Mercy for Everyone

The beginning of Lent always makes me a little nervous. Six weeks stretch out in front of me during which I am called to turn away from sin and build a stronger spiritual life. How to do that? In the same ways that Christians have always sought holiness: by prayer, penance, fasting, almsgiving.

It seems like a difficult path to walk, and in some ways it is. Doing penance is daunting. But the point of Lenten penance is not suffering for suffering’s sake, but making sacrifices to strip away the sins, the bad habits, the inattentiveness, the way we allow the business of daily life to obscure what is really important. And when we peel all of that off and find our deepest inner selves, what do we find?

We find Christ: Christ forgiving us, loving us, seeking union with us, offering us mercy.

Pope Francis, in his proclamation of the Jubilee Year of Mercy, calls us to observe this year’s Lent as “a privileged moment to celebrate and experience God’s mercy.” His words are filled with hope and encouragement.

Pope Francis begins with the words, “Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy.” In Lent we focus on Jesus; therefore, in Lent we focus on the Father’s mercy. Where mercy is, there is love, and there is confidence instead of fear.

The pope encourages Catholics to turn to the Father with trust and to receive the sacrament of reconciliation. “For every penitent it will be a source of true interior peace,” he writes.

Pope Francis is calling us to take all of our sins and failings to God, knowing—not hoping or guessing, but knowing—that what we will find are God’s love and mercy and forgiveness. Not rejection, not judgment and condemnation, but the acceptance and healing and all-embracing love that are the desire of every human heart.

The pope calls us not only to seek and receive mercy, but also to extend it to others through forgiveness.

“We are called to show mercy because mercy has first been shown to us,” he writes. “Pardoning offenses becomes the clearest expression of merciful love, and for us Christians it is an imperative from which we cannot excuse ourselves.”

Forgiving others can be difficult, but it brings us deep peace to let go of past hurts and to move forward. That is one reason I believe that in this Lent, during the Year of Mercy, we need to extend mercy to ourselves. I don’t mean that we should give ourselves a pass when we’re doing something we shouldn’t do. I mean that we should forgive ourselves for our sins, mistakes and failures; we should let go of them and move forward with trust in God. We should put our energy into loving God, not condemning ourselves.

The God of the Gospels seems to me to be always in action. The Father sends his Son to redeem humanity. The Son travels far and wide to announce the Gospel. Jesus teaches, heals, challenges, consoles. He fulfills his mission by his suffering, death and Resurrection. Before his Ascension, he commissions his Apostles to evangelize the world, and he sends the Holy Spirit to make that possible.

We are called by our baptism to participate in that work. We can’t participate in it—we can’t do what the Lord calls us to do—if we are always looking backward, depleting our energy in regret and recrimination.

One of the reasons God offers us his mercy is to set us free not only from our sins, but also from the anxiety and depression that bedevil us when we stay stuck in the past. We cannot make God’s mercy known to others unless we allow it to heal every part of our own lives. We must believe that we are forgiven, and then we must forgive ourselves.

May your Lent be a time of rejoicing in God’s mercy and trusting in his love.