“Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s Mercy.”

This seems like the best line to summarize the contents of this Sunday’s readings. In the first reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, we hear how the suffering servant will suffer so that many may be free and know salvation as a result of the suffering servant taking their iniquity upon himself. The Psalm response asks that the Lord might let his mercy be upon us as “we place our trust in Him. In the second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, we are reminded that Jesus came among us to become our great high priest in order that we all might come before His throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace and timely help. In the Gospel passage Jesus dismisses His disciples’ concerns about who will be the greatest and tells them that He has come not to be great but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. His is a message of mercy. Yes, these readings can best be summed up with the simple line: “Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy.”

“Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s Mercy,” is also the sentence with which Pope Francis begins the letter in which he announces that on December 8, 2015 the Church will begin a Jubilee Year of Mercy. This letter states that everything about Jesus and His mission was intended to reveal to humanity God’s mercy and His desire that all people be saved by knowing about His infinite mercy. Over the next two Sundays, I would like to do something a little different. Normally Father Yaw and I alternate preaching on Sundays. However, over the next two weeks, I am going to do something a little different. I am going to make you listen to me two Sundays in a row. That way you will really want to be shown a little mercy! This week I would like to talk a little bit about God’s mercy and the Year of Mercy and next week I would like to say a few words about how God’s Mercy ought to change all of us.

The purpose for which Jesus came can not be stated any more clearly than what he tells us in today’s Gospel passage. He states: “The Son of Man came to serve and give His life as a ransom for many.” Jesus has come to show us His mercy. Everything that the Church does is intended to proclaim God’s mercy and the mercy that we as Christians are intended to announce to all people. From the moment we arrive at Mass, our entire liturgy is focused upon announcing the salvation that our merciful Saviour came to win for us.

When we approach the church building, we enter through doors which in the ancient tradition of the Church were intended to represent the doors of salvation. When a person enters the Church, he or she is symbolically entering into the place where God desires to encounter us on earth. This year in Rome, as the Holy Year begins, the doors of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and many other churches around the world will be open to signify that Jesus invites all of us in to be saved. In a very significant way during this Year of Mercy, those who are invited in to be saved are all sinners. The salvation that we are called to share is expressed in the holy water fonts that also exist at the doors of every church. When we pass through the doors, we are to remind ourselves of our baptism and the salvation that Christ has won for us. One of the reasons that the confessionals are also located near the doors in our church is also to express the reality that if we have sinned after we have been washed in Baptism, we are invited to experience the mercy that God wishes to show us in His Church through the sacrament of Reconciliation.

Once we pass through the doors of our church, we are invited to be participants in the Church’s liturgy. At the liturgy we share in and participate here on earth with the Heavenly liturgy. This participation reminds us that Jesus gave His life that we all might be saved and spend eternity in heaven with Him. At the very beginning of the celebration we start off by asking that Christ have mercy on us. Some people think that the reason Christians go to Church is because they think they are holy. It seems to me that the reason why we begin Mass with the penitential rite asking God to forgive us and show us His mercy is because we know we are not holy and that we need God’s grace and forgiveness in order to be holy.

In the Scriptures that are proclaimed at each Mass we hear the story of God’s mercy and his loving forgiveness. The Scriptures are not the story about how wonderful Christians are. The Scriptures are the story about how human and sinful Christians are and how loving and forgiving God is through His Son Jesus. Just think of the apostles in all of the Gospels. They are depicted as a group that never understands what Jesus is talking about and are always betraying, denying and running away from Him when He is in trouble. Peter denies him, Thomas doubts Him and the rest of them run away when He is crucified. Throughout all of this, the story in the Gospels is about how Jesus never stops loving them and never loses faith in them. In the Gospels we see that as Pope Francis tells us: “Jesus is the face of the Father’s mercy.”

That Jesus’s mercy is not something of the past, but rather something alive and for us today is most fully communicated by the fact that just as He gave His life as a ransom for many at His crucifixion, so too each time the Eucharist is celebrated He gives Himself to us as a ransom for our sins and to show us the Father’s mercy. How beautiful it is that every time that we receive the Eucharist we share the sign of peace with our brothers and sisters and then acknowledge that Jesus’ mercy and forgiveness heal us and offer us the strength to continue on in our journey towards God. The beautiful proclamation before we receive the Eucharist proclaims: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb.” He who came to ransom us from our sins gives Himself to us every time we come to Mass. As He does so, we are invited to proclaim our faith and trust in Him, as we say: “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the words and my soul shall be healed.” What could be a more perfect fulfillment to our Psalm response today in which we stated the words: “Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you..” Every time we receive the Eucharist, Jesus Christ, the face of the Father’s mercy comes to cast His loving gaze upon us in our neediness and shows us completely the Father’s mercy.

One of the reasons that Pope Francis has chosen next year to be the Year of Mercy is that it is the year in which we will read the Gospel of Luke at all of the Sunday Masses. The Gospels are divided into a three year cycle: one year we read the Gospel of Matthew, another year Mark and another year Luke. The Gospel of John is read through each of the three year cycles in different seasons. As today is the feast of St. Luke and it will be the Gospel of Luke that is read throughout the Year of Mercy, I would like to say just a few words about Luke’s Gospel. Some have called the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of Mercy. In it we have some special stories that are not found in other Gospels. Perhaps the best example of one such story is the story of the Prodigal Son. In this story, the father of the son who has sinned and gone astray does not just wait and look for his lost son. This powerful, wealthy and old man runs down the road to meet his son and hugs him and refuses to let him finish his apology. This is the image that God wants us to have of Him. God sends Jesus to be the Divine Messenger of God running to meet us. Every Eucharist represents God running from heaven to be with us. Pope Francis says that this is how he wants all Catholics to experience the sacrament of Confession. He asks that priests will greet those who come to Confession with such warmth that they will feel like they have had an experience of the loving Father running to meet them.

I think for many people religion is not an experience of the loving Father coming to meet us. Somewhere in the experience of many people religion has been an experience of judgement. I would like to share with you a story that I am sure I will tell many times while I am here. Some years ago I went to a family home for dinner. A little girl in this family was preparing for her First Communion. As we were eating, a lengthy conversation developed as to whether she was going to eat her vegetables. While trying to get her daughter to eat her vegetables, this young girl’s mother said to me: “Father Michael, please tell my daughter to eat her vegetables because only little girls who eat their vegetables can make their First Communion, isn’t that right?” To which I happily replied: Oh, no. God loves every one, especially little girls who do not eat their vegetables. The little girl’s face lit up with joy at the news that God loves everyone— especially little girl’s who do not eat their vegetables.

I suspect part of the reason that Pope Francis is so popular is that he is helping all of us to realize that God loves everyone— especially those who do not eat their vegetables. In some ways it is great that he is doing this. However, I think if all of us took the responsibility of reading our Bibles and knowing Jesus a little better, we would already be much more delighted in how much he loves us. “Jesus is the face of the Father’s mercy,” not because Pope Francis has said so, but because God is a God of love, mercy and compassion who has sent His only Son into the World that we might be saved. God runs to each of us with the joy of the Father in the story of the Prodigal Son— we only need to turn toward Him and accept His loving and merciful embrace.

Fr. Michael McGourty,
Pastor—St. Peter’s Parish, Toronto