What do we know about mercy?  I think that we can say that almost everything that we know about mercy we have learned from God and the Divine Mercy that he has shown us throughout all of salvation history.  Without the witness and example of mercy that God the Father shows us we would know nothing of real mercy.

     Human beings are not by nature merciful beings.  Adam and Eve showed no mercy to one another as they tried to shunt the guilt and shame of sin to one another, pointing the finger beyond themselves and looking for someone else to take the blame and suffer the punishment of death brought on by sin.  Cain was certainly not merciful to his brother Abel when he killed him out of jealousy and envy.  Esau showed no mercy to his brother Jacob, Jacob’s sons showed no mercy to their younger brother Joseph.  Saul showed no mercy to David, David showed no mercy to Uriah the Hittite and down through history we see people looking out for themselves and having very little to do with mercy and forgiveness.  Even in our own secular world today we see little merciful love.  Apart from God in Christ, mercy makes no sense to human persons in our world.  Not until we come to Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, do we see any true example of human mercy in the face of persecution and betrayal.  Jesus, the just one, makes his whole life an offering of mercy on the cross where one of his final words was a plea for mercy, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.”  Jesus not only teaches us about mercy but he lives mercy with his dying breath.  He shows us clearly, in a heart pierced for our offenses, a mercy that reaches beyond death and creates the way for us to new life.  He shows us the mercy of the Father who does not abandon Jesus to death but raises him up to new life and seats him at his right hand, bestowing upon him the name above all other names in which all people might come to know God’s merciful love, “Jesus Christ is Lord.”

     Our trust in the Divine Mercy, in the name that bestows upon us that divine mercy of forgiveness and new life, becomes the way for us to God and to his merciful love.  If we are merciful to one another then we will come to know God’s mercy in our lives.  The measure of mercy that we are willing to show to others will become the measure of mercy that is available also to us through Jesus in the Father.  “Jesus, I trust in you.”  We no longer need to look to ourselves to create justice through vengeance, exacting an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but rather we are called to the same perfection in mercy that the Father shows to us in Jesus the Christ.  We must be merciful just as God is merciful.  We must place our trust in Divine Mercy and not in a human idea of justice extracted through vengeance.

     Mercy is perfected in the Passion of the Christ when Divine Mercy flows forth from his pierced, sacred heart on the cross.  The blood and water that flows from his divine, merciful heart opens the way in sacrament to the font and source of merciful grace that we receive in the sacraments.  John tells us today in our second reading, “This is the one who came through water and blood, Jesus Christ, not by water alone, but by water and blood.  The Spirit is the one that testifies, and the Spirit is truth.”  This same Spirit of truth is given as a gift to all of the apostles by the Risen Christ in the upper room in today’s gospel when he appears to them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”  Now through the priesthood bestowed upon the apostles the gift of Divine Mercy is made available to all who come to Jesus through the apostolic priesthood and humbly subject themselves to God’s merciful love.

     My friends, now we can all know the fullness of divine mercy that is available to us in the sacraments of the Church.  God is mercy and he pours out his Spirit of mercy upon all those who seek him in the sacrament of mercy.  What we can know about mercy is the divine mercy that we have experienced ourselves in the sacramental encounter with Jesus who “loves us to the end” and who “even yet while we were sinners” died for us so that we might not die but live in the light of mercy and love.  Now we can know with certainty that Divine Mercy is the only way to life, an eternal life in the Kingdom of God our merciful Father.