This past weekend, I heard John Allen Jr., a reporter who, until just recently, lived in Rome and wrote about Vatican events.  He's been on planes with all of the last three popes and knows a lot about this aspect of Catholicism.  His lecture was on the influence Pope Francis' papacy ought to have on education.  It was a great talk on the whole, and one particular aspect stood out to me.  Allen suggested that we will likely most remember Pope Francis for his focus on mercy.

 

As an example, Allen talked about a day that Pope Francis was visiting a small Roman parish to say mass.  He was supposed to arrive at a quarter to 11, but showed up at 9:45.  Pope Francis told the parish priest that he was there to hear confessions, because he wanted to help people think about God's mercy.  So the priest ran to the first eight people in line and told them, "Today, you're going to confession."  They all protested and said, "No, we're here to see Pope Francis." And the priest said, "Umm... well, that's the thing...."  So they all got to meet Pope Francis one-on-one.

 

It was a fascinating anecdote for me.  I found myself wondering how many of my friends and students would see the sacrament of confession as a sacrament of mercy or whether they'd see it as, either terrifying or not really very important.  I suspect that my students, at least, would say it is the latter.

 

But Pope Francis' focus on mercy is so, so important and today's scriptures suggest to us why this is.  It is because we live in a world where even at our best, we'll often be doing things we wish we hadn't done.  Even our best actions come with mixed motives, which is exactly why it's good to remember God's mercy.

In today's first reading (Sirach 47:2-11) King Herod is so captivated by the dancer in his hall.  Most people would say there's nothing particularly sinful about admiring a good and beautiful dancer.  But his desire for the dancer leads him to offer a far too-extravagant gift: anything she herself desires, anything at all.  I think most of us would be overwhelmed with such an offer; the girl certainly is, and she asks for advice from her mother.  This, too, is not itself a bad thing.  Asking for advice with big decisions is often helpful.  But the girl's mother desires revenge, revenge on one of the people (John the Baptist) who thinks her current marriage is sinful.  So she asks for John the Baptist's head.  The girl, maybe desiring to please her mother, makes her request.  The king then feels trapped: he doesn't want to renege on a promise, lest his people think poorly of him.  Again, not a bad desire: keeping promises is generally a good action.  Yet here, it is so clearly wrong.  The king knows it is wrong; the girl's mother almost definitely knows it is wrong; likely the girl does, too.

The story shows the problem and the difficulty of focusing solely on one action or decision as being good or bad, without paying attention to what else is going on.  The great Catholic theologian, Thomas Aquinas, noted that reflecting on whether the things we do everyday are good means also reflecting about our purposes, our circumstances, and a whole host of other things.  In other words, our decisions - even our everyday decisions that can seem so tiny and insignificant, and even the ones that seem good - are actually quite complex. Everything we do ends up being mixed.

The things we think are good may have very negative effects - but even the opposite can happen, as we see in today's first reading (Sirach 47:2-11).  Last Friday, I was writing about King David and his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba, which leads him to bring about the death of his best friend.  Not good at all - and yet here, Sirach celebrates the fact that "The Lord forgave him his sins and exalted his strength forever...."  Good can happen even in spite of evil.  

I think it is simply part of the human condition that we find ourselves in a mixed up world where even the purest of motives doesn't lead to the best outcome. What matters more than what we do is what Sirach reminds us: God forgives, God offers mercy, and God works good in us even when we cannot see it.  Today, let us pray for God's mercy for all our mixed motives.           

-          Jana M. Bennett