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“ For His mercy endures forever.” This is the refrain that repeats after each verse
in Psalm 136 as it narrates the history of God’s revelation…To repeat continually
“for His mercy endures forever,” as the Psalm does, seems to break through the
dimensions of space and time, inserting everything into the eternal mystery of
love. It is as if to say that not only in history, but for all eternity man will always
be under the merciful gaze of the Father (MV, 4n7)….
With our eyes fixed on Jesus and His merciful gaze, we experience the love of the
Most Holy Trinity (MV, 4n8)….
In these parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the father with two sons (cf.
Lk 15:13), God is always presented as full of joy, especially when He pardons. In
them, we find the core of the Gospel and of our faith, because mercy is presented
as a force that overcomes everything, filling the heart with love and bringing
consolation through pardon (MV, 5n9)…
Saint Bede the Venerable, commenting on this Gospel passage, (Jesus calls
Matthew, the tax collector), wrote that Jesus looked upon Matthew with merciful
love and chose him (MV, 5n8)…
Pardoning offences becomes the clearest expression of merciful love, and for us
Christians it is an imperative from which we cannot excuse ourselves (MV, 6n9).
Let us not forget the words of Saint John of the Cross, “As we prepare to leave
this life, we will be judged on the basis of love” (MV, 9n15).
But, even if man could not fully understand suffering or God’s love and mercy, by faith,
his consolation may only be the simple knowledge that God’s will was permitting his interior or
exterior struggles and that it was for the good of his soul (CCC, 229).
Also, that the “trials by fire” (Diary, # 121) may be for the “purification” of the bride
“vowed” to the Bridegroom; or so that the bride may be perfected as a “sacrifice of love and
praise” for her Spouse (Diary, # 239). And, for all that, what the Lord has always proposed from
the beginning was imbued only with His great love and mercy for the soul (Diary, # 116).
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