God’s mercies to each man throughout his life will weigh heavily in that man’s judgement: those who have used them for good will receive the reward; those who have wasted them will face justice, with both coming from the Divine and Eternal hands.
Newsroom (16/05/2024 08:30, Gaudium Press ) The Gospel tells us that when Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem shortly before the Passion, He sent two of His disciples ahead of Him to find a place to stay. They were in the region of Samaria, whose inhabitants harboured fierce hatred towards the Jews and, for this reason, did not want to give lodging to the Divine Redeemer and His Apostles.
Outraged by this refusal, James and John turned to the Master and asked: “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from Heaven and consume them?” Jesus turned and rebuked them sharply. “You do not know what kind of spirit you have. The Son of Man did not come to lose men’s lives, but to save them” (Lk 9:54-56). With this response, the Saviour showed how great is the mercy of God, who does not take revenge on those who refuse to accept Him, but waits patiently for them to repent.
However, if we analyze the Creator’s relationship with mankind throughout history, we also come across numerous episodes in which He firmly punishes the sinner. Without leaving the New Testament, let us think of the anger with which Jesus expelled the peddlers from the Temple (cf. Mt 21:12-17; Mk 11:15-19; Lk 19:45-48; Jn. 2:13-17).
In our day and age, we find it hard to understand the combination of mercy and justice. We think that whoever practices the former can never punish, and whoever possesses the latter is unable to forgive. We forget that they are attributes of God, in whom all the virtues harmonize in an admirable way.
Both belong to Him, like the two arms belong to the body. Through mercy or justice, we are always in His hands. And He often shows His goodness by punishing sinners in order to purify them in this life and mercifully grant them eternal salvation…
In order to better understand the essence of this sublime balance, it is important to adjust our concepts to the Church’s doctrine, starting by recalling what justice consists of.
It is defined by the Catechism as the ‘constant and firm will to give to God and neighbour what is their due’. When this giving applies to God, we call it the virtue of religion; when it applies to men, it is properly called justice.
‘God is justice and creates justice,’ says Pope Benedict XVI. All his actions are in some way marked by it. ‘When you punish the wicked, it is justice, because it suits what they deserve; when you forgive them, it is also justice, not because it suits what they deserve, but because of your goodness,’ proclaims St. Anselm.
We can clearly see here how God’s justice is not only punitive in nature towards the evil done. When He uses mercy to forgive, He is also doing justice, only in this case to His infinite goodness.
In one of the Divine Master’s most beautiful parables, we see the Good Shepherd going after the lost sheep and leaving the other ninety-nine of His flock behind. Explaining it to His listeners, Jesus concludes: ‘There will be more rejoicing in Heaven over one sinner who does penance than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance’ (Lk 15:7). Also, in the parable of the Prodigal Son, we see him returning home, repentant for having squandered his father’s goods, and we find the touching scene: ‘He was still a long way off when his father saw him and, moved with compassion, ran to meet him, threw himself round his neck and kissed him’ (Lk 15:20).
These passages are a perfect image of how God – because He never connives with evil – is just towards Himself when he overflows with mercy towards those who repent and ask for forgiveness.
He acts with kindness even in punishment
Whoever – however – fixates on insulting God and therefore on evil, dies impenitent and enters eternity in a state of mortal sin, and comes to deserve eternal punishment. In this case, the Creator of the universe cannot forgive, because it would not be fair to the eternal Good, who is Him. Hence, the need for God to create hell, that sea of fire, of ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Mt 8:12), so often evoked in the Gospel.
Why should punishment be eternal? The fact that punishment has no end serves to ‘manifest God’s indefeasible right to be loved above all else, to make known the splendour of His infinite justice’.
However, even in this monumental work of divine justice, there are evident traces of the compassionate and kind God. This is what the Angelic Doctor ( St. Thomas Aquinas) himself says: ‘Even in the condemnation of the reprobate, mercy appears, not by totally relaxing, but by mitigating the penalties in some way, because God punishes less than is deserved.’
Following the theme, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange continues: ‘God, who is good and merciful, does not delight in the sufferings of the damned, but in His infinite goodness which deserves to be preferred to all created good, and the elect contemplate the splendour of supreme justice, thanking God for having saved them. […] God loves His infinite goodness above all things; this goodness, insofar as it is essentially communicative, constitutes the principle of mercy, and insofar as it has an imprescriptible right to be loved above all else, it constitutes the principle of justice’.
Before unleashing his wrath, God calls for conversion
In one way or another, God never fails to make numerous calls to conversion. He is not pleased ‘with the death of the sinner, but with his conversion, so that he may have life’ (Ezek 33:11) and for this reason He invites us to enter ‘through the narrow gate, because wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter through it’ (Mt 7:13).
Sacred Scripture is full of beautiful facts in this regard. To cite a few, let’s take Elijah’s announcement of punishment for Ahab and the joy God showed when He saw the wicked king doing penance (cf. 1 Kings 21:21-29). Or the change in God’s plans in the face of the contrition of the inhabitants of Nineveh after Jonah’s preaching: ‘Seeing how they forsook their evil ways, God repented of the evil He had purposed to do to them, and did it not’ (John 3:10).
When people remain indifferent to God’s call, His justice brings down punishment on them. When they repent, however, God does the same. This attitude does not mean that the divine criteria are susceptible to change. The humanization of divine actions is just a literary resource used to make them more comprehensible to us.
Divine wrath, explains St. Augustine, is not ‘tribulation of spirit, but the judgement by which He punishes sin. His thought and reflection are the immutable reason for mutable things. For God, who has an opinion of all beings as stable as His foreknowledge is certain, does not repent of His deeds as man does’.
Fatima: Mercy and justice for our times
Now, if in the Old Testament God used the prophets to warn people before exercising His just action, in recent centuries He has done so through Mary Most Holy.
It is through Her that Jesus announces to us the nearness of the Kingdom of Mary, foretold by St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, and the punishments that must come if people do not convert.
And just as all the prophecies that have marked history have provoked opposite reactions, so it is today with the message of Fatima: those who have faith rejoice and are filled with hope; those who do not believe try to deny its authenticity and the importance it has for the life of the Church. ‘But everyone is well aware that the prophecies of the Blessed Virgin will come true,’ writes the founder of the Heralds of the Gospel, Monsignor João S. Clá Dias.
After such a long wait, one might ask: When will it happen?
The day and the hour are part of God’s arcana. He has given the Blessed Virgin, our Mother of Mercy, the power to hold back her arm of justice over the world until all the souls who should be open to her words are ready. Only She knows when the time is right to touch the depths of the hearts of contemporary men and women, in order to finally fulfil her great promise: ‘In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph’.
Until that time comes, it is up to us to open our souls to our Mother of goodness, instrument of divine mercy, Universal Mediatrix of all graces.
And let us not forget that the mercies that God bestows on each person throughout their lives will weigh heavily on the day of judgement: those who have used them for good will receive a greater mercy, eternal reward; those who have wasted them will meet with justice, because we are always in God’s hands!
Text taken, with adaptations, from the magazine Heralds of the Gospel, no. 194, Feb 2018. By Sr. Mariella Emily Abreu Antunes, EP.
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
