The Name of God Is Mercy

by Pope Francis

When you feel his merciful embrace, when you let yourself be embraced, when you are moved—that’s when life can change, because that’s when we try to respond to the immense and unexpected gift of grace,

there is also the importance of the gesture. The very fact that someone goes to the confessional indicates an initiation of repentance, even if it is not conscious.

Words are important, but the gesture is explicit. And the gesture itself is important; sometimes the awkward and humble presence of a penitent who has difficulty expressing himself is worth more than another person’s wordy account of their repentance.

God the Father loves me, he wants to save me, he wants to remove me from the wretchedness in which I find myself, but I am incapable of doing it myself. And so he sends his Son, a Son who brings the mercy of God translated into an act of love toward me….But you need a special grace for this, the grace of a conversion. Once I recognize this, God works in me through his Son.” It is a beautiful synthesis of the Christian message. And then there is the homily with which Albino Luciani began his bishopric at Vittorio Veneto, when he said he had been chosen because the Lord preferred that certain things not be engraved in bronze or marble but in the dust,

bishop and future Pope John Paul I, called himself “dust.”

The Pope is a man who needs the mercy of God. I said it sincerely to the prisoners of Palmasola, in Bolivia, to those men and women who welcomed me so warmly. I reminded them that even Saint Peter and Saint Paul had been prisoners.

I have a special relationship with people in prisons, deprived of their freedom. I have always been very attached to them, precisely because of my awareness of being a sinner. Every time I go through the gates into a prison to celebrate Mass or for a visit, I always think: Why them and not me? I should be here. I deserve to be here. Their fall could have been mine.

I derive consolation from Peter: he betrayed Jesus, and even so he was chosen.

The story of Adam and Eve, the rebellion against God described in the Book of Genesis, uses a richly imaginative language to explain something that actually happened at the origins of mankind.

A FEW years ago, in a school in northern Italy, a teacher of religion explained the parable of the Prodigal Son to her students, then asked them to write freely about it and reflect on the story they had just heard. The large majority of the students interpreted the ending in the following way: the father received the prodigal son, punished him severely, and then forced him to live with the servants so that he would learn not to squander the family’s wealth. That’s an entirely human reaction. The reaction of the elder son is also human. It is the mercy of God that is divine.

Sometimes, even from the Church, we hear, “Too much mercy! The Church must condemn sin.”

The Church condemns sin because it has to relay the truth: “This is a sin.” But at the same time, it embraces the sinner who recognizes himself as such, it welcomes him, it speaks to him of the infinite mercy of God. Jesus forgave even those who crucified and scorned him. We must go back to the Gospel. We find that it speaks not only of welcoming and forgiveness but also of the “feast” for the returning son.

The Church does not exist to condemn people but to bring about

an encounter

with the visceral love of G...

I like to use the image of a field hospital to describe this “Church that goes forth”; it exists where there is combat, it is not a solid structure with all the equipment where people go to receive treatment for both small and large infirmities. It is a mobile structure that offers first aid and immediate care, so that its soldiers do not die. It’s a place for urgent care, not a place to see a specialist.

Mercy exists, but if you don’t want to receive it…If you don’t recognize yourself as a sinner, it means you don’t want to receive it, it

Or 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. If we do not begin by examining our wretchedness, if we stay lost and despair that we will never be forgiven, we end up licking our wounds, and they stay open and never heal. Instead, there is medicine, there is healing, we only need take a small step toward God, or at least express the desire to take it. A tiny opening is enough.

Saint Teresa of Avila warned her sisters about the vanity of self-sufficiency. When she heard comments such as “They had no reason to do this to me,” she would say, “May God free us from bad reasons.

If someone doesn’t want to carry the cross, I don’t know what she’s still doing in the convent.”

WHAT do you think of people who always confess the same sins? If you are talking about the penitent who automatically repeats a formula, I would have to say that he was not well prepared, he was not well catechized, he does not know how to self-examine, and he does not realize how many sins he actually commits….I

When there is the kind of repetitiveness that becomes a habit, you cannot grow in the awareness of yourself or of the Lord;

The routine confession is a bit like the example of the dry cleaner that I mentioned earlier. So many people are wounded, not least psychologically, and do not even realize that they are. That is what I have to say about people who confess by rote…. It is different when someone relapses and commits the same sin and suffers because of it,

She had come to thank me. I thought it was for the package of food from Caritas that we had sent to her. “Did you receive it?” I asked. “Yes, yes, thank you for that, too. But I came here today to thank you because you never stopped calling me Señora.” Experiences like this teach you how important it is to welcome people delicately and not wound their dignity.

MAY I ask you about your experiences as confessor to homosexual people? During the press conference on your return flight from Rio de Janeiro you famously remarked, “Who am I to judge?”

On that occasion I said this: If a person is gay and seeks out the Lord and is willing,

who am I to judge that person?

people should not be defined only by their sexual tendencies:

You can advise them to pray, show goodwill, show them the way, and accompany them along it.

CAN there be opposition between truth and mercy, or between doctrine and mercy?

let us not forget that mercy is doctrine. Even so, I love saying: mercy is true.

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.

in places that were deserted, cast out, and declared impure. In addition to suffering from the illness, they faced exclusion, marginalization, and loneliness.

Jesus moves according to a different kind of logic.

he goes up to the leper and he restores him, he heals him. In so doing, he shows us a new horizon,

the Gospel shows us two kinds of logic of thought and faith. On the one hand, there is the fear of losing the just and saved, the sheep that are already safely inside the pen. On the other hand, there is the desire to save the sinners, the lost, those on the other side of the fence. The first is the logic of the scholars of the law. The second is the logic of God, who welcomes, embraces,

what about the risk of “contamination,” the risk of letting oneself be contaminated? We need to enter the darkness, the night in which so many of our brothers live. We need to be able to make contact with them and let them feel our closeness, without letting ourselves be wrapped up in that darkness and influenced by it.