3 November, Monday — God’s Mercy is Just and Wide

Monday of Week 31 in Ordinary Time

Rm 11:29-36
Lk 14:12-14

God never takes back his gifts or revokes his choice.

When we say that God’s mercy is wide, we do not fully understand the breadth of this Truth. In the readings today, as well as the week before, we are introduced to the concept of God’s forgiveness and mercy to all who are repentant and not only those justified because of lineage and bloodlines. That is, those born into the faith can easily fall out of mercy by their own choice, if they disown their privilege and the gift of their heritage.

Likewise, God will receive into sonship all those who may not have been born into the Chosen race or ancestry, if he or she so much as turns their back on sin and accepts their need for God’s mercy. This is the difference which St Paul refers to in Romans 11:29-36. The Israelites can just as fairly fall out of God’s favour, not because He rescinds it, but when they reject their God-given humanity and choose disobedience. And God will accept the Gentiles when they choose obedience to Him over disobedience and their birth circumstances. This is the same for us Catholics, whether we presume or reject the privilege of being ‘cradle-Catholics’. A newly-baptised or late-in-life Catholic can live more rightly in God’s mercy — let us never presume to know God’s motives.

“God never takes back his gifts or revokes his choice.

  Just as you changed from being disobedient to God, and now enjoy mercy because of their disobedience, so those who are disobedient now – and only because of the mercy shown to you – will also enjoy mercy eventually. God has imprisoned all men in their own disobedience only to show mercy to all mankind.” (Rm 11:29-32)

The fairness and justice of God’s mercy and salvation is most clearly highlighted in these words of scripture above. St Paul goes on to marvel “how rich are the depths of God — how deep his wisdom and knowledge — and how impossible to penetrate his motives or understand his methods!” (Rm 11:33). Indeed, God’s mercy resides in the private interior space that exists between Him and every man’s heart.

The Scripture today gives me deep, deep comfort. For all of my life, I have prayed for my father to receive Jesus Christ into his life. But for all these years, he has resisted, rebelled and even fought against the idea of organised religion, particularly the Christian faith. I had gone through periods of despair and momentarily forgotten my child-like pleas, and stopped praying.

By life’s unexpected twists, my dad suffered a serious stroke in 2022. It was therefore in the multiple days in the ICU, high-dependency wards, and long hospital stays, that I was by my father’s bedside, praying over him, reading to him from the Rosary booklet, and Divine Mercy Chaplet, anointing him with Holy Water and given him a rosary to clutch as I prayed. Finally in his complete and utter inability to resist (physically, mentally, and likely spiritually), I prayed for the grace to be an instrument, an intermediary and channel of God’s mercy to my father.

He truly did not resist. Instead, he cried quiet tears, he nodded, and blinked, and he received the glimmer of mercy God shone through his utter helplessness. By God’s mercy, he recovered and is home, but is no longer fully himself. My heart broke many times as I wondered if he could and would ever be saved, because he had not formally received Christ and is not baptised.

However, pondering on the scripture today, I know God’s mercy is wider and deeper than I can ever imagine, and can penetrate deeper into a man’s soul than his earthly limitations. I will embark on a mission to ask my father if he would like to be received into the Catholic Church, and to find a priest to give my father instruction in this. Please pray for my family; for me to locate a priest who would do this and a Church that my parents can easily attend given their various health and mobility issues. I am indebted to the prayers of this community, and likewise will hold your intentions in my prayers.

(Today’s OXYGEN by Debbie Loo)

Prayer: Dear God, I plead for your mercy in my parents’ lives, as well as those who have yet to receive you into their lives. Lord, you hear the prayers of their loved ones. Have mercy on all of us, do not leave us as orphans in this treacherous life and after.

Thanksgiving: We thank God for the mysteries of calamities that bring our absent minds and lives to the greatest halt. We thank God for these moments of rich mercy and intervention that reveal His deep love for us and His desire never to forsake us, except waiting for us to choose Him back.