[Kd1871-covenant-solidarity] Francis announces a Year of Mercy

[maria]

Pope Francis presided over a penance service in St. Peter's Basilica on 
Friday afternoon, during which he announced an extraordinary Jubilee 
dedicated to Divine Mercy. Below, please find Vatican Radio's English 
translation of the Holy Father's homily, in which he made the announcement.

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This year as last, as we head into of the Fourth Sunday of Lent, we are 
gathered to celebrate the penitential liturgy. We are united with so 
many Christians, who, in every part of the world, have accepted the 
invitation to live this moment as a sign of the goodness of the Lord. 
The Sacrament of Reconciliation, in fact, allows us with confidence to 
draw near to the Father, in order to be certain of His pardon. He really 
is “rich in mercy” and extends His mercy with abundance over those who 
turn to Him with a sincere heart.

To be here in order to experience His love, however, is first of all the 
fruit of His grace. As the Apostle Paul reminds us, God never ceases to 
show the richness of His mercy throughout the ages. The transformation 
of the heart that leads us to confess our sins is “God's gift”, it is 
“His work” (cf. Eph 2:8-10). To be touched with tenderness by His hand 
and shaped by His grace allows us, therefore, to approach the priest 
without fear for our sins, but with the certainty of being welcomed by 
him in the name of God, and understood notwithstanding our miseries. 
Coming out of the confessional, we will feel God’s strength, which 
restores life and returns the enthusiasm of faith.

The Gospel we have heard (cf. Lk 7:36-50) opens for us a path of hope 
and comfort. It is good that we should feel that same compassionate gaze 
of Jesus upon us, as when he perceived the sinful woman in the house of 
the Pharisee. In this passage two words return before us with great 
insistence: /love/ and /judgment/.

There is the love of the sinful woman, who humbles herself before the 
Lord; but first there is the merciful love of Jesus for her, which 
pushes her to approach. Her cry of repentance and joy washes the feet of 
the Master, and her hair dries them with gratitude; her kisses are pure 
expression of her affection; and the fragrant ointment poured out with 
abundance attests how precious He is to her eyes. This woman’s every 
gesture speaks of love and expresses her desire to have an unshakeable 
certainty in her life: that of being forgiven. And Jesus gives this 
assurance: welcoming her, He demonstrates God’s love for her, just for 
her! Love and forgiveness are simultaneous: God forgives her much, 
everything, because “she loved much” (Luke 7:47); and she adores Jesus 
because she feels that in Him there is mercy and not condemnation. 
Thanks to Jesus, God casts her many sins away behind Him, He remembers 
them no more (cf. Is 43:25). For her, a new season now begins; she is 
reborn in love, to a new life.

This woman has really met the Lord. In silence, she opened her heart to 
Him; in pain, she showed repentance for her sins; with her tears, she 
appealed to the goodness of God for forgiveness. For her, there will be 
no judgment except that which comes from God, and this is the judgment 
of mercy. The protagonist of this meeting is certainly the love that 
goes beyond justice.

Simon the Pharisee, on the contrary, /cannot find the path of love/. He 
stands firm upon the threshold of formality. He is not capable of taking 
the next step to go meet Jesus, who brings him salvation. Simon limited 
himself to inviting Jesus to dinner, but did not really welcome Him. In 
his thoughts, he invokes only justice, and in so doing, he errs. /His 
judgment on the woman distances him from the truth/ and does not allow 
him even to understand who guest is. He stopped at the surface, he was 
not able to look to the heart. Before Jesus’ parable and the question of 
which a servant would love his master most, the Pharisee answered 
correctly, “The one, to whom the master forgave most.” And Jesus does 
not fail to make him observe: “Thou hast judged rightly. (Lk 7:43)” Only 
when the judgment of Simon is turned toward love: then is he in the right.

The call of Jesus pushes each of us never to stop at the surface of 
things, especially when we are dealing with a person. We are called to 
look beyond, to focus on the heart to see how much generosity everyone 
is capable. No one can be excluded from the mercy of God; everyone knows 
the way to access it and the Church is /the house that welcomes all and 
refuses no one/. Its doors remain wide open, so that those who are 
touched by grace can find the certainty of forgiveness. The greater the 
sin, so much the greater must be the love that the Church expresses 
toward those who convert.

Dear brothers and sisters, I have often thought about how the Church 
might make clear its mission of being a witness to mercy. It is journey 
that begins with a spiritual conversion. For this reason, I have decided 
to call an /extraordinary Jubilee/ that is to have the mercy of God at 
its center. It shall be a Holy Year of Mercy. We want to live this Year 
in the light of the Lord's words: “Be merciful, just as your Father is 
merciful. (cf. Lk 6:36)”

This Holy Year will begin on this coming Solemnity of the Immaculate 
Conception and will end on November 20, 2016, the Sunday dedicated to 
Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe – and living face of the 
Father’s mercy. I entrust the organization of this Jubilee to the 
Pontifical Council for Promotion of the New Evangelization, that [the 
dicastery] might animate it as a new stage in the journey of the Church 
on its mission to bring to every person the Gospel of mercy.

I am convinced that the whole Church will find in this Jubilee the joy 
needed to rediscover and make fruitful the mercy of God, with which all 
of us are called to give consolation to every man and woman of our time. 
From this moment, we entrust this Holy Year to the Mother of Mercy, that 
she might turn her gaze upon us and watch over our journey.

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