English
EspañolDo not prevent or reproach God in the name of justice – “your justice” – for being infinitely good, loving, and merciful. Do not be one of those “good guys” who take pleasure in punishing, condemning, and marginalizing the “bad guys”; and then recriminate God for loving them.
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“For this reason, a pastor cannot feel that it is enough simply to apply moral laws to those living in “irregular” situations, as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives. This would bespeak the closed heart of one used to hiding behind the Church’s teachings, “sitting on the chair of Moses and judging at times with superiority and superficiality difficult cases and wounded families.” Along these same lines, the International Theological Commission has noted that “natural law could not be presented as an already established set of rules that impose themselves a priori on the moral subject; rather, it is a source of objective inspiration for the deeply personal process of making decisions.” Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin – which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – a person can be living in God’s grace, can love, and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end. Discernment must help to find possible ways of responding to God and growing in the midst of limits. By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God.” (The Joy of Love, n.305)
“In every situation, when dealing with those who have difficulties in living God’s law to the full, the invitation to pursue the via caritatis must be clearly heard. Fraternal charity is the first law of Christians (cf. Jn 15:12; Gal 5:14). Let us not forget the reassuring words of Scripture: “Maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet 4:8); “Atone for your sins with righteousness, and your iniquities with mercy to the oppressed, so that your prosperity may be prolonged” (Dan 4:24[27]); “As water extinguishes a blazing fire, so almsgiving atones for sins” (Sir 3:30).” (The Joy of Love, n.306)
Commentary
Many times in my private family life – especially with my children or grandchildren and among them with their siblings – and no less in my professional counseling experience, I have been star-struck by the fascinating revelation of how God loves. There are two extraordinary Gospel parables. One is that of the brother of the prodigal son, the “good” son who, unlike the wasteful and vicious prodigal son, has always stayed “at home” obeying his father (Lk 15:11-32). The other is that of the day laborers, called to work in the Lord’s vineyard at different times of the day, including the last, to whom the same denarius is paid equally (Mt 20:1-16). Understanding the “logic” of God’s love has helped me a lot with my children and grandchildren. Moreover, it has been no less helpful for them to learn to be brothers and sisters and then fathers and mothers when the time came for them to have their own children.
It seems that many of us have inside a sense of justice that, if examined in the light of love, conceals under the pretext of “justice” an arsenal of dark intentions; for example, envy, rage, and resentment because the “son” with deviations, errors and wrong steps is treated lovingly by our parents. That hard and envious demand that some “good people” have, due to the cost that fulling their duties and doing it “right” had, to see those who lived their lives happily and leisurely, those who spent most of the time not working on their duties and obligations, those who return home – “to the vineyard” – after many years or at the end of their lives, be given harsh punishment, so that they purge with greater sufferings that pain that the “good people” suffered in order to be good. In short, the prodigal son’s brother was angry and saddened that his Father embraced the lost son’s return with joy and made a great feast. The love with which his father told him “all that is mine is yours” was not enough for him; he also and mainly needed his brother to be discriminated against, marginalized, and punished. Day laborers of the first hour and the obedient brother do their duties without hesitation, but with the hardness and inner sadness of those who do not do it out of love but out of obligation. For this very reason, because they are not guided by a free, gratuitous and joyful love for their Father, nor the Lord of the vineyard, nor their neighbors, and even less for the last to arrive or for the lost who long to return, they react with a sinister demand for justice, the one that aborts love. They demand that those “others” be discriminated against; that they are punished or, at least, made to suffer what the good have suffered; and, above all, they dislike that the Father and Lord of the vineyard – the Triune God himself – is good, loving and merciful to all his “children.” That is to say; they reproach the Triune God for being infinite Love. Moreover, if they could, they would prevent it.
How often do we have to remember these parables of Jesus Christ in the history of our love as fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers, and, of course, as children and siblings! How many conflicts, pressures, and sufferings our children bring us! The Gospel teaches us how we can attend, from authentic and good love to the differences of each particular case, without disuniting and dividing. How can we navigate the storms of family life? With confidence in the power of love, there will be a harvest in time. We teach love in the family and keep it alive by returning good for evil, overcoming the bad with the greatest abundance of good, “reuniting” again and again and rejoicing in our hearts at every improvement. This is the “logic” of love, the logic of the Triune God.
Some prefer the Triune God to be implacably just but not very loving. They are willing to administer God´s mercy and tender embrace, imposing on him the discriminations, measurements and laws to which his Love must submit. They love to enforce rules, punishing rebels and unsubmissive people, but they dislike to love them concretely by involving their heart in it. They prefer external sacrifices to the mercy of the heart. They demand that God be like them. Fortunately, Jesus Christ has those guilds of scribes and Pharisees well-identified; the old and the new. Pope Francis, as his vicar, too.
Love is superior to justice but does not contradict it. Justice is to give each one his due, not one “denarius” more or one less. However, love, once that just denarius has been given, is characterized by generosity without measure, by a particular and merciful embrace of the different needs of each child and each of their lives because our parental love does not have, by essence, to be prosecutors, judges, and executioners. Our love as fathers and mothers, since we have given them life, is to give ourselves entirely to these lives of our children; to accompany, embrace and help “without measure” so that they do not live “dead in life,” which implies to witness with our example the good path, but not to impose it by means of condemnations, punishments, and exclusions; sowing and fertilizing the good, with love, without demanding the harvest occur the same day; going out every day to the doors of our heart with the faithful hope – its tender mercy, encouragement and warm affections – that they will return if they were lost; and rejoicing with every step they take in their improvement.
