Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Mercy.

During a truly striking talk I heard during CCO Rise Up this Christmas, André Regnier, the co-founder of CCO, mentioned that "we all have a love language. The Father's love language is MERCY." This is how God communicates His love for us - through this personal, freely offered mercy. And how life-changing that mercy is.

That's incredible on so many levels to hear, especially in this Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. The Father offers this mercy to us, and it is absolutely nothing that we deserve or merit for ourselves - but something generously given as a demonstration of the Father's heart.

That mercy changes us.

We all need to experience this mercy, to experience this forgiveness. Even thinking back to my own 'conversion', or reawakening, or reinvigoration back into the faith (or what have you), the biggest part of that was an experience of the Father's love, the Father's heart - through the mercy that He offers us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It's incredible the effect of simple words "You are forgiven" can have on us and our lives. It's a burden lifted, it's a burden carried by Jesus on His cross that we no longer have to carry - and as a result, we are changed.

This freedom and joy is offered to all of us and it's incredible how much that we all grasp at just about everything else to find that freedom and acceptance and peace and joy - but fall just short of finding God. The Evil One wants us to believe that we are not worthy of God, that we are not worthy of His forgiveness and His mercy that He offers us. That we have fallen into a hole that is so deep, that now because we are no longer worthy of achieving God, we must look towards the world and 'settle' for something that's smaller than the great mercy of God.

But God doesn't want us to settle. He wants us - He's pursuing us.

And that is something that is so beautiful that I cannot begin to fathom. Is our God really that good? Is He that relentless? Somedays I find it hard to believe myself. Well, most of the time. It's hard to imagine a God that is so good, so loving, so perfect - because all we have to work with here on earth is a broken world, and we are a broken people. But I can have trust that it is my brokenness that God desires to heal, and that is what He came down to heal. And that is what He is offering every day in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It's perhaps a mystery that I will never understand until I meet Him, but it is a mystery that I choose to delight in.

Rise Up in Montréal was a stunning experience for me and really helped me in my prayer life and relationship with God. I was given an opportunity to just let Him delight in me. Everything was so beautiful, and the experiences I had were so blessed - I could hardly imagine the beauty of God after experiencing the beautiful Notre Dame, the expansive Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral, and the humble but stunning St. Joseph's Oratory. Each of these three churches took my breath away - and how much more infinitely beautiful and stunning is God, compared to these man-made buildings, man-made interpretations of God?

We are no longer slaves to fear, to our sin, to our doubts, to our brokenness. We are children of God. And it is time for us to let Him delight in us as we run towards His awaiting arms of mercy.