Advent Communal Penance Service
December 14, 2015
It’s always wonderful to gather as a community to celebrate this great sacrament
of God’s mercy, but it’s especially wonderful to be celebrating at the beginning
of the Jubilee Year of Mercy, this year that Pope Francis has set aside in order
for us to become more aware of how central mercy is to our faith – God’s mercy
and ours.
Maybe you noticed that the readings we just heard
were all about mercy. In the first reading which I can never listen to
without hearing the familiar strains of Handel’s Messiah, Isaiah sounded a
clarion call: “Go up a high mountain, Zion, herald of glad tidings; Cry out at
the top of your voice; say to the cities of Judah: Here is your God!”
Isaiah spoke those words to a people in exile in a
foreign land. They were words of hope and promise. Their exile was about
to end. They would at long last be returning home. But we need to hear
those words now as spoken to us. Spoken to us in our exile. For who
of us is not - because of our sins and our failings and our shortcomings – who
of us is not in some sort of exile? We may not have turned our backs on God –
or maybe we have – but we have certainly made selfish choices that have
compromised our relationship with God and our relationships with one another.
Exile need not be in a foreign land: exile can happen very close to home.
And people in exile are in need of comfort.
And comfort is exactly what Isaiah proclaims.
Glad tidings of comfort, glad tidings of mercy. “Here comes with power the
Lord God who rules by his strong arm. Like a shepherd he feeds his flock, in his
arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom.”
My friends, those words of comfort are something we all
need to hear. God is merciful. God is there to shepherd us. No
matter what our sins or failings, God is there to gather us in his arms and to
carry us close to his heart. Or, to use Pope Francis’ own words at his homily
opening the Year of Mercy, “How much wrong we do to God and his grace when we
affirm that sins are punished by his judgment before putting first that they are
forgiven by his mercy! It is truly so. We have to put mercy before judgment, and
in every case God’s judgment will always be in the light of his mercy.” And Pope
Francis concluded, “Let us then abandon all fear and dread, for these do not
befit men and women who are loved!” Words of comfort if ever I heard them!
In the familiar passage from St. Luke’s gospel, we
heard Mary sing the praises of God’s mercy which is “from age to age in every
generation.” That includes our generation, of course! Mary is the one we
pray to as the Mother of Mercy, but Mary is also one of us: she is living proof
of God’s mercy. And because of that she is the one to whom we sinners turn
to as our advocate. We do so especially during these Advent days when she
points the way to the one she carried in her womb, the one who is Mercy itself,
Jesus our savior. I hope you feel her presence and her advocacy tonight
because she wants nothing more than for us to experience the mercy of her son.
And I hope that, in receiving that mercy, you will carry in your heart her great
hymn in praise of the God who is mighty and who has done great things not only
for her, but for you. For us!
In the reading from Colossians, St. Paul reminded us
that we are not only to be on the receiving end of mercy but on the giving end.
“Put on, as God’s chosen ones,” he told us, “heartfelt compassion, kindness,
humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one
another, if one has a grievance against another. As the Lord has forgiven you,
so you must also do.”
So mercy is a mission as well as a gift. Mercy
is our mission. We are to be messengers of mercy to everyone we know and
even those we don’t. In our families, for sure, and in our workplaces,
too, and in every place we live our lives. And our mercy must be global,
too. It must embrace everyone; it must exclude no one. It must
embrace the poor, the lonely, and the forgotten, and it must also embrace those
we think of as beyond mercy and forgiveness – and it’s not hard to think who
they might be, is it? “Be merciful, as your heavenly Father is merciful,”
Jesus tells us. And then he reminds us that God makes the sun to rise on
the just and the unjust.
So mercy is a mission. Even as we celebrate
and receive God’s mercy in this wonderful sacrament, we need to commit ourselves
to bring the mercy we have received to those who may need it even more.
That, I believe, is “the revolution of tenderness” that Pope Francis spoke about
when he proclaimed this Year of Mercy. It’s a revolution that could change
the world!
Father Michael G. Ryan
