I will take your heart of stone from you

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Meditation on Holy Saturday, year B1

Create, O God, in me a pure heart

and renew my spirit strength.

Don’t put me off your face

and take your holy spirit away from me.

Ps 51

And I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit inside you,

I will take a heart of stone from you and I will give you a heart of flesh.

I want to infuse my spirit within you and make you

that you live according to my dictates and keep my commandments,

and followed them.

From the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel

Recently, I have been reflecting very deeply on the relationship between God’s justice and His mercy. And whether a man can be at least a little like God in it. Just and merciful.

Recently, I got involved in a discussion about the demands of the LGBT community towards the Church. Taking a position consistent with my state of knowledge about the teaching of the Church and in accordance with my conscience, unfortunately sometimes I use very little merciful arguments towards people of flesh and blood. I am aware that it can hurt feelings, cause emotional pain, maybe even cause anger, resentment.

The same thing happens when I talk to people about relationships outside of wedlock or living in cohabitation. When trying to understand other people’s moral principles and to consider different situations in the light of the moral principles preached by (Catholic) Christianity, I often face a dilemma: how do I say it? Sometimes when I hear about the stories of divorces, breakdowns of marriages of my close and distant friends, I think about the attempt to answer the questions about God’s right in human life.

Listening and silence on my part is sometimes the best way to communicate with people who, by putting their trust in me, talk about their failures and harsh experiences that often cause me to leave God and the Church.

Paradoxically, as I come closer to the human stories of suffering in the fall, I am beginning to understand God’s heart, if at all it can be called that. God loves the weak, the fallen, the wicked, the erring. And most often it is ignorance and, once again, ignorance that is the cause of human decline. It is not about intellectual knowledge.

It’s about knowing what’s right and wrong. Not the one established by philosophers, but the one established by the Creator at the beginning of the existence of the world and people. The Bible most often calls this knowledge the Law of God.

I am often silent and remain silent about controversial issues, but sometimes I take a position in a very categorical manner, devoid of emotions, which I associate with merciful attitudes. In the name of the truth, as I believe, I sometimes find it right to speak out more in a spirit of justice than mercy.

The readings of today interweave words of justice with words of mercy. The prophet Ezekiel gives strong words: “When the house of Israel lived in their land, they defiled it by their conduct and their deeds. Then I poured out my indignation on them because of the blood which they had shed in the land and because of the idols with which they had defiled him. And I scattered them among the heathen peoples, and they scattered throughout the lands, I judged them according to their conduct and deeds. “ But then God says through the mouth of the prophet: ” I will give you a new heart and a new spirit. ”

God sees that man, on his own, is not able to change his evil behavior and decides to change human hearts. God wants people to live by His commandments because of the holiness of His name, because of who He Himself is. I think it is about love, the mad love of God who, seeing a being loved by Him fall, does not abandon it in spite of everything. He touches it and changes it beyond recognition, waiting for this change to take place and bear fruit in the form of a man who agrees to His will.

The words of the prophet Baruch do not sound too soft either: “Obey, O Israel, the life-giving commandments, incline your ear to know wisdom. What is it, Israel, that you are in the land of your enemies, emaciated in a foreign land, considered unclean as the dead, counted among those who go down to Sheol? You have left your source of wisdom. If you were to walk on God’s way, you would live in peace forever. Learn where there is wisdom, where there is strength and reason, and you will know at the same time where there is a long and happy life, where there is light for the eyes and peace “.

Do we want to know wisdom or prefer to leave its source?

Demolition of the Jerusalem Temple, F. Hayez

In conversations with people who choose solutions other than me in terms of family or marriage relationships, I discovered something that I probably would not discover if I was mercifully silent and careful not to hurt or irritate my interlocutors.

Namely – when you enter into a dialogue with people with different views, when you engage in this dialogue even in a way that sometimes upsets the interlocutors (you know, we sometimes value erudition, knowledge shows or juggling with arguments), you can learn a lot about yourself. And discover that, in fact, we all suffer the same and for the same reason.

Homosexual people who want to be close to God suffer not only because many people treat homosexuality as a plague and isolate themselves from its carriers as much as possible – by gesture, word, law. They also suffer because they have an identity problem as a child of God. I don’t quite know how it is for sure, because I’ve never been homosexual. But it seems to me that as a result of the lack of moral order from which “this orientation” results, man is lost not only in himself. He also loses the path to God. It may seem that outside the Church one can look for such paths, since the only thing that the Church offers to those who live in a moral disorder is “convert” or “live in chastity”. However, the truth about conversion is quite simple. Saint Paul repeats it in the Letter to the Romans: “Well, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him, knowing that Christ, risen from the dead, dies no more, death has no power over him. Because he died, he died to sin only once, and because he lives, he lives for God. Yes, and you understand that you died to sin and that you live for God in Christ Jesus. “

The same kind of suffering is felt by people who are divorced and who cannot fully participate in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Or cohabiting people who would like to be in the Church and close to God.

I would call it losing my way to God and looking for it on my own. Errant people most often ask for directions. Most people don’t know it. Even with a map in hand, they lose their way. The trail will blur and the end, even with experienced bends, it happens.

In moral confusion, unfortunately, it is rare to find a solution on your own. Homosexuality, promiscuous life, intercourse outside marriage, premarital relationships, cohabitation and other such disorder are still considered a sin in the Church. That is, the choice of non-compliance with God’s law, which Jesus specified and discussed in a very radical way, for example in the Sermon on the Mount or in parables and answers to questions specifically concerning marital relations or between people.

The suffering experienced by people who are morally lost is always about their own identity, asking who I am, questions about personal happiness and responsibility for the lives of other people connected with us.

Jesus and the adulteress, Gustave Dore

It is always good to be merciful when judging people. Jesus always addressed sinners with love and respect before there was a healing and radical demand to change the way of life. Therefore, and I – if I want people to hear anything about God who always waits, loves and forgives all the worst – I should often forgive, endure human stupidity and arrogance, accept the blows of accusations of my own ineptitude or ignorance, or alleged injustice in assessments. I think it is worth ignoring the blows of pointless arguments directed at me and not to trample the interlocutors into the ground in order to prove your right.

I think so. Because the ultimate goal is salvation.

However, when it comes to paving the way back to God from the depths of the fall, the path of forgiveness and reconciliation with Him, unfortunately, also involves confronting the truth about oneself.

I was wondering about it while walking 20 km to the Holy Cross this year. I thought about the prophets. On Jonah, Jeremiah, Elijah, Ezekiel. What is my Nineveh? What is it that I am running from and what I wish it would collapse behind me and scream for me no more and exist? Can I, like Jeremiah, loudly and firmly warn people close to me and distant from the extreme, in which there will be no place and time for God’s mercy? Over this and over those people whose life I pass every day, whose behavior pains me so much that sometimes I myself don’t know how it is possible that the wrath of God has not yet wiped them off the ground.

For example – a group of żulików in front of a shop, people not much older than me, whose content of life is robbery, drunkenness and dark doings, for which they have been imprisoned more than once. One of them is my neighbor. The second one threatened me when I politely asked him to stop yelling because the baby was waking me up. But this one is still sitting for serious crimes, incl. a charge of murder and participation in an organized criminal group. I will not say that I feel sorry for his freedom. Is this a lack of mercy?

I often pass people from 7am drinking in front of the store. I feel sorry for them because I wonder how it is possible to live like this, where their family, wives, children and husbands are. And I think I’m lucky because I don’t spend my life that way. I am free from addictions. I am greater than they are … But if I am sure, since I do not even know how to help them and do I even want to … Is prayer enough?

I also discover the route to Nineveh in my conversations with very difficult people. I recognize God’s voice in these places and my calling to ask Him not to be angry yet, to wait a moment longer, I will talk to them, maybe they will come to their senses. Maybe that’s why I sometimes speak to people in that tone, knowing it’s not merciful.

Do everything you can, what you need, what I know and know, so that anyone who errs and does not want to agree as a Christian to the consequences of following Jesus, accusing the Church of not making progress and God of sadism, will come to his senses and find himself on the straight long-marked path of moral laws established by God. Christianity is a demanding road.

The triumph of Christianity, Gustave Dore

Mercy and justice are not easy for people. It is difficult to be fair when someone is a bad person to me or others, and at the same time I am aware that God also loves someone, sends them and acts in them.

How can you then punish, curse, get mad at the state of things in the world?

On the other hand, it is difficult to be merciful when you see people use it against the forgiving ones, the ones giving the opportunity. When abortion or LGBT lobbies manipulate the law and truth about people, when medical concerns resemble mafia structures, and state institutions use power and law against the freedom of citizens – it is difficult to be merciful in assessing the phenomena and processes that destroy the civilization of life and love.

But if I find that more than once or twice, people do bad things deliberately not so much for profit and prestige or because of power, but simply in ignorance – then it is easier to be merciful. To teach, preach and speak patiently about the truth of Life which is God. To have the courage to talk about the power of hope and love that God gives, especially in hopeless situations, such as, for example, pregnancy due to rape or refraining from abortion, even in the worst of life. Sometimes you have to talk about God delicately and tactfully, sometimes, unfortunately, you have to reprimand and say something stronger.

Considering human affairs in terms of guilt and punishment or merit and rewards always pops up like a soap bubble in the vicinity of eschatological conclusions when I recall the biblical scene p.t. Jesus forgives the thief on the cross.

Justice required punishment for what this man did in his life, for hurting other people. And for how much he erred in life, and how much he erred that he found himself on a cross.

But on the other hand, it was the wandering and the moral ground that he had reached that led him to the cross standing next to the Savior’s cross. And one decent act of repentance, a petition addressed to God at almost the last moment of his life, made the scoundrel enter paradise with Christ.

Titian, Jesus and the good thief

“Seek the Lord while He is made to be found, invoke Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous forsake his schemes. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him and to our God, for he is generous in forgiving. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts. ” This is what Isaiah wrote, and this is what happens when a man wishes to return from the path of sin to God. Forgiveness, transformation, joy and great, great amazement.

God will always surprise us. Just as he surprised women who wanted to anoint the dead body of Jesus. Instead of a corpse, they saw an empty tomb and an angel who sent them on the way: “Go, tell his disciples and Peter: He is going to Galilee ahead of you, there you will see him, as he told you.”

Then let’s go! Sisters, believers and non-believers, cleansed and not – let us seek the Lord when He allows Himself to be found, let us call Him while He is near … The meeting with Him will surely amaze us forever.

Noah’s Ark, Wuchta Faith