The Justifying Power of Mercy
Some years ago, I read about this incident at a middle school: a boy, who was about ten years old, was suspected of stealing. One day, at the end of class, his teacher called him over and asked him if he would run an errand for her. He agreed, and she handed him a short list of items to buy and her coin purse with money in it. He was not away long, and when he came back, he handed her a paper bag with the items on the list and her coin purse. She thanked him, took the bag and the coin purse and opened her handbag to drop them in. He stopped her and said, “You didn’t count the change.” She smiled at him and replied, “I trust you.” She dropped the coin purse into her handbag and closed it. From that moment on, he was perfectly trustworthy.
It is no secret that the cornerstone of Pope Francis’s ministry as the Vicar of Christ has been to proclaim the mercy of God. Indeed, it is the foundation of his own spiritual life, enshrined in his motto, “miserando atque eligendo,” (“showing him mercy and choosing him”).
What is the relationship between mercy and justice? St. Thérèse of Lisieux identifies each with the other: God’s justice IS his mercy! “What a sweet joy it is to think that God is Just, i.e. that He takes into account our weakness, that He is perfectly aware of our fragile nature.”[1]
I find this identification of mercy and justice at work in the incident of the woman caught in adultery.[2] We know what happened: a group of the scribes and the Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They reminded him that the law of Moses commanded that such a woman be stoned to death, and then demanded to know what he thought. Jesus’ verdict was that the one who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. With that, they all went away, beginning with the elders, leaving the woman alone with Jesus. He asked her, “’Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’”
There are a number of explanations of the incident. It is often presented in the context of justice vs mercy, the justice of the Law of Moses vs the mercy of Jesus. But if, as Thérèse says, God’s mercy and justice are identical, then we need to look more closely at what constitutes justice for Jesus. It is not a question of the justice of the Law of Moses vs the mercy of Jesus, but of the justice of the old Law vs the justice of Jesus, or more specifically, of the justice of the Old Law vs the justifying power of Jesus.
St. Paul discusses at length the question of justification, and the relationship of the law and the effects of faith. The justice of the law in the Old Testament was an educative justice: it made known the righteousness that God intends for the human beings He created. But it only teaches us; it cannot make that righteousness a reality in our lives. It can teach us not to lie, not to steal, not to murder, but it cannot remove from our souls the impulses that cause us to twist the truth, or to cheat and manipulate people in our relationships. Paul insists that this freedom from distorted desires only comes about through a living relationship of faith in Jesus.
To return to the exchange between Jesus and the woman, we usually read it in such a way that there is a tension between mercy and justice. We see mercy when He says that He does not condemn her, and we can find a form of justice when He tells her to go and sin no more. For Jesus to tell her to go and sin no more sounds like what any spiritual guide or mentor would say: a directive on how to live her life from now on. If that is all He is saying, then He says nothing more than the law says in the Old Testament.
Yet Jesus is not just a spiritual guide or mentor. He surpasses the law of the Old Testament. He is the incarnate Word of the Father, and God’s Word accomplishes what He says: “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”[3] God’s Word does what He says. That is clear throughout the Gospels. He heals the sick, cleanses lepers, forgives sins, simply by the words that He says. So it is also here in this passage. He first frees the woman from the punishment of the law when He says, “Neither will I condemn you,” and He then makes her capable of living the requirements of His law of love by saying “Go and do not sin again.” As St. Augustine writes, “For you, O Lord, bless the just man, but first you justify the wicked.”[4] When Jesus said to someone, “Your sins are forgiven,” He went beyond any legal forgiveness and brought about their interior justification. Justification does not just obliterate sinful actions of the past; it eradicates the distortions within us that caused those sinful actions. It renders us righteous in the very depths of our being and makes us capable of living the new commandment, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
This is not a new understanding of the Gospel. St. Teresa of Jesus speaks of this justifying power of mercy when she reflects that “the very One who gave peace to the apostles when they were together can give it to the soul. It has occurred to me that this greeting of the Lord must have amounted to much more than is apparent from its sound.”[5] She says that the same thing happened to the sinful woman who bathed the feet of Jesus in the house of Simon the Leper.[6] And John of the Cross, explaining what he calls “substantial locutions,” writes, “God did this to Abraham. When he said: Walk in my presence and be perfect, Abraham immediately became perfect and always proceeded with reverence for God. We note this power of God’s word in the Gospel when with a mere expression he healed the sick, raised the dead, and so on.”[7]
Substantial locutions are extraordinary graces, and Jesus no longer speaks to us His words of forgiveness. Or does He? When a priest acts in persona Christi, it is not his own words that he speaks. It is the words of Jesus, and, just as happened with the woman caught in adultery, His words accomplish what they say. “This is my body, this is my blood” spoken by the priest transform the bread and wine into His body and blood. “I absolve you from your sins” spoken to the penitent, not only wipes out past sins but goes deeper and heals the sources of sin within us – if we accept to be healed.
It was not by accident that Pope Francis established the Missionaries of Mercy during the Jubilee of Mercy. Mercy and justice are identical in the justifying graces that Jesus gives us through the sacraments. His justice is offered to us. We need only to be willing to accept it.
Notes
[1] St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Manuscript A, folio 83, vo, emphasis in the original
[2] Jn 8, 1-11
[3] Is. 55, 10-11
[4] St. Augustine, “Confessions,” Bk 10, ch. 2, para 2
[5] “Int. Cast. VII, 2, 6-7 – cf. Jn. 20:19-21
[6] Ibid. cf. Lk 7, 36-50
[7] “John of the Cross, “Ascent of Mt. Carmel, II, 31, 1; cf. Gen. 17, 1
Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, O.C.D. (Sr. Gabriela Hicks) was born in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the Gold Rush country of California, which she remembers as heaven on earth for a child! She lived a number of years in Europe, and then entered the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Flemington, New Jersey, where she has been a member for forty years. www.flemingtoncarmel.org.
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