Mercy is there — why don’t we see it?

Examples of Jesus’ mercy are scattered throughout the Gospels like Easter eggs. He told us about his mercy in the way he treated sinner and stranger. He showed his mercy in everything he said—and didn’t say. 

So why do we still not know his mercy?

Jesus did many amazing things in plain sight (and still does), and yet many do not see him for who he is. Jesus commented on this overt and astounding blindness in Mark’s Gospel when, incredulous, he says to his disciples: “Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember?”

Why can’t we see the truth?

In his book Who Told You You Were Naked?, Trappist monk John Jacob Raub writes about how we are the cause of our own blindness. He explains how, in the beginning, “it was not so.”

In the Garden of Eden, two trees were mentioned: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, from which Adam and Eve were told not to eat, and the Tree of Life in the centre of the garden.

When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, not only did they realize that they were “naked,” but their minds began to criticize and judge their surroundings, circumstances, and—worst of all—they began to judge themselves. God’s beloved children could no longer perceive their belovedness or God’s delight in them. Darkness fell.

We are the only ones blocking our perception of God’s love and mercy. We can’t see our goodness and, therefore, we can’t imagine a good and loving God.

We have judged ourselves unworthy of forgiveness, even by God. No one could be good enough to see past our guilt and rid us of our shame. Many people stay away not because they don’t believe in God, but because they don’t believe that someone loves them and desires to know them intimately.

This is why God gave us St. Faustina and the message of Divine Mercy. Even after reading her entire Diary and participating in the Divine Mercy novena and feast day for years, some of us will still “have ears but fail to hear.”

Our humanity murmurs within us that surely Jesus will eventually get tired of our shenanigans. Surely, he can’t endlessly forgive this addiction or that hidden vice. We are, after all, terrible parasites on the earth. This God business is too good to be true!

You know what else seems too good to be true? How Jesus tenderly received Judas’ kiss at the moment of betrayal and, even then, called him “friend,” after sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

Also too good to be true is how Jesus gave heaven to the Good Thief, who uttered only a few words of repentance after a lifetime of crime.

In so many of his parables, he tried to teach us about mercy. He tried to show us the Father’s heart, but the fruit from that sinister tree in the garden has had lasting effects—we can’t believe him.

We can’t believe the Author of Life when he tells us that after boldly and recklessly spending all of the Father’s money on prostitutes and parties, we would only need to think about going home to repent, and we would be better off than ever before.

We can’t believe him when he says he would leave 99 valuable sheep to go after one silly, wayward one.

We can’t believe him when he says he has prepared a place for us and that he will come back and welcome us into his presence, “so that you also may be where I am.”

Because we judge reality according to our twisted sense of justice, we cannot understand the Father’s definition of “fair.” Divine mercy does not inhabit the same world as our idea of fairness. God makes his sun shine “on the good and the bad” and his rain fall “on the just and the unjust.”

God cannot discriminate among his children. All he can do is love each one of us with his whole being. The Lord does not see as man sees: “For man sees the outward appearance, but the Lord sees the heart” (1 Sam 16:7). This is the law of the land from which we hail—boundless mercy and love for everyone, sinner and saint alike.

We need only collapse into his waiting arms.

Let all who have ears listen.

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