True Mercy After Abortion

"Mercy is what love looks like when it turns toward the sinner." Bishop Barron

Word on Fire posted a beautiful article by Bishop Robert E. Barron in 2015 that I think is worth reposting , then an Auxiliary Bishop for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, entitled Pope Francis and True Mercy.

I especially love this…

"Now this is important, for many receive the message of divine mercy as tantamount to a denial of the reality of sin, as though sin no longer matters. But, just the contrary is the case. To speak of mercy is to be intensely aware of sin and its peculiar form of destructiveness. Or to shift to one of the Pope’s favorite metaphors, it is to be acutely conscious that one is wounded so severely that one requires, not minor treatment, but the emergency and radical attention provided in a hospital on the edge of a battlefield."

I have, over the years, compared post abortive people as the wounded in a battle field. So often, in our eagerness to save babies from abortion (which we should be doing), we step over those wounded by abortion on the battle field.

I have also encountered people who are afraid to offer mercy for abortion because they have felt that somehow it would make people feel abortion was not a serious sin, especially those who have participated in abortion. But, the truth is, no one knows the gravity of the sin more than people who have taken the lives of their own children.

I think Bishop Barron's comparison speaks to the heart of this truth as he reminds us in his article, "St. Augustine long ago reminded us, misericordia (mercy) and miseria (misery) are two sides of the same coin."

Amen.

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