Mercy Me!

1 Peter 2:10

Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.

Many people have the notion that mercy means pretending a nasty sin was “nothing”.  In a quirky way, this is what keeps some of us from accepting forgiveness from God.  “How can I ever be forgiven after what I did?” we ask.  “It wouldn’t be right for me to come slinking back to God now, after the despicable thing I did.  I deserve to be punished.”  And in imposing that judgment on ourselves, we can become vastly more merciless to ourselves than any god out of Greek mythology ever was.  We can shut ourselves up in dungeons of self-hatred darker and colder than any ever built of stone.  But the reality is that mercy is not for those who “did nothing” but for those of us—-you and me-—who have really and truly sinned.  God desires with all his heart to love you and forgive us, not because he doesn’t know how nasty we’ve been and how ashamed we are of it, but because he knows this perfectly well and loves us still.  So let us receive the mercy he gives in abundance today—-this moment.  We won’t be cheating God of anything.  In fact, we’ll be doing the right thing and opening the way to restoring and healing what was damaged by our sin.

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Mark P. Shea is a popular Catholic writer and speaker. The author of numerous books, his most recent work is The Work of Mercy (Servant) and The Heart of Catholic Prayer (Our Sunday Visitor). Mark contributes numerous articles to many magazines, including his popular column “Connecting the Dots” for the National Catholic Register. Mark is known nationally for his one minute “Words of Encouragement” on Catholic radio. He also maintains the Catholic and Enjoying It blog and regularly blogs for National Catholic Register. He lives in Washington state with his wife, Janet, and their four sons.

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