Vatican City, 26 January 2016 (VIS) “'I
desire mercy, and not sacrifice': The works of mercy on the Jubilee
path" is the title of Pope Francis' message for Lent 2016 (10
February to 20 March). Taking as a starting point this phrase from
the Gospel of St. Matthew, the Holy Father divides his message into
three sections: "Mary, the image of a Church which evanglises
because she is evangelised", "God's covenant with humanity:
a history of mercy", and "The works of mercy". The
document, signed on 4 October, feast of St. Francis of Assisi,
concludes by encouraging the faithful not to waste this season of
Lent, a favourable time for conversion, and by invoking the
intercession of Our Lady who, "encountering the greatness of
God’s mercy freely bestowed upon her, was the first to acknowledge
her lowliness and to call herself the Lord’s humble servant".
The following is the full text of the
Pope's Message:
"The works of mercy on the road of
the Jubilee
1. Mary, the image of a Church which
evangelises because she is evangelised
In the Bull of Indiction of the
Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, I asked that 'the season of Lent in
this Jubilee Year be lived more intensely as a privileged moment to
celebrate and experience God’s mercy'. By calling for an attentive
listening to the word of God and encouraging the initiative '24 Hours
for the Lord', I sought to stress the primacy of prayerful listening
to God’s word, especially his prophetic word. The mercy of God is a
proclamation made to the world, a proclamation which each Christian
is called to experience at first hand. For this reason, during the
season of Lent I will send out Missionaries of Mercy as a concrete
sign to everyone of God’s closeness and forgiveness.
After receiving the Good News told to
her by the Archangel Gabriel, Mary, in her Magnificat, prophetically
sings of the mercy whereby God chose her. The Virgin of Nazareth,
betrothed to Joseph, thus becomes the perfect icon of the Church
which evangelises, for she was, and continues to be, evangelised by
the Holy Spirit, who made her virginal womb fruitful. In the
prophetic tradition, mercy is strictly related – even on the
etymological level – to the maternal womb (rahamim) and to a
generous, faithful and compassionate goodness (hesed) shown within
marriage and family relationships.
2. God’s covenant with humanity: a
history of mercy
The mystery of divine mercy is revealed
in the history of the covenant between God and His people Israel. God
shows Himself ever rich in mercy, ever ready to treat His people with
deep tenderness and compassion, especially at those tragic moments
when infidelity ruptures the bond of the covenant, which then needs
to be ratified more firmly in justice and truth. Here is a true love
story, in which God plays the role of the betrayed father and
husband, while Israel plays the unfaithful child and bride. These
domestic images – as in the case of Hosea – show to what extent
God wishes to bind Himself to his people.
This love story culminates in the
incarnation of God’s Son. In Christ, the Father pours forth His
boundless mercy even to making Him 'mercy incarnate'. As a man, Jesus
of Nazareth is a true son of Israel; He embodies that perfect hearing
required of every Jew by the Shema, which today too is the heart of
God’s covenant with Israel: 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is
one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your might'. As the Son of God,
He is the Bridegroom who does everything to win over the love of His
bride, to whom He is bound by an unconditional love which becomes
visible in the eternal wedding feast.
This is the very heart of the apostolic
kerygma, in which divine mercy holds a central and fundamental place.
It is 'the beauty of the saving love of God made manifest in Jesus
Christ Who died and rose from the dead', that first proclamation
which 'we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which
we must announce one way or another throughout the process of
catechesis, at every level and moment'. Mercy 'expresses God’s way
of reaching out to the sinner, offering him a new chance to look at
himself, convert, and believe', thus restoring his relationship with
him. In Jesus crucified, God shows His desire to draw near to
sinners, however far they may have strayed from Him. In this way He
hopes to soften the hardened heart of His Bride.
3. The works of mercy
God’s mercy transforms human hearts;
it enables us, through the experience of a faithful love, to become
merciful in turn. In an ever new miracle, divine mercy shines forth
in our lives, inspiring each of us to love our neighbour and to
devote ourselves to what the Church’s tradition calls the spiritual
and corporal works of mercy. These works remind us that faith finds
expression in concrete everyday actions meant to help our neighbours
in body and spirit: by feeding, visiting, comforting and instructing
them. On such things will we be judged. For this reason, I expressed
my hope that 'the Christian people may reflect on the corporal and
spiritual works of mercy; this will be a way to reawaken our
conscience, too often grown dull in the face of poverty, and to enter
more deeply into the heart of the Gospel where the poor have a
special experience of God’s mercy'. For in the poor, the flesh of
Christ 'becomes visible in the flesh of the tortured, the crushed,
the scourged, the malnourished, and the exiled … to be
acknowledged, touched, and cared for by us'. It is the unprecedented
and scandalous mystery of the extension in time of the suffering of
the Innocent Lamb, the burning bush of gratuitous love. Before this
love, we can, like Moses, take off our sandals, especially when the
poor are our brothers or sisters in Christ who are suffering for
their faith.
In the light of this love, which is
strong as death, the real poor are revealed as those who refuse to
see themselves as such. They consider themselves rich, but they are
actually the poorest of the poor. This is because they are slaves to
sin, which leads them to use wealth and power not for the service of
God and others, but to stifle within their hearts the profound sense
that they too are only poor beggars. The greater their power and
wealth, the more this blindness and deception can grow. It can even
reach the point of being blind to Lazarus begging at their doorstep.
Lazarus, the poor man, is a figure of Christ, who through the poor
pleads for our conversion. As such, he represents the possibility of
conversion which God offers us and which we may well fail to see.
Such blindness is often accompanied by the proud illusion of our own
omnipotence, which reflects in a sinister way the diabolical 'you
will be like God' which is the root of all sin. This illusion can
likewise take social and political forms, as shown by the
totalitarian systems of the twentieth century, and, in our own day,
by the ideologies of monopolising thought and technoscience, which
would make God irrelevant and reduce man to raw material to be
exploited. This illusion can also be seen in the sinful structures
linked to a model of false development based on the idolatry of
money, which leads to lack of concern for the fate of the poor on the
part of wealthier individuals and societies; they close their doors,
refusing even to see the poor.
For all of us, then, the season of Lent
in this Jubilee Year is a favourable time to overcome our existential
alienation by listening to God’s word and by practising the works
of mercy. In the corporal works of mercy we touch the flesh of Christ
in our brothers and sisters who need to be fed, clothed, sheltered,
visited; in the spiritual works of mercy – counsel, instruction,
forgiveness, admonishment and prayer – we touch more directly our
own sinfulness. The corporal and spiritual works of mercy must never
be separated. By touching the flesh of the crucified Jesus in the
suffering, sinners can receive the gift of realising that they too
are poor and in need. By taking this path, the 'proud', the
'powerful' and the 'wealthy' spoken of in the Magnificat can also be
embraced and undeservedly loved by the crucified Lord Who died and
rose for them. This love alone is the answer to that yearning for
infinite happiness and love that we think we can satisfy with the
idols of knowledge, power and riches. Yet the danger always remains
that by a constant refusal to open the doors of their hearts to
Christ Who knocks on them in the poor, the proud, rich and powerful
will end up condemning themselves and plunging into the eternal abyss
of solitude which is Hell. The pointed words of Abraham apply to them
and to all of us: 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear
them'. Such attentive listening will best prepare us to celebrate the
final victory over sin and death of the Bridegroom, now risen, who
desires to purify His Betrothed in expectation of His coming.
Let us not waste this season of Lent,
so favourable a time for conversion! We ask this through the maternal
intercession of the Virgin Mary, who, encountering the greatness of
God’s mercy freely bestowed upon her, was the first to acknowledge
her lowliness and to call herself the Lord’s humble servant".
