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In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Today’s gospel is about mercy, and it seems to us so often from the
experience we have of our earthly relationships that the gap between
justice and mercy is almost unbridgeable. It seems that the two are in
contradiction. Don't we always fall into the trap of being unjust when
we try to be merciful and so hard when we try to observe justice. Did
not one of the great writers of the past say that a judge is at the same
time below the level of man and above the level of man, — above because
he has a power which is superhuman to judge and to condemn, below
because it is not given him to have mercy. And yet the Holy Scripture
teaches us that in God justice and mercy have met. But the justice which
we find in God is so different from the kind of justice which we try to
apply. For us to observe justice is to pass a right judgement and then
either to revoke it or to pardon but without being able within ourselves
to reconcile compassion and severity. So often when we want to be just,
severe, helpful in that way we must force our heart to be silent.
Such is not the way of God. Christ says in the Gospel that our justice
must be beyond the justice of Scribes and Pharisees, beyond the people
who try to be righteous before God, who try to be spotless before Him.
What is God’s justice? We can see it in the Old Testament and New
Testament in a way which at times may frighten us, that the justice of
God consists first of all — and this is perhaps the most frightening
example Christ gives us — consists first of all in recognizing for a
person the right to be himself even if he is in the wrong, even if he
follows evil ways. Oh, it does not mean that we can come to terms with
evil, accept the ways of it, but we must learn to distinguish as God
does, between an evil deed and a person, between the sickness unto death
of a person wounded by sin and possessed of evil and a person whom God
has willed and loved into the world and for whom He proved ready to live
and to die. God knows how to distinguish.
One of the most frightening and striking examples of it can be found in
the very beginning of human history when Cain murders his brother Abel
and then feels that not only God’s rejection but man's hatred will hunt
him down. And the Lord says to him, ‘I will put My seal on thy forehead
and no one will kill you.’ And by doing this God recognizes that He has
given freedom, a frightening freedom to man and that He is to guarantee
the freedom and even its misuse — but not only that. If that was the
case, then God would be responsible for all the evil of the world and we
could condemn Him for all the suffering that is ours, for all the horror
that has been in human history. But there is one more thing God does. He
takes upon Himself all the consequences of deliberate or foolish human
choices. He takes them upon Himself and carries the consequences upon
his shoulders. Christ's incarnation, the incarnation of the Son of God,
the life, the suffering, the death, the dereliction upon the Cross, the
descent into Hell of Christ, the Son of the Living God become the Son of
Man, are different manners in which God covers, takes upon Himself the
consequences of human evil and evil in the world. His justice consists
in accepting the other one on his own terms but also of paying the cost
of human folly and human evil. And here love, sacrificial love and
justice as we do not either understand or exercise it meet in a way
which can frighten. To recognize in another person even when this person
is endangering our integrity, our life, a human being whom we are called
to take upon ourselves and carry and save, is something which few
achieve.
I have mentioned to a certain number of you the story of a woman of this
parish who is now coming step by step to her death. When she was young
she was taken to prison in the course of the Russian Revolution. She
underwent endless interrogations, and one night when she had been
interrogated for hours and hours and felt that she could no longer
endure it, she felt that she must break the spell even if she must
suffer for it, even if it meant punishment, and she turned to her
interrogator ready to challenge, to insult him, but make an end to this
endless torment. And suddenly she saw on the other side of the
interrogation table a man pale, gray with tiredness, with anguish on his
face because he was exhausted. And she suddenly saw him a human being,
not an enemy but one whom the cruel circumstances of human history had
put on one side of the table while she was on the other. And having seen
him a human being, she smiled at him. The interrogation did not come to
an end. He smiled back, but he continued to interrogate her. But she was
now beyond the power of being destroyed. She had seen a man; she would
answer now with patience to a man and be gradually drawn to her tomb
without hatred, without bitterness in an act of surrender.
This is a great example, but it is not taken from the Scriptures, which
seems so often remote, nor from the lives of saints, which seem to be
beyond us, but from the life of a woman who is one of us. Can't we
understand that the first act of justice which may lead us to stern
action unto salvation of the evildoer, is first of all to recognize in
him the right, to hate in him the evil that possesses him, to hate in
him all that is destruction in him, but to serve him, indeed to worship
him, to serve him as we would serve our God, to serve him unto salvation.
The distance between justice and mercy seems to be infinitely great in
our lives. We must learn to discover what it means to love unto
salvation and to be just with the crucified love of the living God,
which He has left with us as our most precious and holy gift, the Church.
Amen.
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