Living in a culture that constantly urges us to blame someone else when things go wrong, to not take responsibility for our own actions, and to constantly claim "victim" status even when we are the perpetrators, it can be difficult to discover and/or acknowledge that we are fallible, ongoing sinners. Yet sometimes our humble prayer needs to be "cleanse me from my unknown faults; from wanton sin especially restrain your servant." Pope Francis, in the 2016 book "The Name of God is Mercy: A Conversation with Andrea Tornielli," (Random House: New York) gives us some suggestions for inward examination and reflection.
Sometimes, the Pope says, we can be like the Pharisees, who dragged the woman caught in adultery before Jesus, waiting to see if he would follow the law by condemning her to death by stoning: "sometimes we, too, like to reproach others, to condemn others."
Or else we can be like the Pharisee in Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee is convinced of his own righteousness and despises everyone else; his prayer in the temple is "O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity - greedy, dishonest, adulterous - or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and I pay tithes on my whole income."
"But the tax collector," Jesus says, "stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, 'O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.' I tell you," Jesus continues, "the latter went home justified, not the former..." (The Gospel according to Luke 16: 9-14.)
Pope Francis counsels us that if we are like that Pharisee praying in the temple and think that we are righteous, "we do not know the Lord's heart, and we will never have the joy of feeling his mercy!"
Tornielli comments "Those who are in the habit of judging people from above, who are sure of their own righteousness, who are used to considering themselves just, good, and in the right, don't feel the need to be embraced and forgiven."
But some of us may also feel as if we are irredeemable because our lives are a pattern of doing one bad thing after another. Tornielli tells us
"In this connection, Francis related a dialogue he had had with a man who, on being given this explanation of mercy, had answered: 'Oh Father, if you knew my life, you wouldn't talk to me like that! I have done some terrible things!' This was Francis's reply: 'Even better! Go to Jesus: he likes to hear about these things. He forgets, he has a special knack for forgetting. He forgets, he kisses you, he embraces you, and he says: 'Neither do I condemn you. Go, (and) from now on do not sin any more.' That is the only advice he gives. If things haven't changed in a month...we go back to the Lord. The Lord never tires of forgiving: never! It is we who tire of asking him for forgiveness. We need to ask for the grace not to get tired of asking for forgiveness, because he never gets tired of forgiving.'"
Pope Francis has preached extensively on the Gospel story of the woman caught in adultery. a story that reveals Jesus, whose heart is mercy: "Jesus too goes beyond the law and forgives by caressing the wounds of our sins." The Pharisees drag a a woman before Jesus, possibly with her hands tied, and make a public accusation: "You talk to us of goodness, but Moses told us that we must kill her!" Adultery, blasphemy, and idolatry were considered grave sins under the law of Moses, and were punishable with the penalty of death by stoning.
Pope Francis observes "They said this to put him to the test, so that they could accuse him of something. In fact, if Jesus had said to them, 'Go ahead with the stoning,' they could then have said to people: 'You say your master is so good, but look what he has done to this poor woman!' If instead Jesus had said, 'No, the poor woman, we need to forgive her!' They could have accused him of not enforcing the law. Their only objective was to lay a trap for Jesus. They didn't care about the woman; they didn't care about adultery....Maybe even some were themselves adulterers."
Jesus the Confessor, says Pope Francis, wanted "to be alone with the woman and speak to her heart." So he says to the Pharisees " Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." They went away one by one, starting with the eldest, after hearing these words. The Pope observes "Clearly they owed a lot of money to the heavenly bank!"
Meanwhile, he continues, "Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. Some commentators say that Jesus was writing out the sins of those scribes and Pharisees but maybe that is just imagination. Then he stood up and looked at the woman who was full of shame and said to her 'Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? We are alone, you and I. You are before God. With no accusations, no gossip: you and God."
In this homily, Pope Francis notes that this woman did not claim to be a victim of false accusations; she didn't defend herself by saying that she didn't commit adultery. She acknowledged her sin and responded to Jesus "No one condemned me, Lord." And so Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go (and) from now on, sin no more."
Pope Francis draws an insight into Jesus from this Gospel story:
"Jesus forgives. But here there is something more than forgiveness. Because, as Confessor, Jesus goes beyond the law. In fact the law stated that she must be punished. What's more, Jesus was pure and could have himself cast the first stone. But Christ goes further than that. He does not say adultery is not a sin, but he does not condemn her with the law, the law that demanded stoning. This is the mystery of the mercy of Jesus....Mercy is something difficult to understand: it does not erase sins. What erases sins is God's forgiveness. But mercy is THE WAY IN WHICH GOD FORGIVES. Jesus defends sinners from their enemies, he defends the sinner from a just condemnation....This also applies to us.....How many of us would deserve to be condemned! And it would be just! But he forgives. How? With mercy, which does not erase the sin: only God's forgiveness erases it, while mercy goes FURTHER."
Pope Francis gives us a beautiful description of mercy:
Mercy is "like the sky: we look at the sky when it is full of stars, but when the sun comes out in the morning, with all its light, we don't see the stars anymore. That is what God's mercy is like: a great light of love and tenderness because God forgives not with a decree, but with a caress. (He does it by) caressing the wounds of our sin because he is involved in forgiving, he is involved in our salvation."
Tornieli gives us more meat from this homily of Poe Francis: "In this sense, Pope Francis concluded, Jesus is a confessor. He does not humiliate the adulteress. He does not exclaim: 'What have you done, when did you do it, how did you do it, and who did you do it with!' On the contrary, he tells her 'Go and sin no more. The mercy of God is great, the mercy of Jesus is great: they forgive us by caressing us.'"
Can we overcome our self-righteousness which makes us look down on others and tells us falsely that we are better than others? Can we look at our attitudes and lifestyles which urge us to not accept responsibility for the bad things we have done and the good things we have not done? Can we overcome our fear that God can never forgive the things we have done? Can we put away our misconceptions of a stern, punishing God whose wrath will rip us to shreds?
Pray for the grace to be slowly enlightened by God to recognize your unknown sins and the grace to repent and accept responsibility for the sins that you are aware of. Pray daily for the grace to never tire of asking for God's forgiveness. Daily, simply and humbly say "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner" and walk into the embrace of a merciful God who will forgive you and caress your sins away.
Pope Francis urges us to overcome the difficulty of admitting that we are sinners. He says "The medicine is there, the healing is there - if only we take a small step toward God, or even (have) just the desire to take that step." Then grace and mercy can be granted us so we can walk into God's arms - and become more compassionate to our brothers and sisters on the journey with us.