The first sentence of Pope Francis’s letter announcing the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy is, “Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy” (1).

As catechists, this sentence is the key to understanding what the church means by “mercy.” For most people in the world, mercy is an optional act of leniency toward an offender. And it can be withdrawn at any time. So we have the phrase, “at the mercy of.” I am at the mercy of someone who has power over me. Mercy like that is a kind of bondage.

Mercy is about liberation

Christians know that life in Christ is liberation, not bondage. So if Jesus is the face of mercy, mercy must be about freedom and deliverance from bondage. And it is not fleeting. God’s mercy is rich and everlasting.

When the pope says the Jesus is the face of mercy, he is saying three things:

• Jesus is the visible, tangible sign of God’s love
• When we see Jesus, we see the father
• Jesus, therefore, reveals God’s mystery to us

Mercy is concrete

He is also saying that mercy is not some abstract idea. Mercy is a way of life. Mercy is a set of concrete, observable behaviors. Our goal is not to teach the catechumens what mercy means as much as it is to teach them how to be merciful.

This is important. The catechumens are not going to learn who God is by studying the qualities of mercy. They are going to learn who God is when they receive mercy and when they offer mercy. In other words, to teach the catechumens about the merciful God, we have to teach them to be merciful people.

The pope lists many ways in which God has concretely acted in the lives of his people. These concrete actions don’t just tell us what God does. They tell us who God is. God is mercy. The pope says:

In short, the mercy of God is not an abstract idea, but a concrete reality with which he reveals his love as of that of a father or a mother, moved to the very depths out of love for their child. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that this is a “visceral” love. It gushes forth from the depths naturally, full of tenderness and compassion, indulgence and mercy. (6)

A job description for the catechumens

The examples of concrete mercy that the pope lists include the following. These are actions of God that the catechumens must learn to practice. We must provide:

• Justice for the oppressed
• Food for the hungry
• Freedom for prisoners
• Sight for the blind
• Protection of travelers
• Support for widows and orphans
• Comfort for the brokenhearted
• Healing for the wounded
• Elevation of the downtrodden

This is our job description for the Jubilee year. Mercy is not a theoretical concept. It is doing these things.

The world will know who God is when they know us to be a church of mercy.

The hardest act of mercy

Another concrete action that we have to teach the catechumens is forgiveness. The pope recalls Peter’s question to Jesus about how many times we have to forgive someone. After giving Peter the impossibly large number of “seventy times seven,” Jesus goes on to tell the parable of the unmerciful servant. You remember how that goes. A master forgives a huge debt of one of his servants. That servant then goes out and refuses to cancel the debt of a fellow servant. So the master chastises the unmerciful servant and throws him in prison.
Forgiveness is hard. It’s hard for me, because I have a huge balance sheet in my head where I keep track of who has wronged me and what they “owe” me. But the truth is, I have been forgiven. God has no balance sheet. If he did, I could never repay what I owe. And so the pope says to me, and to all of us:

Jesus affirms that mercy is not only an action of the Father, it becomes a criterion for ascertaining who his true children are. In short, we are called to show mercy because mercy has first been shown to us. Pardoning offences becomes the clearest expression of merciful love, and for us Christians it is an imperative from which we cannot excuse ourselves. At times how hard it seems to forgive! And yet pardon is the instrument placed into our fragile hands to attain serenity of heart. To let go of anger, wrath, violence, and revenge are necessary conditions to living joyfully. (9)

The foundation RCIA teams must give the catechumens

For the catechumens, mercy cannot be optional. It is a core definition of what it means to be Christian. The pope says, “Mercy is the very foundation of the Church’s life” (10).

We started by saying that Jesus is the face of mercy. Now we can add that we are the face of Jesus. The world will know who God is when they know us to be a church of mercy. We have to be witnesses of mercy to the world.

What do you think? How would you define mercy? What is one thing you can do to teach your catechumens to be merciful?