As the number of people who attend church services continues to decline, the temptation among many of our Church leaders and ministers is to see this more as a pruning than as a tragedy and to respond by making God鱿鱼视频app mercy less, rather than more, accessible. For example, a seminary professor whom I know shares that, after 40 years of teaching a course designed to prepare seminarians to administer the Sacrament of Penance, today sometimes the first question that the seminarians ask is: 鈥淲hen can I refuse absolution?鈥� In effect, how scrupulous must I be in dispensing God鱿鱼视频app mercy?
To their credit, their motivation is mostly sincere, however misguided. They sincerely fear playing fast and loose with God鱿鱼视频app grace, fearing that they might end up dispensing cheap grace.
Partly that鱿鱼视频app a valid motive. Fear of playing fast and loose with God鱿鱼视频app grace, coupled with concerns for truth, orthodoxy, proper public form and fear of scandal have their own legitimacy. Mercy needs always to be tempered by truth. But sometimes the motives driving our hesitancy are less noble and our anxiety about handing out cheap grace arises more out of timidity, fear, legalism and our desire, however unconscious, for power.
But even when mercy is withheld for the nobler of those reasons, we鈥檙e still misguided, bad shepherds, out of tune with the God whom Jesus proclaimed. God鱿鱼视频app mercy, as Jesus revealed it, embraces indiscriminately, the bad and the good, the undeserving and the deserving, the uninitiated and the initiated.
One of the truly startling insights that Jesus gave us is that the mercy of God, like the light and warmth of the sun, cannot not go out to everyone. Consequently it鱿鱼视频app always free, undeserved, unconditional, universal in embrace and has a reach beyond all religion, custom, rubric, political correctness, mandatory program, ideology and even sin itself.
For our part then, especially those of us who are parents, ministers, teachers, catechists and elders, we must risk proclaiming the prodigal character of God鱿鱼视频app mercy. We must not spend God鱿鱼视频app mercy, as if it were ours to spend; dole out God鱿鱼视频app forgiveness, as if it were a limited commodity; put conditions on God鱿鱼视频app love, as if God were a petty tyrant or a political ideology; or cut off access to God, as if we were the keeper of the heavenly gates. We aren鈥檛. If we tie God鱿鱼视频app mercy to our own timidity and fear we limit it to the size of our own minds.
It is interesting to note in the Gospels how the apostles, well-meaning of course, often tried to keep certain people away from Jesus as if they weren鈥檛 worthy, as if they were an affront to His holiness or would somehow stain His purity. So they perennially tried to prevent children, prostitutes, tax collectors, known sinners and the uninitiated of all kinds from coming to Jesus. However, always Jesus over-ruled their attempts with words to this effect: 鈥淟et them come! I want them to come.鈥�
Early on in my ministry, I lived in a rectory with a saintly old priest. He was over 80, nearly blind, but widely sought out and respected, especially as a confessor. One night, alone with him, I asked him this question: 鈥淚f you had your priesthood to live over again, would you do anything differently?鈥� From a man so full of integrity, I fully expected that there would be no regrets. So his answer surprised me. Yes, he did have a regret, a major one, he said: 鈥淚f I had my priesthood to do over again, I would be easier on people the next time. I wouldn鈥檛 be so stingy with God鱿鱼视频app mercy, with the sacraments, with forgiveness. I fear I鈥檝e been too hard on people. They have pain enough without me and the Church laying further burdens on them. I should have risked God鱿鱼视频app mercy more.鈥�
I was struck by this because, less than a year before, as I took my final exams in the seminary, one of the priests who examined me gave me this warning: 鈥淏e careful,鈥� he said, 鈥渄on鈥檛 be soft. Only the truth sets people free. Risk truth over mercy.鈥�
As I age, I am ever more inclined to the old priest鱿鱼视频app advice: We need more to risk God鱿鱼视频app mercy. The place of justice and truth should never be ignored, but we must risk letting the infinite, unbounded, unconditional, undeserved mercy of God flow free.
But, like the apostles, we, well-intentioned persons, are forever trying to keep certain individuals and groups away from God鱿鱼视频app mercy as it is offered in word, sacrament and community. But God doesn鈥檛 want our protection. What God does want is for everyone, regardless of morality, orthodoxy, lack of preparation, age or culture, to come to the unlimited waters of divine mercy.
George Eliot once wrote: 鈥淲hen death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.鈥�
(Fr. Rolheiser can be reached at www.ronrolheiser.com.)