it and tell you
it’s just another ‘devotion’. Then we must carefully free it from layers of
misunderstanding and ignorance.
And having done all that we need to live the gift. We need to become what we
have received – trusting and merciful.
This gift of God can only be understood by
those in whom another gift, the gift of gratitude, has matured. This is not
always a common occurrence.
To really appreciate the light we have to have known
the darkness; to appreciate food and drink we have to have experienced hunger
and thirst. If someone saves us from being swept away in a flash flood, falling
over a cliff, or being buried in a collapsed tunnel we naturally feel gratitude
towards them. We can’t help but feel it. In fact, if a person were not to feel
gratitude toward such a benefactor we would say there was something wrong.
And yet, before the gifts of God, among
which his Divine Mercy is the greatest, we can often find ourselves standing
almost completely unmoved. What has gone wrong?
Broadly speaking I think one of two things
has gone wrong. Either we are evil, or we have not been paying attention.
Remember the servant in the Gospel who was
released for an enormous debt he simply could not pay - who then went out and
had a fellow servant thrown into a prison because he could not pay a paltry
amount? Think about that. Let the enormity of the crime sink in. What went
wrong?
The answer must surely be that this servant
was either evil – or had not been paying attention when the master forgave him
his colossal debt. This servant must not have realised the enormity of the gift
of mercy the master had showered on him and so he felt absolutely no gratitude
and therefore was able to fail in mercy towards his fellow servant.
Whatever the case, he was a servant who
needed to be taught a lesson and the master had him thrown into prison to be
tortured till the whole debt had been paid. [Sounds a bit like Purgatory,
doesn’t it?]
We can easily imagine that this servant
would be paying much greater attention if at any time in the future he should
be shown mercy. And with the mercy would most certainly come gratitude – unless
that servant was just plain evil.
Let us not forget the final line of this
parable because it tells us where God expects our gratitude, and therefore our
mercy to come from: That’s what my
heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and
sisters from your heart. (Mtt 18:35) I repeat: From your heart.
When
this servant was forgiven his huge debt he wasn’t paying attention and so the
Master’s mercy never reached his heart. It left his heart untouched, unchanged.
That’s why he felt no gratitude. That’s why he failed to show mercy to his
fellow servant. That’s why he was punished.
Now it only remains for us to apply this
reflection to our own lives. We can summarise the process already outlined as:
1. God forgives us.
2. We are grateful.
3. We forgive others.
4. We become like God.
Is that how it is in your life? Are you
grateful to God for his mercy towards you? Do you show that gratitude by
forgiving others (especially those who have hurt you the most)?
Remember that all mercy begins with God’s
mercy towards you and that it is your response to that mercy which give you
power to forgive others from your heart.
From your heart!
