In Conversation with God – Volume 3 Part 2: Weeks 7 - 12 in Ordinary Time by Fernandez Francis

Author:Fernandez, Francis [Fernandez, Francis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scepter UK Ltd
Published: 2011-12-04T05:00:00+00:00

82.2 Mercy presupposes justice, and surpasses the demands made on us by the virtue of justice.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,[451] we read in the Gospel of today’s Mass. God is particularly anxious that his children should develop this attitude towards their brothers and sisters, and He tells us that the mercy shown towards us will be in proportion to the mercy we ourselves have shown. The measure you will give will be the measure you get.[452] It will be a proportionate amount, not the same amount, for God’s goodness surpasses all our reckonings. To a grain of wheat will correspond a grain of gold; to our sack of wheat will correspond a sack of gold. For the fifty denarii we forgive, the ten thousand talents (a fortune of incalculable wealth) that we owe to God will be written off. But if we harden our hearts towards the misfortunes and weaknesses of others, the less accessible and narrower will be the gate by which we are to enter Heaven and find God himself. He who would receive mercy in Heaven must practise it in this world. Because of this, since we all long for mercy, we must act in such a way that mercy becomes our advocate in this world, so that we may afterwards be free in the next. There is mercy in Heaven which is reached by means of showing mercy on earth.[453]

Occasionally we try to set mercy up against justice, as though the one meant laying aside the demands of the other. This is certainly a mistaken view, for it makes mercy unjust, whilst the truth of the matter is that mercy is the fulness of justice. Saint Thomas teaches[454] that when God acts with mercy – and when we imitate him – He does something which is above justice, but which presupposes having previously had and lived this virtue to the full. In the same way, if someone gives two hundred denarii to a creditor to whom he owes only one hundred, he does not act against justice, but – as well as satisfying what is just – he behaves with liberality and mercy. This attitude towards our neighbour is the fulness of all justice. Moreover, without mercy we come in the end to a system of oppression of the weakest by the strongest or to an arena of permanent struggle of some against the others.[455]

With justice alone it is not possible for there to be real family life, or harmony at work, or concord amidst the great variety of social activities. It is obvious that if we do not live justice in the first place, we cannot practise the mercy that God asks of us. But after giving to each one what is his, after giving what belongs to him in justice, a merciful attitude leads us much further: for example, it leads us to know how to forgive offences promptly (even though these offences may be just in our imagination or

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