Mercy
“A Christian must forgive because he has been forgiven”. Pope Francis made this off-the-cuff remark at his general audience today, addressing a crowd of 25,000 gathered in St Peter’s Square. “All of us who are here in this square today have been forgiven – he continued off the cuff –, none of us can say we have never been in need of God’s forgiveness in our lives. And it is because we have been forgiven that we have to forgive, we repeat this every day in the Our Father. If God has forgiven us, how can we not forgive? Are we perhaps greater than God? Let us forgive!”. “The Church cannot but be the sacrament of God’s mercy in the world, in every age and for all mankind”, the Pope recalled. “Every Christian is therefore called to be a witness to mercy, which is what happens on the way of holiness. Let us think of the many holy men and women who, by their charity, have enlightened the history of the Church! They have all become merciful because they have all let their hearts be filled with Divine Mercy. They have given flesh to the love of the Lord, pouring it out into the needs and suffering of humanity. In the blossoming of so many forms of charity, we can see the merciful face of Christ”. “To forgive” and “to give”: these are the two verbs that, according to the Pope, explain “what it means for us, disciples, to be merciful”. “Jesus does not want to subvert the course of human justice; however, he reminds the disciples that in order to have fraternal relationships, judgment and condemnation should be withheld”, Pope Francis said, explaining the first verb. “Indeed, forgiveness is the pillar that supports the life of the Christian community, because it shows the gratuitousness of the love with which God loved us first”.
