There is No One Like You
March 6, 2024
Fr. John Riccardo
Brothers and sisters: God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ — by grace you have been saved —, raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast. For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.
Ephesians 2:4-10
I recently read a book about an encounter between a priest and one of history’s most notorious criminals. I’ll leave the people involved nameless, as they are besides the point for what’s on my mind. At the end of his life, the criminal returned to God and went to the sacrament of confession. The contents of that confession, of course, are unknown, as the confessor is bound by a sacred seal and he can never reveal what he has heard to anyone. I can’t speak – no one can, for that matter – about the sincerity of the man’s confession or how earnest he was about turning back to God. All we know is that he did it, whereas so many others in situations like his don’t.
There are a series of essays in the back of the book offering various perspectives and opinions on this sacramental encounter. Specifically, they address whether or not the priest was right to even meet with the man, let alone hear his confession and give him absolution. Virtually all of the essays emphatically said no. Certain crimes, like this man's, are beyond God’s mercy; they are utterly unforgivable. Never!
Blessed be God, they’re wrong.
Unlike us, God “is rich in mercy.” Unlike us, God loves to forgive. Unlike us, God’s love knows no limits. Unlike us, Jesus cries out from the cross, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” Unlike us, God does not delight in the death of the wicked. Unlike us, God wants all men and women to be saved. Now, of course, we have to cooperate with His grace, we have to respond to His promptings, we have to reach out and ask for that mercy and repent.
Pope Benedict XVI, in his letter on hope, addressed this balance of grace and judgment:
“All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation ‘as through fire’. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us forever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ’s Passion. At the moment of judgment we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. … The judgment of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace. If it were merely grace, making all earthly things cease to matter, God would still owe us an answer to the question about justice—the crucial question that we ask of history and of God. If it were merely justice, in the end it could bring only fear to us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two together—judgment and grace—that justice is firmly established: we all work out our salvation ‘with fear and trembling’ (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our ‘advocate.’
We recently feasted at Mass on this passage from the prophet Micah: “Who is there like You, the God who removes guilt, and pardons sin…Who does not persist in anger forever, but delights rather in clemency, and will again have compassion on us, treading underfoot our guilt? You will cast into the depths of the sea all of our sins” (Micah 7:18-19).
Who is there like You, the God who removes guilt?
No one. No one at all.
“[Let] the greatest sinners place their trust in My mercy. They have the right before others to trust in the abyss of My mercy. My daughter, write about My mercy towards tormented souls. Souls that make an appeal to My mercy delight Me. To such souls I grant even more graces than they ask. I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if he makes an appeal to My compassion, but on the contrary, I justify him in My unfathomable and inscrutable mercy.”
Let us not hesitate in these final weeks of Lent to avail ourselves of the extraordinary mercy of God in the sacrament of confession, especially if it has been some time. And let us pray that those who are farthest away from the Lord right now, those who fear they are unforgivable, will turn to the God who is rich in mercy.
ACTS XXIX Prayer Intentions
March 2024
For the ordained and lay leaders who will be joining us for a Leadership Immersive on our campus.
For our mission with the priests of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
For all those running The Rescue Project in parishes and homes across the world.
For the Rescue LIVE Revival planning team in Vancouver, BC.
For God's protection upon Fr. John Riccardo, our team and our families.
For the various publishing projects underway with our ACTS XXIX press.