Q. At the end of confession we say, “for His mercy endures forever.” What does this mean?
A. “The Gospel is the revelation in Jesus Christ of God’s mercy to sinners.”
These words, taken from the Catechism, are a beautiful summation of the entire mystery of salvation. God sends His Son to show His mercy to humanity. That is the whole point. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16-17). That God loves all of us is made so explicit by the words of Scripture that it cannot be argued with. It is a fact, irrefutable and undeniable.
Mercy can be understood as having compassion for one’s suffering and doing what is within one’s power to alleviate it. God feels great compassion for His children (something that is also made very, very clear in Scripture) and has the power to alleviate the worst form of our suffering, namely, being separated from Him because of sin. Therefore, He shows us His mercy by forgiving our sins whenever we approach Him through confession and are truly contrite and resolved to amend our life. He cannot not forgive our sins because He cannot act against His nature, and His nature is Love and therefore merciful.
However, it can be hard to believe that God is Love, at least on a personal level. Faced with our own sinfulness, it is easy for all of us to believe that God loves everyone – just not us. Or He loves us a bit less. Or we need to earn His love. Or one day He will stop loving us. After all, how can God love us even though we sin so much, sometimes even committing the same sin over and over and over again?
The simple answer is because God is Love and He has ordered creation in such a way that He is our Loving Father and we are His children. Don’t ask me to explain it more than that. I don’t know how.
That is because God’s mercy is less about understanding and more about experiencing. It is something to be entered into, not puzzled out.
One of the hardest things to do for many people is allow God to love them. It requires vulnerability and a willingness to see ourselves as we are, not as we wish to be. Which is unpleasant sometimes. But the first step in getting help is admitting we have a problem. It is why Mass begins with the Act of Penitence, to remind ourselves that we are sinners and we need God’s grace.
Confession ends with the ritual exchange of the priest saying, “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good,” and the penitent saying, “for His mercy endures forever” also as a reminder, in this case reminding us that God will continue to show us His mercy just as He did in this confession. So long as we are truly contrite and truly intend to amend our life, God will continue to show us His mercy through the forgiveness of our sins. Always and without exception.
As I said, this is a hard thing to believe at times. We truly cannot comprehend God’s love because, as limited human beings, we can never love the way He can. So all we can do is try to understand His love via analogy, that is, basing God’s love on our experience of the love we receive from others. This is natural, but flawed, as the love we receive from others, whether they be parents or siblings or a spouse, will always be limited because they are fallen human beings just like we are. It becomes easy then to believe that God’s love is imperfect because all we’ve experienced in our human relationships is imperfect love.
But God’s love is not imperfect, it is perfect. He goes to great lengths, in Scripture, in private revelations like the Sacred Heart and Divine Mercy, and in our own experiences to help us to believe this. So as we approach Divine Mercy Sunday, let us all ask for the grace to allow the Truth of God’s Mercy to cast out from us any doubt that God loves us, that He will always love us, and nothing we can do will ever change that.
This question was answered by Father Caleb La Rue, chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln. Write to Ask the Register using our online form, or write to 3700 Sheridan Blvd., Suite 10, Lincoln NE 68506-6100. All questions are subject to editing. Editors decide which questions to publish. Personal questions cannot be answered. People with such questions are urged to take them to their nearest Catholic priest.
