Luke 6:36-38

Daniel 9:4b-10

Psalm 79:8, 9, 11 and 13

Luke 6:36-38

Jesus said to his disciples:

“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

“Stop judging and you will not be judged.

Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.

Forgive and you will be forgiven.

Give and gifts will be given to you;

a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,

will be poured into your lap.

For the measure with which you measure

will in return be measured out to you.”

Opening Prayer: Lord God, when you revealed yourself to us, you revealed yourself as Merciful Love. I am not worthy of the gift of your mercy. Help me to welcome it and experience it to the full.

Encountering the Word of God

1. Be Merciful: In the Old Testament, God commanded Israel: “Be holy, for I the Lord your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). Here, Jesus reformulates the teaching of Leviticus and replaces the command to imitate God’s holiness (Hebrew: kadosh), with a command to imitate his mercy (Hebrew: hesed). To be holy was “to be set apart.” This meant that Israel was called to be set apart from the other nations to serve and worship the Lord as a holy people. The subtle difference between the divine attributes of holy and merciful “points to a difference between the Old Covenant and the New. The quest for holiness in ancient Israel meant that God’s people had to separate themselves from everything ungodly, unclean, and impure, including Gentiles and sinners (Leviticus 15:31; 20:26). Jesus gives holiness a new focus, defining it as mercy that reaches out to others and no longer divides people into segregated camps or disqualifies some and not others to enter the family of God” (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: Old and New Testament, 1843).

2. Stop Judging and Condemning; Forgive and Give: The command to be merciful is followed by four concrete ways to live mercy. The first concerns how we judge others. This refers especially to judging the heart and intentions of someone else. There is nothing wrong with objectively judging external actions as good or evil, right or wrong. But our judgment needs to stop there. The judgment of a person’s heart – their conscience, deepest intentions, psychological state – is best reserved to God alone. The second way to live mercy concerns moving from judgment to condemnation. This means pronouncing judgment against someone or pronouncing them as guilty. This doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to evil or being naïve about moral evil, but in line with being merciful and not judging a person’s heart, it means leaving the ultimate sentencing to God, who, once again, knows all things and can see into the depths of a person’s heart. The two prohibitions against judging and condemning are complemented by two exhortations to forgive and be generous in giving to others. If we forgive, we will be forgiven. And if we give, gifts will be given to us. And God, as we know, is never outdone in generosity.

3. God’s Merciful Covenant: The First Reading, taken from Daniel’s confession of the sins of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, complements the Gospel, which asks us to forgive in order to be forgiven. Daniel is contemplating the prophetic words of Jeremiah about the 70 years of exile in Babylon (Jeremiah 25:11). The year of Daniel’s prayer was 539 B.C. (see Daniel 9:1), and Daniel was aware that the end of the 70 years of exile was near. He fasted, dressed in sackcloth, placed ash on himself, and turned his face to God in prayer. In the prayer, he made a confession of national sin and an appeal for restoration. “He is aware that Israel’s distress is the just result of its disloyalty to the Lord and his covenant, yet he petitions Yahweh to restore blessings to his disgraced people” (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: Old and New Testament, 1469). Throughout his prayer, Daniel remembers God’s fidelity to his covenant and his merciful love (Hebrew: hesed). In response to Daniel’s prayer, the angel Gabriel appeared and announced a penitential time of “70 weeks of years” (Daniel 9:24). The 490 years announced by Gabriel comes to fulfillment in the time of Jesus, the anointed one, who was crucified for our sins, established a new and “strong covenant,” and foretold the downfall of the Jerusalem Temple in A.D. 70 (see Daniel 9:24-27). 

Conversing with Christ: Lord Jesus, you are Mercy Incarnate. Your entire life speaks of God’s merciful love. Even as you were dying on the Cross, you begged your Father and ours to forgive those who crucified you and hurled insult upon you. I have no reason not to be merciful toward all.

Living the Word of God: Am I withholding mercy or forgiveness toward someone? Do I realize that I will be shown mercy by God if I am merciful toward my brothers and sisters? Which of the four ways of living mercy do I need to focus on the most?