Homily for 1 Mar 2016

1 March 2016

What a strange prayer! . . . “Remember your mercies, O Lord.”  Does God have to be reminded that he’s supposed to be merciful?  It’s a question that runs throughout the readings today. Azariah in the furnace prays that God “not make void his covenant;” as though God has the potential to be unfaithful.  And even in what Jesus says, if God is like the king in the parable, then it would seem that God’s first inclination is to be merciless, not merciful.

What a strange prayer—“Remember your mercies, O Lord.”  And it should strike us as strange.  After all, we have the Son of God himself who says: “I am with you always, until the end of the age;” I am faithful (and here’s my Holy Spirit to help you).  And we have the Word-made-Flesh who made the definitive ratification of the covenant on the Cross.  And then, here again, is the Son of God himself freely offering mercy and healing to sinners, lepers, prostitutes, the Gentiles.  It doesn’t sound like that merciless king in the parable.

But, you know, that king wasn’t exactly merciless.  After all, he forgave the servant’s debt—no questions asked.  All the servant had to do was to ask for it, and desire it.  The idea of reminding God to be merciful isn’t because God is always on the brink of being unfaithful or forgetful or merciless.  Instead, it’s because we are.

That prayer, “Remember your mercies, O Lord,” is really a reminder to us that God is the merciful One, the faithful One, the One who signed the everlasting covenant with his Blood.  The flood gates of God’s mercy and love are always poised to be opened . . . we just have to want it and ask for it.  And that’s simply because God will never force himself upon us—after all, that would go against his very being Love itself.

God doesn’t need to be reminded to be merciful, but we do.  And so, we pray again and again, “Lord, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.  Make us merciful . . . as you are very merciful.”