Not Justification but Mercification

We are not justified by faith, but mercified through a living faith

A Reflection on the Readings for Saturday of the 28th Week of Ordinary Time

By Fr. Maximilian Buonocore, OSB

Readings:
Romans 4:13, 16-18
Luke 12:8-12

One of the students I tutor sent an email to Dr. Fletcher, the music teacher and band director, to inform him that he would not be able to make it to band practice after school. The email read: “Good evening Dr. Fletcher, I just wanted to let you know that I have torturing tomorrow after school.” I wonder if that was just a misspelling, or he meant it figuratively, or, perhaps, even meant it literally. Dr. Fletcher shared that email with other faculty members. One of the faculty members asked me, “What is it that you do after school with the students when you tutor?” “Well,” I responded, “I do whatever it takes to get them to learn.” I think that it can only be experienced as torture when I have to break through a student’s defensive denial of his need for help. The kind of student that I am not able to help is the student that is in denial of having a learning or skills deficiency that needs to be addressed. I think that this is kind of what Jesus was talking about when he says, “. . .whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” Denial of one’s sinfulness and denial of one’s need for forgiveness can be taken as a kind of blasphemy. It is a kind of blasphemy because it denies what and who the Holy Spirit is. As a result, the Holy Spirit cannot act in such a person according to the Holy Spirit's very nature which is to be merciful, and according to that person’s very nature, which is to be a channel of God’s mercy. Denying what we are created to be - that is, both an object and subject of God’s mercy - is a kind of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Denying the Holy Spirit’s mercy is denying what the Holy Spirit is, which is mercy. To act against forgiveness is to prevent the Spirit’s power in us to forgive. A “sin against the Spirit” is any action that prevents God from being God in our life – and it is unforgivable because we lock out the very access to forgiveness that would transform our lives. God wants to activate the image and likeness of himself in us through the power of love, to work his mercy in and through us so that we can become what he has created us to be. When I go about all day doing all of my service work - tutoring, counseling, teaching, and then come home to clean the refectory, dust and vacuum, and then go to bed tired from all of the good works that I have done, feeling that I am justified by all of the good work that I have done, and then forget to do an examination of conscience and seek God’s mercy, by this, I am blocking the work of the Spirit in me to work his mercy in and through me. In this way I am in a certain sense acting against forgiveness. To act against forgiveness is to prevent the Spirit’s power in me to forgive. So not only will I not be forgiven, but I will be less able to forgive others.

I sin against the Holy Spirit when I think of my justification by faith as a quid pro quo affair - I do this and God will do that. St. Paul worked hard to disassociate the word, justification, a very legalistic term, from its legalistic meaning when applied to God’s action. As I said, the word, justification, implies a quid pro quo - I do this and God will do that; I put my faith in him and do good works and God will reward me with eternal life. But that is not the nature of the justification which is worked in us by the Holy Spirit. It is not quid pro quo. It depends 100 percent on God’s action in me. It is gift. Thus, I propose a better word than “justification” to describe what the Holy Spirit is doing in us: he is not justifying us, he is “mercifying” us. The action of the Spirit in us, when we are allowing him to live and work in us, can best be described as “mercification,” not justification. Putting my faith in Jesus Christ and doing all of the things that are associated with a life of faith, such as fasting, prayer and good works, are not the means of my justification, but the way that I cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the process of “mercification” in me, so that he can not only mercify me but, in turn, work his mercification through me. I am not being justified by faith. Rather, I am being mercy-fied by faith. Through faith I am being forgiven and becoming ever more a forgiving and loving person, and this is happening in the context of a living faith working through love.

Once again in today’s reading from Romans (4:13, 16-18), St. Paul talks about the righteousness that comes through faith. As I said in a previous reflection, the faith through which justification comes - or, using my term, the faith through which mercification comes - must be a living faith that works through love. A living faith is a loving faith, and a loving faith is a living faith. The justification which comes through a living faith is not a justification which comes from faith-acts or faith-works, but a justification which comes from the Spirit of Christ living and active in us who acts in the world through us - through our living, loving faith. That is why I prefer to refer to it as mercification. Our actions of living-faith flow from the life of the Spirit of love in us. As Christians – in particular monks – ours is a life of faith. We are not called just to have faith, but to live it. We are not asked to live good lives, but to live lives in which Goodness himself is living and active in us. We are called to live lives that manifest a living faith in Jesus Christ, lives in which the image and likeness of God in us is fully activated. That is what a living faith is: the activation of the image and likeness of God in us. St. Paul said that we are justified by faith. I propose that we are justified neither by faith nor by works: we are justified by the Spirit of Christ living within us, enlivening us with faith-life, which is at the same time love-life. What really matters to our personal salvation is not faith-works but faith-life, which is the activation of the image and likeness of God in us as faith working through love. We are called to a living-faith which is a loving-faith, which spontaneously finds expression in a life of love, in a lifestyle that allows the Spirit of Christ to live in and through us so that his, and our, heavenly Father can touch the lives of his children in and through us. That is the goal of our faith-life, to which everything else is secondary.

All for Jesus,

Fr. Max