By Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke
Part 1
(Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke delivered the address below at the Consecration Weekend, The Marian Catechist Apostolate, Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, La Crosse, Wis., July 23, 2016. Because of its length, we are publishing it in two parts, with part 2 appearing in next week’s issue. And also because of its length, we omitted the footnotes. This text is reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.)
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Pope Francis has recently published a book-length interview which is being distributed in six languages in more than 80 countries with the title: The Name of God Is Mercy. This publication and its wide distribution manifest how divine mercy is a central subject of discussion in the Church today. The centrality of divine mercy is certainly not new in the Church’s teaching and pastoral practice, even though some today would give the impression that it is so.
At the same time, the current widespread discussion of mercy risks making it a slogan lacking a profound understanding of its meaning in the Church’s constant teaching. Sadly, for example, one hears of various difficult situations in the Church today rather easily dismissed by invoking God’s mercy.
It is therefore important that we take up a serious consideration of the nature of God’s mercy as He has revealed it to us and as it has been taught in the Magisterium. To assist such reflection, I will concentrate my attention on the teaching in the Sacred Scripture as it has been interpreted by St. Thomas Aquinas and Pope St. John Paul II. Then, I will relate that teaching to the natural moral law.
Preliminary Observations
Before entering into the heart of the matter, I make some preliminary observations. My first preliminary observation is that the word, “mercy,” together with several other words, like “pastoral,” “listening,” “discernment,” “accompaniment,” and “integration,” have, in these years, become talismanic in the Church, that is, they have taken on a kind of magical quality which risks becoming an ideology replacing what is irreplaceable for us: the constant doctrine and discipline of the Church.
The phenomenon in question has been studied in some depth by the Italian scholar, Guido Vignelli, as it manifested itself in a striking manner during the preparation and celebration of the last two sessions of the Synod of Bishops, dedicated to marriage and the family. The results of his study thus far are published in a small volume of which there should soon be an English translation.
For instance, pastoral care is now regularly contrasted with concern for the doctrine which must be its foundation. The concern for doctrine and discipline is characterized as pharisaical, as wishing to respond coldly or even violently to the faithful who find themselves in an irregular situation morally.
In a similar manner, discernment, listening, and accompaniment are divorced from their necessary foundation in the truth, in objective reality. Likewise, integration is divorced from communion which is the only foundation of participation in the life of Christ in the Church.
All of these terms are used in a worldly or political sense, guided by a view of nature and reality which is constantly changing. The perspective of eternal life is eclipsed in favor of a kind of popular view of the Church in which all should feel “at home,” even if their daily living is an open contradiction to the truth and love of Christ.
In any case, the use of any of these terms must be firmly grounded in the truth, together with its traditional expression, of our incorporation into Christ, into His Mystical Body, by one faith, one sacramental life, and one discipline or governance.
One of the more disturbing manifestations of the ideological use of these terms ends up by proclaiming that all men and women, no matter what their religion, are children of God, and that all are guided by divine love. The truth is that a man or woman can only become a child of God in God the Son Incarnate, that is, through the Sacrament of Baptism. All men and women are created in the image and likeness of God, but they have been alienated from God by original sin. Hence, the need of rebirth in Christ through the Sacrament of Baptism. At the same time, the gift of divine love only comes into our hearts from the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus.
To think and speak otherwise is to deny that Jesus Christ alone is Lord, that Jesus Christ alone saves us from sin and wins for us eternal life.
My second observation has to do with our duty as members of the Church Militant to serve Christ and His Mystical Body, the Church, in two ways: the defense of the faith and the care of our neighbor in need.
For the defense of the faith, we must know the faith profoundly and practice it with integrity. Clearly, key to the faith is our belief in God’s mercy, when we have repented of our sins and seek to be reconciled with Him and with one another. Belief in divine mercy, as we shall reflect, is part of belief in the immeasurable and unceasing love of God, which is represented for us by the Divine Heart and, after the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by His Most Sacred Heart.
The covenant of love, which God has formed with us from the time of our First Parents and which He has brought to fullness by the Redemptive Incarnation of His only-begotten Son, is the source of our care for the poor.
We are not social workers. We are not do-gooders. We are soldiers of Christ who, by the very nature of being incorporated into the Body of Christ, express our holy militancy by bringing the love of God to the poor whom we serve.
The Encyclical Letter of Pope John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, and the Encyclical Letters of Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est and Caritas in Veritate, express the profound truth of our care of the poor. Yes, we address their poverty, whether it be serious illness, homelessness, material poverty, or any other form of human misery, but, first, we address their deepest need: to know the love of God in Our Lord Jesus Christ. Our charity is always defined by our life in Christ Who inspires and strengthens us to bring the Father’s love to every neighbor and especially the neighbor who is in most need.
It must always be clear, for example, that, in our care for the poor, we respect absolutely the moral law. In today’s highly secularized world, pressure is often exerted upon works of charity to engage in immoral practices which are somehow seen to be a ready answer to one or another form of suffering. For us, charity can never contradict the truth. What is morally evil can never serve the good of the one for whom we care, even if it may seem to offer some immediate help or remedy.
Regarding the care of the poor who are not Christian, we do not engage in proselytism, that is, in practices to induce or force another into embracing the Christian faith. But it must be clear to our non-Christian brethren that our love of them has a source other than ourselves, namely, that our love of them is Christian: It comes from our communion of love with God the Father in God the Son through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Pope Benedict XVI takes up this question in his Encyclical Letter Deus Caritas Est.
My third preliminary observation regards the Jubilee Year of Mercy. First of all, we must be conscious that technically the Year of Mercy is not a jubilee, in the way in which the Church has always understood the devotion. In the Old Testament a jubilee was celebrated every seven years or at other intervals. It was always, as it is today, a time to set things right in life, to correct injustices and to exercise more strongly the bond of love with neighbor which is inherent to the bond of love with God.
Since the Redemptive Incarnation, the jubilee year always marks a 25-year anniversary of either the Birth of the Lord or His Saving Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. The Jubilee Year then happens in a multiple of 25 years from the Birth of Our Lord, or the year 33, the year of the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Our Lord. Thus, we held the last jubilee year of the Birth of Our Lord in the Year 2000, and the last Jubilee of the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension in 1983.
I make this point, not to be technical, but to remind us all that a jubilee year is essentially connected to the Mystery of Faith. If we lose that connection, then there is a risk, as I sometimes detect today, to make the jubilee of mercy a kind of slogan of which the content is not well defined.
Secondly, every jubilee year is by definition a year of repentance and mercy. The Christian is invited to make pilgrimage to the holy places of our Catholic faith, principally the four major basilicas in Rome, as an expression of repentance for sin, as a work of reparation, and as a means of obtaining extraordinary grace for reconciliation and peace. Hence, the concession of special indulgences.
The symbolism of the Holy Door is essentially related to our Baptism by which we entered into Christ, by which we came to life in Christ, and to Penance by which we repent of anything which has betrayed our life in Christ, express our sorrow and receive the grace of conversion and reparation. The multiplication of the Holy Door in many churches in every diocese risks the loss of the sense of a pilgrimage to the Papal Basilicas or to another designated place of pilgrimage, in order to confess our sins and to set out anew on the way of eternal life in the circumstances of our daily living.
Once again, I make these points, not to be technical, but to help us to avoid a superficial understanding of divine mercy which is not rooted in our covenantal relationship with God, which He initiated out of His totally pure and selfless love. Here, once again, we must be careful to avoid reducing divine mercy to a slogan.
Divine Mercy And Justice
In The Sacred Scriptures
In our time, divine mercy is presented in many different, and sometimes contradictory, ways. Not infrequently, it is seen as opposed to divine justice. But God reveals that mercy and justice are not in conflict with each other but instead are essentially related one to the other. We read in the Book of Psalms, for example: “Mercy and truth have met together; justice and peace have kissed.” We see the relationship, too, in the penitential prayer of the Prophet Jeremiah:
“We recognize, O LORD, our wickedness, the guilt of our fathers; that we have sinned against you. For your name’s sake spurn us not, disgrace not the throne of your glory; remember your covenant with us, and break it not.”
Psalm 50, known popularly by the first word of its Latin translation, Miserere, “Have mercy,” expresses in a most beautiful way how God’s justice makes us conscious of our sins and inspires in us sorrow for them and the firm purpose of amendment, and how God’s mercy gives us confidence to confess our sins, to beg His forgiveness, and to begin again on the just way of obedience to God’s will in all things. We cannot understand mercy without justice; we find their inseparable relationship expressed most perfectly in Christ, in the great mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation of God the Son.
Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est, described the whole of the Sacred Scriptures as a love story in which God “comes towards us, He seeks to win our hearts, all the way to the Last Supper, to the piercing of His Heart on the Cross, to His appearances after the Resurrection and to the great deeds by which, through the activity of the Apostles, He guided the nascent Church along its path.”
In His justice, God recognizes our sin and the need of its reparation, while, in His mercy, He showers upon us the grace to repent and make reparation. In this light, one understands how Our Lord wept over Jerusalem just after His entrance into the city on Palm Sunday, as He was preparing to undergo His cruel Passion and Death within a matter of days.
At Our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem, the people rejoiced at His coming to them, crying out: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” But our Lord knew the superficiality of their welcome; He knew that it would not endure. He wept, saying: “If this day [you] only knew what makes for peace. . . .”
He recognized that they were lacking in turning over their hearts to God, in returning love to Him Who first loved them without measure. He knew of the injustices in which they were engaged to the harm of one another. They indeed failed to recognize what makes for peace, namely obedience to God and His Commandments, a just and loving relationship with God and neighbor, in accord with God’s law.
Through the mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation, we see in flesh and blood the unconditional love of God for us, which, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “is so great that it turns God against Himself, His love against His justice.” God’s justice, with its demands, remains always, but He chooses to meet those demands with His superabundant mercy. God never turns His back on us; He will never break His covenant with us, even though we are so frequently indifferent, cold, and unfaithful.
We face, in our time, many questions regarding justice, including questions about human rights, “just war,” and economic inequality. What becomes clear is that the issue of justice is present in all human interactions. In that sense, we speak of justice as a social virtue. Justice is fundamentally the virtue by which we give others something, namely, the good that is owed to them.
It is the virtue which establishes the right relationships necessary for happiness and peace. In Sacred Scripture, God frequently exhorts us to be just toward others: “Love justice, you that are judges of the earth”; “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless.” This is because God Himself is just, as all the saints in Heaven proclaim: “Great and wonderful are thy deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are thy ways, O King of the ages!”
Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke
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