“Amen,
I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43)
Today
on the Solemnity of Christ the King, the Year of Mercy comes to its
conclusion. It was an exceptional year
of grace that the Holy Father gifted us with, and we end it by hearing about
one of the most exceptional acts of mercy our Lord ever did. All year long, Pope Francis has been guiding
us and challenging us to be a more merciful church, so before we meditate on
this gospel passage, I want to outline the pope’s best tweets from the Year of
Mercy. Each on its own could fill a Holy
Hour with meditation:
-God’s
mercy toward us is linked to our mercy toward our neighbor.
-It is not
enough to experience God’s mercy in one’s life; whoever receives it must also
become a sign and instrument for others.
-God never
tires of offering His forgiveness each time we ask for it.
-Mercy can
truly contribute to the building up of a more humane world.
-An easy
prayer to say every day: “Lord, I am a sinner: come with your mercy”.
-Mercy
does not just mean being a “good person” nor is it mere sentimentality. It is
the measure of our authenticity as disciples of Jesus.
-A
merciful heart has the courage to leave comforts behind and to encounter
others, embracing everyone.
-No one
can be excluded from the mercy of God. The Church is the house where everyone
is welcomed and no one is rejected.
-Mercy is
the path uniting God with man, for it opens the heart to the hope of an eternal
love
-Even in
the worst situation of life, God waits for me, God wants to embrace me, God
expects me.
That last quote goes to the very heart of today’s
gospel. Can you think of a worse
situation than what the repentant thief found himself in on that first Good
Friday? We don’t know what he did. We don’t know how grave his crime was. We don’t even know if he did any good in his
life. But right there, on his cross,
next to the crucified Lord, none of that mattered. In the worst moment of his life, he turned to
Jesus. And there, even as he was dying,
as he struggled for every precious breath, Jesus assured the repentant thief
that he would soon be in paradise. There
is nothing more powerful than the mercy of God.
It turns thieves into saints.
We celebrate Christ as King today. We worship him not on a golden throne but on
the throne of the cross because it is precisely at his most vulnerable moment
that our Lord was truly powerful: a King who forgives, a King who thirsts for
us, a King who gives his life for us.
The true measure of power is not in how we rule but in how we
serve. So we bring this Year of Mercy
to a fitting conclusion gazing up at the cross at our Lord and King. And perhaps our prayer this day is a prayer
of mercy like that of this blessed thief:
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
