Need a “Revolution of Mercy in 2016”

“We need a “Tenderness Revolution”

Religion without mercy is like man without heart. The word “mercy” refers the real love, and compassion towards others. The Pope Francis has started his pontiff as a person of compassion towards the marginalized and the poor. According to him the humanity needs “mercy” to survive in this world of competition for power and possession.

Pope Francis opened the special jubilee Year of Mercy, calling the whole world to be compassion towards all. Without doubt all his words in recent Synod of Bishops on the family, on the subject of ‘communion’ to the divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, even though there was no consensus within the participants but his call of mercy continue to sound everywhere in the world. 

Several Cardinals, bishops and clerics resist Pope’s initiatives but the word “Mercy” overcomes all the resistances; for an example, when Pope made a visit to the Continent - Africa on November, there appeared a controversial essay by an editor for a web-site operated by the largely progressive German bishops’ conference, suggesting that Pope Francis may have an overly romanticized vision of the global South and an overly negative approach to Europe. Latter when Francis landed in Africa, he called the international community to look the reality of people, their miseries, poverty and constant influence of powerful countries in the continent to achieve their objectives by making the people in misery. Later when Pope Francis extolled the wisdom of poor communities, some Catholic commentators wondered aloud when he might also acknowledge the virtues and generosity of believers from the middle class and above. 

A Year of Mercy intended to launch a ‘Revolution of Tenderness’

Pope Francis wants to create a special corps of priest volunteers from around the world, called “Missionaries of Mercy” who will be personally commissioned to preach mercy and to forgive sins, including whose forgiving is usually reserved to the Vatican. The inauguration ceremony of the Opening of the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica is a symbolic expression of the mission of mercy that the Church and its members do every day in their life. December 13, the holy doors in all Catholic Cathedrals in the world are opened as a sign of Church’ mercy towards all people. 

The Year of Mercy” is not a spiritual initiative of the Church; it is the real expectation of every person who suffer by various reasons. Pope’s Encyclical “Laudato Si”- On Care for Our Common Home” is inviting the whole world to have mercy on the nature by respecting our ‘Common home’ which is the Earth: “Fiat Lux – Illuminating our Common Home”. The urgency of environmental protection is highly important for the well-being of humanity. His voice is reached today up to the COP21 “Climate Change Summit” that held in Paris in 2015. 

The whole nature and humanity must be looked with mercy because the both humanity and nature suffer massively by human selfish motives. The inauguration of “Year of Mercy” is also continuation of Pope’s encyclical. On Friday Dec 18^th 2015, Pope Francis visited a Charity centre in Rome and opened what is being called a “Door of Mercy” as a symbolic expression of mercy. By this gesture Pope intends to teach the entire Church, so that her members must take care of the weak by visiting and feeding the hungry as Jesus said in his public ministry.

It’s worth asking, why Pope Francis believes “the need

 of Mercy” in the present time?

To begin, mercy is the cornerstone of Francis’ own spirituality. His motto as Pope, the same as when he was the archbishop of Buenos Aires, is miserando atque eligendo — loosely, “choosing through mercy”.

As Francis recalled in an interview released in the month of Dec 2015, he spoke about mercy during both his first Sunday Angelus as pope and his first Sunday homily.

“It wasn’t a strategy,” he said. “It came from inside me … the Holy Spirit wants something. It’s obvious that the world of today needs mercy; it needs compassion.”

“We’re used to bad news, to cruelty and ever-greater atrocities that offend the name and the life of God,” he said. “The world must discover that God is a father, that there’s mercy and that cruelty isn’t the way.”

“Even the Church itself sometimes takes a hard line, falling into the temptation of underlining only its moral norms,” he said. “But how many people are left out?”

Pope Francis then told a story about the 1994 Synod of Bishops on Consecrated Life, in which he participated. At one stage, he said, he suggested in a small group meeting that what the Church needs is a “revolution of tenderness.” Another prelate in the group, he said, was dubious, warning that such language could be dangerous.

Francis said the bishop’s objections were “reasonable” and “intelligent,” but ultimately, he didn’t buy it.

“I continue to say that today the revolution [needed] is that of tenderness, because justice and all the rest comes from it,” Francis said. “We have to cultivate the revolution of tenderness today as a fruit of this Year of Mercy, the tenderness of God toward each one of us.”

As the reference to justice suggests, Pope seems convinced that the social change he’s after stronger measures on climate change, for instance, or an end to unjust trading relationships, a halt to illegal arms trafficking, greater investment in anti-poverty efforts, and so on; is dependent on something more fundamental.

In a word, that “something” is mercy. As the “Pope of Mercy” sees it, in other words, this jubilee year isn’t just a series of celebrations and events intended to foster deeper piety, however desirable that may be. The far more audacious aim is to launch a revolution; spiritual at its core, but with imminently social and even political consequences.

!Let us make a year of being mercy!