Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
On this Divine Mercy Sunday, I offer for your mediation an excerpt from St. John Paul II’s encyclical, Rich in Mercy (#13): “It is precisely because sin exists in the world, which ‘God so loved...that he gave his only Son,’ (John 3:16) that God, who ‘is love,’ cannot reveal Himself otherwise than as mercy. This corresponds not only to the most profound truth of that love which God is, but also to the whole interior truth of man and of the world which is man's temporary homeland.
“Mercy in itself, as a perfection of the infinite God, is also infinite. Also infinite therefore and inexhaustible is the Father's readiness to receive the prodigal children who return to His home. Infinite are the readiness and power of forgiveness which flow continually from the marvelous value of the sacrifice of the Son. No human sin can prevail over this power or even limit it. On the part of man only a lack of good will can limit it, a lack of readiness to be converted and to repent, in other words persistence in obstinacy, opposing grace and truth, especially in the face of the witness of the cross and resurrection of Christ.
“Therefore, the Church professes and proclaims conversion. Conversion to God always consists in discovering His mercy, that is, in discovering that love which is patient and kind (Cf. 1 Cor. 13:4) as only the Creator and Father can be; the love to which the "God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 1:3) is faithful to the uttermost consequences in the history of His covenant with man; even to the cross and to the death and resurrection of the Son. Conversion to God is always the fruit of the ‘rediscovery’ of this Father, who is rich in mercy.”
In Christ,
Bishop Tim Freyer