ENCOUNTERING GOD'S MERCY AND LOVE IN CHRIST

ST. JOHN PAUL II, POPE

Eph 2:12-22; Ps 85: 9-14; Lk 12:35-38

Encountering God’s Mercy and Love

St. Paul’s discussion of the peace that Jesus Christ has brought to the Jews and Gentiles alike is a suitable introduction to our celebration of the memorial of Saint John Paul II. He was a great Gospel man of God. He assimilated the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and became a preacher of truth and peace. According to Paul's explanation in the reading, the Gentiles had no Christ and were living with no hope and no part in the covenant of God’s blessings given to Israel. But this was as it pertains to Gentiles possessing no knowledge of the revelation of God’s mercy and love. “Do not forget that you had no Christ and were excluded from membership of Israel, aliens with no part in the covenants with their Promise; you were immersed in this world, without hope, and without God.” God had the Gentiles in his plan right from the beginning, even before the creation, as we read at the start of the letter. God left the general aspect of his plan of mercy and love involving the Gentiles directly and implemented the part that had to do with the Israelites. So, the Gentile world was considered lost or abandoned because God had yet to reveal his whole plan involving everybody in Christ. The general plan of God’s mercy and love was never to be realised without the Gentiles because Christ was not to be revealed without the involvement of the Gentiles.

The wonderful plan of God’s mercy and love in Jesus Christ is what we are celebrating as the full revelation of God to all people. We can say that God did not reveal the full scale of his plan of salvation without the Gentiles, for even the aspect of the Law and the Prophets was to serve as a means to prepare for the full revelation that will involve the Gentiles. So, as Gentiles, we have every course to rejoice and praise God. “But now in Christ Jesus, you that used to be so far apart from us have been brought very close, by the blood of Christ. For he is the peace between us, and has made the two into one and broken down the barrier which used to keep them apart, actually destroying in his own person the hostility caused by the rules and decrees of the Law.” This consequence of the Law was not the effect God intended, but due to the fallen human nature. The purpose of the Law was to help Israel mediate the full revelation of God’s mercy and love to all Jews and Gentiles alike. Hence, the hostility was the effect of Israel’s arrogance in sin and Gentiles’ hopelessness and sinfulness in ignorance. The coming of Jesus Christ in human nature destroyed the arrogance of those who had the Law and gave hope to the hopeless by revealing justification through faith.

Subsequently, through faith, we all have received the fullness of mercy and love of God in Jesus Christ. We must distance ourselves from the two errors of the Jews and Gentiles, we must humble ourselves, understanding that the grace of salvation is through faith and never what we have done or merited, and we must also be enlightened in Jesus Christ, knowing the fullness of blessings of heaven given to us all. “Through him, both of us have in the one Spirit our way to come to the Father.” With this knowledge of God’s abundant mercy and love shown to us in Jesus Christ, we must all die to ourselves and dedicate our whole being to knowing Jesus Christ and serving the will of the Father he reveals to us. “Be like men waiting for their master to return from the wedding feast, ready to open the door as soon as he comes and knocks. Happy those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.” This heavenly happiness belongs to Saint Pope John Paul II. Our dear Pope lived such a life of dedication to the Gospel truth and preached it to both believers and unbelievers with so much peace and love. He was born in 1920 in Wadowice, Poland. He was ordained a priest in Rome after his studies and returned home to various pastoral and academic tasks. He became the auxiliary bishop and later Archbishop of Krakow in 1964. He was elected Pope on 16 October 1978. He died on 2 April 2005, the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday, peaceful and with God’s abundant mercy and love, that he preached and lived through his life and work on earth. May his prayers assist our journey into Christ.

Let us pray: O God, who are rich in mercy and who willed that Saint John Paul the Second should preside as Pope over your universal Church, grant, we pray, that instructed by his teaching, we may open our hearts to the saving grace of Christ, the sole redeemer of mankind.