The Name of God Is Mercy

by Pope Francis

Those who are in the habit of judging people from above, who are sure of their own righteousness, who are used to considering themselves just, good, and in the right, don’t feel the need to be embraced and forgiven.

The Lord never tires of forgiving: never! It is we who tire of asking him for forgiveness. We need to ask for the grace not to get tired of asking for forgiveness, because he never gets tired of forgiving.”

thinking of the Church as a field hospital, where treatment is given above all to those who are most wounded.

The Church does not exist to condemn people but to bring about an encounter with the visceral love of God’s mercy.

maybe you prefer your wounds, the wounds of sin, and you behave like a dog, licking your wounds with your tongue. This is a narcissistic illness that makes people bitter. There is pleasure in feeling bitter, an unhealthy pleasure.

All we need to do is take our condition seriously. We need to remember and remind ourselves where we come from, what we are, our nothingness. It is important that we not think of ourselves as self-sufficient.

None of us should speak of injustice without thinking of all the injustice we have committed before God.

The Lord of mercy always forgives me; he always offers me the possibility of starting over. He loves me for what I am, he wants to raise me up, and he extends his hand to me. This is one of the tasks of the Church: to help people perceive that there are no situations that they cannot get out of. For as long as we are alive it is always possible to start over, all we have to do is let Jesus embrace us and forgive us.

how important it is to welcome people delicately and not wound their dignity.

Once again, as in many other pages of the Gospel, Jesus does not remain indifferent, he feels compassion, he lets himself be involved and wounded by pain, by illness, by the poverty he encounters. He does not back away.

Jesus moves according to a different kind of logic. At his own risk and danger he goes up to the leper and he restores him, he heals him. In so doing, he shows us a new horizon, the logic of a God who is love, a God who desires the salvation of all men.