Scripture 1 Tim 6:11-19 and Excerpt from Encyclical on the Mercy of God (St

The passage from 1 Timothy 6 emphasizes the importance of righteousness, faith, love, and steadfastness in the fight for eternal life. It also urges the rich to not be haughty and to do good deeds. St. John Paul II's encyclical discusses how God reveals himself through creation and especially through Christ, who personifies mercy. The encyclical acknowledges that modern society may struggle with the concept of mercy, but emphasizes the need for it in our world today. The Church must confront the challenges of our time while holding onto the truth received from God. As we approach the Feast of Divine Mercy on April 7, 2024, I wish to bring to you a passage from 1 Timothy 6, verses 11-19, and follow that up with an excerpt from St. John Paul II's encyclical, On the Mercy of God. The Good Fight of Faith But as for you, man of God, shun all this, aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this will be made manifest at the proper time by the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion, Amen. As for the rich in this world, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches, but on God, who richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous, thus laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life which is life indeed. And now from the encyclical. Although God dwells in unapproachable light, he speaks to man by means of the whole of the universe. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. This indirect and imperfect knowledge, achieved by the intellect seeking God by means of creatures through the visible world, falls short of the vision of the Father. No one has ever seen God, writes St. John, in order to stress the truth that the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. This making known reveals God in the most profound mystery of his being, one and three, surrounded by unapproachable light. Nevertheless, through this making known by Christ, we know God above all in his relationship of love for man, in his philanthropy. It is precisely here that his invisible nature becomes in a special way visible, incomparably more visible than through all the other things that have been made. It becomes visible in Christ and through Christ, through his actions and his words, and finally through his death on the cross and his resurrection. In this way, in Christ and through Christ, God also becomes especially visible in his mercy. That is to say, there is emphasized that attribute of the divinity which the Old Testament, using various concepts and terms, already defined as mercy. Christ confers on the whole of the Old Testament tradition about God's mercy a definitive meaning. Not only does he speak of it and explain it by the use of comparisons and parables, but above all, he himself makes it incarnate and personifies it. He himself, in a certain sense, is mercy. To the person who sees it in him and finds it in him, God becomes visible in a particular way as the Father who is rich in mercy. The present-day mentality, more perhaps than that of people in the past, seems opposed to a God of mercy and, in fact, tends to exclude from life and to remove from the human heart the very idea of mercy. The word and the concept of mercy seem to cause uneasiness in man who, thanks to the enormous development of science and technology never before known in history, has become the master of the earth and has subdued and dominated it. This dominion over the earth, sometimes understood in a one-sided and superficial way, seems to have no room for mercy. However, in this regard, we can profitably refer to the picture of man's situation in the world today as described at the beginning of the Constitution, Gaudium et Spes. Here we read the following sentences. In the light of the foregoing factors there appears the dichotomy of a world that is at once powerful and weak, capable of doing what is noble and what is base, disposed to freedom and slavery, progress and decline, brotherhood and hatred. Man is growing conscious that the forces he has unleashed are in his own hands and that it is up to him to control them or be enslaved by them. The situation of the world today not only displays transformation that gives grounds for hope and a better future for man on earth, but also reveals a multitude of threats far surpassing those known up until now. Without ceasing to point out these threats on various occasions, the Church must at the same time examine them in the light of the truth received from God. I wish you a blessed Feast of Divine Mercy for 2024, and may God, the Father who is rich in mercy, bless you and yours. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Amen.