We are called to be a Church of Mercy.

 

EIGHTH SUNDAY IN OT C  2025

 

Jesus opens today’s Gospel account with a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind person?  Will not both fall into a pit?  This leads us to ask what blindness Jesus is talking about?

I suggest we need to be aware of the dangers of spiritual blindness.  I suggest for our prayer today we see the blind guides that Jesus refers to are people who don’t know their own need for mercy, who have not experienced mercy, and who therefore cannot act with mercy.

We see in our Eucharistic Liturgy how we humbly ask for the mercy of our forgiving God.  The Penitential Rite is part of the beginning of our Eucharistic celebration.  For us to enter into the mystery of God’s presence among us, we first acknowledge our need for the healing forgiveness of Good.  Then before receiving Communion, we humbly pray: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the Word and my soul shall be healed.”

The genuineness of our discipleship of the Lord Jesus is dependent upon our humility and our humble recognition that we need the mercy of a forgiving God, and we are to share this mercy with others.

The cross of Jesus is His great act of love for us.  In the cross, we encounter the mercy, the forgiveness, and the love of Jesus for us.

Please God, may we always be aware that we are sinners who stand in need of a forgiving, healing God.  As we approach Ash Wednesday, the ashes to be placed on our foreheads announce that the light of Christ that is burning within us is dimmed.  It has been darkened by sin symbolized by the ashes on our foreheads.

On an international scale, the wars in the Middle East and In Ukraine show the effect show the effect of sin on an international scale.  War is the result of hearts that are not filled with the merciful, forgiving love of our God.

With the ashes that we will receive on Ash Wednesday, we are confessing and announcing we stand in need of God’s forgiveness.  Further, we commit ourselves to the penitential season so that we will be reconciled with God and so prepare ourselves for the joy of Easter.  The blessed ashes that we receive are blessed ashes, holy ashes, and they hold the promise of cleansing protection and, most importantly, the promise of resurrection.

Our upcoming Lenten journey invites us to become more aware of our inner life, our spiritual life before God.  The Lenten season invites us to accept the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and self-denial.  The purpose of these spiritual disciplines is to lead us to conversion, to place God first in our lives.  In following these spiritual disciplines, we come to know the Gospel good news.  The Good News is precisely this:  it tells us about a God who gives first, loves first, who loves unconditionally, and who loves us whether we deserve it or not.

Pope Francis in his Lenten message to us invites us to reflect on jubilee theme of making our Lenten journey as pilgrims of hope.  Yes, we are pilgrims as we journey through the forty of lent and even more than that, we are pilgrims in the journey of life.  May we journey together as pilgrims of hope.  May we always know deep in our hearts that we are the recipients of the hope that comes from our experience of the merciful love of Jesus deep in our hearts.  As pilgrims of hope, we are to be a Church of Mercy.

The conversion we seek is to be a Church of mercy.  Our world torn by the effects of war needs to experience the mercy of God in the world, and in our personal lives we need to encounter a God who loves us unconditionally and calls us to a Church of mercy, a Church of welcome.

For the 3^rd consecutive Sunday, the Gospel has been taken for Luke’s account of the Sermon on the Mount.  The last two Sundays we have been invited to reflect on what to do.  The Beatitudes call us to a way of life in which our values are turned upside down.  “Blessed are the Poor; Blessed are they who hunger; Blessed are they who mourn.” These people are most in touch with the spiritual dimension of life.  They more clearly know their need for God’s grace.

Last Sunday the Gospel called us to love even our enemies.  That doesn’t come naturally for any one of us.  It’s not in our genes.  It is only with the grace of God and the example of Jesus Himself that we are empowered to love our enemies.

This Sunday’s Gospel tells us how we can live our discipleship of Christ Jesus in which we are called to love our enemies.  Where the Gospel last week dealt with action toward others, this Sunday’s Gospel calls to reflect and to reach deeper:  to the wellspring of eternal life that is found in the human heart.  Get the heart right, Jesus seems to be saying, and all else will follow.

Plain and simple, the conversion we seek must come from the inside.  We need to be aware of our inner life, our interior life if we are to live out the Gospel demands in our outer life.  Jesus in the Gospel proclaimed that a tree cannot bear good fruit unless the core of the trunk is solid.  “A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.  For every three is known by its own fruit.”  So too, a good person out of the store of the goodness in his heart produces good fruit, for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.

May our conversation come from the language of our heart – a heart that has experienced the merciful love of Jesus.    The last line of today’s Gospel is very telling:  “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” For us to be a Church of mercy, we need to know that our God calls us beyond our faults to be immersed in the mystery of His love for us.  May the conversion we experience at St. Joseph’s Church lead us to be a Church of mercy, a Church of welcome.

May God lead us to know His merciful love, and may we share this love with one and all.