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Let Us Bring the Oil of Mercy

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When someone has been hurt – either by another person, or through his/her own mistakes – it’s natural to try to offer comfort. “Don’t pour salt in the wound” is a clichéd expression, but it points toward a temptation for many of us. In our insecurity, jealousy and weakness, it canSalt be all too easy to secretly (if somewhat unconsciously) delight in another’s “wounds.” An honest look inside our hearts will likely turn up moments when we’ve impulsively grasped that salt shaker and seasoned the wound of an enemy…or a friend. We may not have shaken that salt directly on the wounds; but perhaps we passed the shaker around our “private table” and shared it with anyone who’d take it. Inevitably, any satisfaction we feel at our superiority before the wounded is short-lived, and the salt ends up stinging us, too.

Once a sinful woman poured salt on Jesus’ not-yet-wounded feet when she washed them with her tears. While Jesus dines at the home of a Pharisee named Simon, a woman enters the house and prostrates herself before Him. She washes His feet with her tears, dries them with her hair, and then anoints them with ointment. Simon is appalled at the audacity of a public sinner – and a woman – bursting into his home and touching his guest. We have to wonder, though, if the Pharisee was upset over his perception that the Blessed Savior was being “assaulted”, or if the salt in the woman’s tears aggravated his own wounded pride.

You did not give me a kiss, but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with ointment. (Lk 7:45-46) Jesus chides Simon, not because He felt slighted as a guest, but because He desired Simon’s humble surrender to His love and mercy. Unlike the woman who burst in and, in an “unbecoming display”, crudely washed and anointed the Lord, Simon stubbornly clung to his status and his perceived knowledge of God and the Law. For Simon, legality, protocol and etiquette were essential to maintain. For the sinful woman, reaching out in desperate weakness and utter humility to seek the Lord’s mercy was as natural as taking a breath. Once she’d been convicted of whatever sins she’d been bound by, and convinced that Jesus offered mercy, no obstacle could keep her from receiving it. The salt in her tears and the perfumed ointment she liberally poured on Him prepared the Lord’s feet for the pilgrimage He would soon make toward His Passion and Crucifixion.

The second Sunday of Easter in the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches commemorates the Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women. Like the woman who burst into Simon’s Myrrh Bearing Womenhouse, these women (who were His faithful followers) bathed Jesus’ path to Calvary with their tears. Although His hastily wrapped body could not be properly prepared for burial, the women knew they’d return to the tomb after the Sabbath. Then they would anoint the Lord with the sweet-smelling ointment that was their communication of mercy to Him. All four Evangelists tell what happened when the Holy Myrrh-Bearers made for the tomb to fulfill their duty. The accounts are similar, but the differences display the range of human emotion and the spiritual questions we all experience. Matthew and Luke tell us that when the women saw the empty tomb and heard the angel announce the Lord’s resurrection they were frightened – yet they ran to the Apostles and told them what they’d seen. Mark says the women were “seized with trembling and bewilderment,” and left the tomb without telling anyone what they witnessed. Finally, John has only Mary Magdalene – the woman from whom seven demons had been cast out – finding the empty tomb and immediately running to inform Peter and the other Apostles.

Each account of the women discovering the empty tomb should resonate in our hearts. Hopefully we seek Him out of love, but sometimes it’s out of sheer duty (fulfilling my Sunday “obligation,” or “following the rules” of the Church.) We look for the Lord in difficult times, to be rid of whatever “demons” haunt us, yet sometimes we feel like He’s not there, as if He’s vacated our lives just as surely as He did the tomb. We fear the unknown, what God might be calling us to do…or to endure. We stay quiet; quiet before God (slacking in our prayer life, forgetting Him in our everyday busyness), and quiet before others (focusing only on ourselves). Instead, we must go after the Lord like the Women, with an urgency that is not born of duty but of love. In our fear and woundedness, standing before the mystery of life and wondering how God is operative in it, we must seek Him.

The “salt” of our sins and our suffering are poured into the wounds of Jesus, and He freely accepts it. Pope Francis says Jesus retains His wounds in heaven as a means of absorbing our sins and transforming them into mercy and forgiveness. When we pour out the “salt” of our sins and whatever baggage we carry into Jesus’ wounds, we become myrrh-bearers too. Surrendering to God’s forgiveness and embracing His love “anoints” Jesus’ wounds and become our humble “mercy offering.” Jesus accepts our offering just as He accepted the anointing from the sinful woman. But in accepting our “mercy” He asks us to put down the salt shakers and become myrrh-bearers (love-bearers) to the world.

‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ Mt. 25:40

Ann Koshute teaches theology for Saint Joseph’s College Online.

I Saw the Light

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Divine MercyToday is Divine Mercy Sunday, the second Sunday of Easter. Opening Day of Major League Baseball might signify for some, even some of the internet’s most articulate Catholics, the return of spring. Divine Mercy Sunday likewise signals a change in the Church’s calendar as well as its outlook and practice. My colleague, Father Frank Donio, S.A.C., has ably articulated what Divine Mercy Sunday constitutes and what led to St. John Paul II declaring it in 2000. Recently at Word on Fire Father Robert Barron posted his Divine Mercy Sunday homily which offers another clear explanation.

A confession: at first I found Divine Mercy Sunday baffling. I have since recovered—through the help of Catholic commentators like Fathers Donio and Barron, but also through the writings of St. Faustina Kowalska (1905-38) herself. If you, too, have wondered about this relatively new devotion, perhaps you will find reassuring the following exploration.

The devotion’s stumbling block seems to be its novelty. Pope John Paul II declared it—with an element of surprise—during St. Faustina’s canonization mass. So what was heretofore a relatively obscure mystical devotion from the Pope’s homeland was now, with a few words, given place of prominence—the very first week after Easter. Deacon Scott Dodge writes that the genuine dilemma is:

Are we to view it [the Divine Mercy devotion] as somehow in competition with our observance of the Lord’s death, burial, and resurrection, or as a complement to it, whether we choose to participate or not?

Furthermore, the accompanying image, St. John Paul specified, should be displayed as well. Critics immediately detected an act of papal authority, one with a particularly Polish accent.   (The rays of light—red and white—emanating from Christ’s Sacred Heart resemble the Polish flag.)

Kevin Tierney makes an important point here—the Extraordinary Form propers for Divine Mercy Sunday illuminate the devotion’s Scriptural foundation, especially the Epistle I John 5:4-10:

Dearly beloved: Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory, which overcometh the world, our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? This is He that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ: not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit which testifieth that Christ is the truth. And there are three who give testimony in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that give testimony on earth: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three are one.

Water and blood—precisely the explanation of the Divine Mercy image’s white and red rays Christ gives to Sister Faustina (Diary, #299): “These two rays issued forth from the very depths of My tender mercy when My agonized Heart was opened by a lance on the Cross.” (This references John 19:34.)

Powerful stuff, but how significant has this new tradition of mercy become? This weekend Pope Francis declared an Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy with copies ceremonially delivered to representatives of the Church around the world. Pope Francis gives us so many challenges through his frequent tweets exhorting greater concern for the poor and more ardent prayer and the example of his audiences where he joyfully embraces children and the marginalized. Now the Pope issues perhaps the most difficult yet sanctifying call so far: that we grant mercy, so that we in turn receive it (Matthew 5:7). This is far easier to write or say than to do. Sunday’s gospel—John 20:19-31—includes the well-known story of doubting Thomas (perhaps the Scriptural challenge to all theologians…that and Matthew 12:33-35). Tierney suggests this passages underscores our very real human frailty concerning mercy: we want to set human limits or standards on divine initiative:

Isn’t that us, always wanting more?  How often do we half-heartedly place absurd restrictions on Christ’s mercy?  We say we will accept His mercy if there is a miracle, or we can add this or that stipulation.  This doesn’t make us a bad person.  Mercy and grace are scary things, because they require us to likewise be merciful and gracious, even when, and especially when, someone else doesn’t deserve it.  Faced with that reality, we try to be good followers of Christ, but on our own terms.  We tell God when we will believe.

Much of St. Faustina’s diary consists in Christ’s concern for and overcoming precisely this human resistance. The Divine Mercy novena—which Christ stipulates begins on Good Friday—requests the broadest range of souls be brought in prayer back to Christ: priests and religious, but also pagans (#1216), schismatics (#1218), and finally the lukewarm (#1228) who pain Christ most. Even these, St. Faustina responds in her diary, can find solace in “the abyss” of God’s mercy (#1230).

Scott Dodge argues—with good evidence just like Fathers Donio and Barron—that the Divine Mercy devotion should be viewed as complementary to the Triduum, not in competition with it. Dodge and Father Barron both note that the Church’s surest sign of mercy is offered through the sacrament of Penance. So perhaps some remain uncomfortable confronted by this new devotion, but through Confession—which once was so familiar in Catholic life, but has now fallen into disuse—we are all brought into Christ’s mercy. St. Faustina’s diary and devotion offers a particular vision and expression of divine mercy, but the Church’s sacrament is universal. It is this uniquely Catholic blend of the particular and the universal that has helped my appreciation of St. Faustina and St. John Paul II’s bold declaration. Of course, the great cloud of witnesses that is the Church (Hebrews 12:1)—itself particular yet universal—illuminated every step of the way, for in God’s light, we will see light (Psalm 36:9).

Guest blogger Jeffrey Marlett blogs at Spiritual Diabetes.