Mercy Not Justice is the Goal
One
As Christians we are called to go beyond the limits of strict justice. For Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you.” This commandment of love means that I must do for others what is supernaturally good for them in order to truly live this command. Since justice is giving others what we owe them, charity and mercy go beyond what we owe and seek to give to others the way God gives to us.
Justice ensures that I respect your good as I pursue my good, and that I don’t do it in such a way that harms your good.
Justice makes sure I take into consideration what you need as I pursue what I need.
But this implies there is a difference, a tension, a separation between your good and my good.
Charity bridges the gap – charity makes your good the same as my good. Lord Jesus, you love me and thus care about what happens to me even though you do not benefit from it. Help me to love my brothers and sisters in the same way so as to live your love through my own heart.
Two
In Matthew’s Gospel, our Lord tells a parable about workers in a vineyard. Some people are hired to work at the beginning of the day; some are hired midday, and some aren’t employed until the end of the day. Yet everybody gets paid the same in the end. Those who labored the entire day are expecting to get paid more since they labored more and are quite upset when that doesn’t happen. It doesn’t seem fair that someone who worked less gets paid as if they worked more. (cf. Mt 20: 1-16). To grasp our Lord’s point, imagine that you and your sibling are in a foreign country, trying to find work to support your families. You live together yet scrape to get by. Every morning you both go to different locations on the dock hoping to get hired and make enough money to help your families survive the day. So suppose you and your brother go out one morning and you get dropped off at dock 1 and he at dock 2. You get hired immediately, but not your brother. Furthermore, you notice that every hour or so more people are brought to work and every time you hope that your brother is there. And he’s never there. You keep looking and realizing how happy your families would be if you both were working.
Finally at the end of the day you see your brother at the last hour, the last hour before quitting time he shows up and starts working. He won’t likely be paid a full days wage, but will be paid something, and that will help! But then you each discover to your joy you both receive a full days wage! How happy will your families be when they find out! And you’re both ecstatic as well. Why? Because he’s your brother and what he has you have and what you have he has and you’re both in it together. You’re both trying to scrape together as much as you can to support the wives and the kids. And you are thrilled because there is no division between your good and his good. The money he makes is money in your pocket and the money you make is money in his pocket.
You recognize this is a family project and you celebrate because you love your brother.
This is why charity and mercy are the goal and not simply justice.
Making sure that the person you love gets as much as possible is the recipe for your happiness, your brother’s, your family’s, and society’s. This is joy; and this is the point of Jesus’ parable. Let us go and live for this joy!
Three
We are obliged to give other people more than they have the right to expect of us.
That means we are obliged to give and to forgive even when the other person is not entitled to receive generosity or forgiveness.
Why?
For two reasons, one natural and the other supernatural.
Naturally, society demands it.
It is not good for society if those who need help are not given help.
It is not good for society if the mentally ill are not cared for, if people are homeless, if people who want to work cannot find employment with a just wage.
It’s not good for families to have parents who neglect their children or have others raise them because they feel they’be done their fair share simply by bringing them into the world. It’s true, this is good. But if our goodness ends there we will have wounded kids and a warped society and it breeds unrest. Further, we ought to be generous to strangers as well as to our children so created conditions of even greater flourishing! This is the example of our Lord. And we are called to follow Him.
Four
There’s another vital element to create such a society: Forgiveness. The human condition is fallen and as such, we cannot live together and survive unless we are willing to forgive one another.
The massacre of Tutsi’s by the Hutus in Kibeho, Rwanda in 1994 is a terrifying example of what can happen to a society that doesn’t forgive but seethes in vengeance. Immacule, who survived, has toured the world since preaching Christ’s love and forgiveness as the only way to live in peace. Her entire family was murdered.
Bankruptcy laws are there to give people a second chance so they can contribute to society in a way that compensates for the damage they have done.
If we don’t forgive them to the extent that we can, then society will lose more productivity than it lost in the debt. It is truly the influence of the devil that tells us to get back at others, even when we know it hurts us in the long run, rather than forgive. This is why Jesus commands us to love one another as he has loved us, and this is the only way to live in a fair and just society.
Five
God has been merciful and generous to us, He has given us everything.
The way we try to pay him back, meaning, love Him in return, is by being merciful and generous to others
The way we live Justice toward God – giving Him what we owe Him—is by going beyond justice toward neighbor and offer and live mercy and generosity as well. Being Just to God means being more than just to others.
In the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant in Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 18, Jesus demonstrates His expectations of mercy from His followers. The king in the story makes clear that his servant’s contractual attitude towards fellow servants violated the debt that existed between that servant and the king. The King therefore punished the unmerciful servant fully, which means severely.
Peter Kreeft writes: In the Our Father we pray for our own damnation if we do not forgive those around us
· Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
· If we don’t forgive those who trespass against us
· The implication is we are praying that God will not forgive us
Being just towards God means being more than just towards neighbor
We owe God everything.
The way we give everything to God is by giving other people much more than we owe them or they expect. And let us end in praise of our Heavenly Father who honors us by calling us and gracing us precisely to live like Him!