Already before Pope Francis announced that a Holy Year of Mercy would be declared, he was calling the Church to consider the Mercy of God and the Forgiveness of Christ. So much so that Cardinal Walter Kasper said that Pope Francis was making the Mercy of God the cornerstone of his thinking and preaching. Mercy finds a great echo in Laudato Si even as Pope Francis challenges us in the Encyclical to see the world around us with new eyes and to act with mercy as God is merciful.
But there was one particular phrase Pope Francis used which caught my attention: “Justice without Mercy becomes injustice,” and also “where there is no mercy there is no justice” (2015-03-23 Osservatore Romano, Homily, Casa Marta). Pope Francis borrowed the phrase from St. Catherine of Siena (1347-80) in her first letter to Urban VI, urging him to show mercy to the rebellious princes of Siena.
This call to mercy especially affected me against the backdrop of refugees and migrants flooding into Europe through Turkey, Greece and Italy. All escaping from the ravages of war in Africa and the Middle East. How can the image of the 3 year old Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, being carried by a Turkish soldier from the sea, with his well tied shoes clearly visible, not be seared into our imagination? The reaction to the crisis in Europe was particularly divided, with some calling precisely for mercy and others calling strictly for order. We all know how that is playing out till this day – this tug of war between mercy and order.
Being a biblical scholar, here in Rome at the moment, I tried to find the original sources for the Mercy of God in the Old Testament. I was surprised to see how this clarion call to Mercy is most often attached to Justice. Consider the foundational text in the book of Exodus where God reveals the self to Moses and declares:
The LORD passed before him, and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation." (Exo 34:6-7; cf. Exo 20:5; Num 14:18; Nah 1:3)
The phrase, ‘a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness’ is spread throughout the Old Testament. Notice the mercy of God is extolled to the thousandth generation whereas the justice of God is extolled to the fourth. Yes, God is merciful, to the thousandth generation, but God is also just, to the fourth generation. Almost as if mercy and justice cannot in fact be separated. We must do mercy justly, otherwise it is not truly mercy. And we must do justice mercifully, otherwise it is not truly justice. This is no easy task and we really cannot do justice mercifully without the grace and the wisdom of God.
Even in the Psalms which loudly proclaim the mercy of God, the Psalms of Praise include the justice of God. Notice the power of the word pairs in Psalm 85 with justice juxtaposed to love, peace and the good. Justice and peace embrace and kiss each other.
Steadfast love and truth will embrace;
justice and peace will kiss each other.
Truth will spring up from the ground,
and justice will look down from the sky.
The LORD will give what is good,
and our land will yield its increase.
Justice will go before him,
and will make a path for his steps. (Ps 85:10-13)
In a film which I suspect many of us have seen and relished, Babette’s Feast (1987), the General at the end of the last supper uses this particular psalm to deliver a solemn toast in honour of the hosts, reflecting on his life and on choices taken:
Mercy and truth have met together.
Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.
People, and their weakness and shortsightedness, believe they must make
choices in this life. We tremble at the risks we take.
We do know fear.
But no, our choices are of no importance.
There comes a time when our eyes are opened, and we come to realize that
mercy is infinite. We need only await it with confidence and receive it in gratitude.
Mercy imposes no conditions.
And lo, everything we have chosen has been granted to us.
And everything we rejected has also been granted. Yes, we even get back what we rejected.
For mercy and truth are met together, and righteousness and bliss
shall kiss one another.
I really should not have been surprised by this combination of mercy and justice. Pope Francis, in declaring the Jubilee Year of Mercy, April 11, 2015, confirms this foundational relationship between mercy and justice.
It would not be out of place at this point to recall the relationship between justice and mercy. These are not two contradictory realities, but two dimensions of a single reality that unfolds progressively until it culminates in the fullness of love. Justice is a fundamental concept for civil society, which is meant to be governed by the rule of law (Misericordiae Vultus, 20).
Even this particular image of justice and mercy of Pope Francis has been borrowed or at least confirmed with St. Catherine of Siena. In the same letter that she wrote to Pope Urban VI, she elaborated on the relationship between mercy and justice. After exhorting the newly elected Pope to show mercy to the princes because justice without mercy devolves to injustice, she reminds the Pope of the perspective of justice. To be merciful without justice is like putting balsam on a sore which instead needs sterilization. As a result, the sore becomes infected and the desired result of healing festers away. A rather powerful image for underscoring the importance of acting mercifully and justly together.
Where does this leave us in facing the many crises in our world and in our everyday lives? In this Holy Year of Mercy? There is no easy answer. The call to be truly merciful requires the effort to be circumspect and practical for the benefit of those in crisis. The call to be truly just and orderly requires the compassion of mercy. In this we need all the help we can get!