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Daily Scripture

In You, O Lord, Justice and Mercy Meet

Today’s gospel reading triggered off in my memory the number of times I have jumped the gun by passing judgment on someone before knowing all the facts — the soft data as well as the hard data. It’s clear to me now that prejudice and bias covered up by pride have a great deal to do with this jump; our comrades can do no wrong; our foes can do no right! Of course, it’s easy to meet out mercy to those we like and easier to meet out justice to those we don’t like.

The words of Isaiah introduce the theme of mercy and pave the way for the encounter of Jesus with the adulterous woman recorded in the gospel of John. The people of Israel had prostituted themselves if not in truth, at least metaphorically. God had espoused himself to them, for better or worse for richer or poorer forever. It was an irrevocable covenant that remains to this day. The people of Israel to whom Isaiah addressed these words abandoned their God and aligned themselves with foreign powers for political and economic gain. In effect, they entered an adulterous alliance and were literally carried away to a foreign land by their greed and lust for power.

In the name of their God, a disciple of Isaiah writing in his name and style reminds them of the great exodus when God led the people out of Egypt through the Red Sea into the Land of Canaan, the land they called home for centuries. In words similar to these, the prophet declares, “You think that was great? Forget about it; you ain’t seen noth’in yet! I’m about to do something even more spectacular. I’ll pave a way through the wilderness and bring you home again. I will forgive your unfaithfulness and forget your affair. Your misery will meet mercy and you will be saved.”

It has been said that pride is the worst of all sins because it distorts the truth of who we are. In fact, pride is a lie. But more than this it is a distortion of who God is. Recall that the sin of Adam and Eve was not that they wanted to be like God but that they did not recognize that they were already like God — made in God’s image and likeness.

There was another encounter taking place in John’s story beyond that of the meeting between Jesus and the woman. It was between Jesus and the woman’s accusers. In was in this encounter that justice was enjoined to the ‘trial’. “Let the one who is without sin be the first to cast the stone!” Their pride blinded them to their own sins. Jesus exposed their hypocrisy as his mercy engulfed the sinful woman.

Was he being soft on sin? Hardly. “Go now”, he said to the woman “and avoid this sin.” Might we not rightly assume that this initiative of mercy effected a dramatic change in her life? God’s saving grace was fully manifested in Jesus. Oddly enough, the same mercy resulted in the hardening of her accusers. They drifted away one by one from the eldest to the youngest but they sought another opportunity to trick him into mercy mending.

John’s story about the woman caught in the act of adultery revealed the depth to which Jesus extended himself to the sinner. “In you, O Lord, justice and mercy meet! [Psalm 85] or in the words of St. Augustine, “Misery meets mercy” in the person of Jesus.

Lent is about opening ourselves up to the saving grace of God but repentance is not something we do. It is allowing the forgiving power of God to touch our life, indeed, to engulf us and point us in a new direction. It’s about God empowering us to goodness and about our initiating a new pattern of life.

Lent is also about dropping stones and the acceptance of the humanity of others, despite their sins and failures. It is about entrusting others and ourselves to the tender mercy of God. More than that, it is about allowing ourselves to become conduits of God’s mercy and saving grace—helping others to find their way out of the wilderness of failure, sin and rejection.

“To err is human; to forgive is divine.”

At the same time, to forgive is not so much an act of the will as a disposition of the heart and in many situations, the conclusion of a very long process. We dare not be presumptuous or simplistic about it.

Forgiveness does not absolve the sinner from taking responsibility for the sin or from its consequences. Thus the mantra, “There is no forgiveness without justice, no justice without truth, no truth without full accountability.”

Here is the story that a rabbi colleague shared with me many years ago. A man went into the temple for the observance of Yom Kippur, which is the Jewish observance of atonement. As he entered the Temple, he noticed all his sins were listed on the board at the entrance. He tried to erase them but he was unable to do so. Then he went inside to participate in the penitential service. As he left the temple, he attempted once more to erase his sins but again was unable to do so. He departed and set about making amends for his sins and then returned to the temple. Lo and behold, his sins had disappeared.

This story is akin to the teaching of Jesus, “When you are bringing your gift to the altar and recall that your brother or sister has something against you, go first to be reconciled and then return with your gift.”

The Scriptures set the tone not only for our Lenten journey but also for our life long journey. Our destiny is not Jerusalem the earthly city but Jerusalem the heavenly city. Mercy is our mission but we must first pass through the gateway of justice and truth. In you O Lord, justice and mercy meet and when they do, reconciliation is complete.

The Unfinished Church

Friday July 8, 2005

The Unfinished Church, Ecclesiology Through the Centuries, Bernard P. Prusak, Paulist Press, New York/Mahwah, NJ, 2004, paperback, 404 pages

Movement is a more descriptive word than institution to describe the reality of the Church and this appears to be the conclusion of Dr. Prusak in his splendid book entitled, ‘The Church Unfinished.”

In 341 pages, this superb ecclesiologist takes the reader on an encyclopedic and somewhat kaleidoscopic tour of the evolution of the Church from its apostolic foundation in the teachings of Jesus to its post Vatican II mix of the old and the new. The book concludes with a look into the future with no firm promises or predictions of what the Church will look like in generations to come but with reasons for hope without ducking some crucial issues and questions.

It has been said that it takes an orator six hours to produce a six-minute speech – one hour per minute. Therefore, it should not surprise us that this book took over five years to complete. Dr. Prusak is painstakingly thorough in all his endeavors.

With a Licentiate in Sacred Theology and a doctorate in Canon Law, Dr. Prusak is a blended and balanced scholar. He is an historian of much breadth and depth. His grasp of biblical theology, his appreciation of the influence of political forces on the development of church structures and discipline, his insight into the impact of the human element on the Church’s mission and ministry and his innate sensitivity for people in the pew all combine to make this a remarkably informative book.

The first five chapters take us through 1900 centuries of history with an emphasis on facts but with an interpretation faithful to facts rather than speculation so often characteristic of progressive writers. There is no spin in these pages. The facts are amply documented with fifty pages of notes most of which pertain to original sources. There is also an index of modern authors extending for eleven pages.

An understanding of Peter’s role among “The Twelve” and the role of the pope and bishops throughout the Church’s history is crucial for a complete understanding of the papacy and its relation to the college of bishops today.

Chapter 6 is basically a commentary on the documents of Vatican II with an emphasis on “Lumen Gentium – Dogmatic Constitution on the Church” and “Gaudium et Spes – Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World.” However, he does not neglect the “Decree on Ecumenism,” the “Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church” and the “Declaration on Religious Liberty.”

Notwithstanding all of the above, and recognizing the sound philosophical and theological assumptions by which a world Church may be guided in its progress into the future, Chapter 7, “Restoring a Future to a World Church” fulfills the purpose of this treatise. Despite the desire for change by proponents of reform, new models of Church always contain elements of the old. We need to look back in order to move forward. Moreover, despite the guidance of the Holy Spirit, there are always unexpected influences that skew change in unanticipated directions. Quantum theory is not antithetical to the conviction to Christ’s promise that God will not abandon the Church.

Dr. Prusak’s commentary on the willingness of Pope John XXIII to risk a more intentional outreach to the world is a refreshing reminder that the Church must always be in dialogue with the world if it is to achieve its end. Jesus did not reject the world but embraced it. Before his arrest and crucifixion, Jesus prayed, “As you have sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world…. I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.” [John 17:18-21]

The accent of Vatican II was on dialogue with the world and the collaboration of Christians with people of good will everywhere in the pursuit of the common good of humanity.

This quote from Chapter 7 sums it up nicely:

“’What humanity is,’ the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey writes, ‘only history tells us.’ Like human life, the life of the catholic or universal Church is lived forward but understood backward. Catholic tradition does not, however, simply involve remembering and preserving the past. The final chapters of Catholic identity are a work in progress, like a book without a final chapter and a back cover. The Church’s catholicity includes sweeping spatial and temporal dimensions. It involves an ever-expanding memory, embracing the immense richness of past and present times, places and cultures, and at the same time an openness to assimilating, and possibly being transformed by, a future history in which God offers a surplus of possibilities. What the Church is, only the entirely of its history will fully reveal.” (Looking Ahead, p 333)

We are only in the first trimester of a Church still in its embryonic stage. There’s a lot more to come and if the past is any indicator of the future, there is every reason to keep hope alive.

“The Unfinished Church” will not be an easy read for Catholics who have little or no knowledge of Church history. However, in my opinion, it is an essential read for anyone serious about Church reform. Prusak is faithful to history but he allows history to make its own assessment of the past and open the doors to the future.

Dr. Bernard Prusak, STL, JCD is the head of the Department of Theology and Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Villanova University.