Compiled By Thea Jarvis

On Dec. 2, 1980, Pope John Paul II issued his second Papal encyclical, “Dives in Misericordia” (Rich in Mercy). The following passages have been excerpted from that encyclical. Full copies of the text are available through Notre Dame Bookstore (458-1779) and Trinity Bookstore (255-0530).

He Who Sees Me Sees The Father (CF. John 14:9)

1.The Revelation of Mercy

It is “God, who is rich in mercy” whom Jesus Christ has revealed to us as Father: it is his very Son who, in himself, “has manifested him and made him known to us.”…Man and man’s lofty calling are revealed in Christ through the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love…

2.The Incarnation of Mercy

…in Christ and through Christ, God also becomes especially visible in his mercy…(Christ) himself makes (mercy) 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…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 situation of the world today not only displays transformations that give grounds for hope in a better future for man on earth, but also reveals a multitude of threats, far surpassing those known up till now…

The truth, revealed in Christ, about God the “Father of mercies,” enables us to “see” him as particularly close to man, especially when man is suffering, when he is under threat at the very heart of his existence and dignity…

The Messianic Message

3.When Christ Began to Do and to Teach

…Especially through his life-style and through his actions, Jesus revealed that love is present in the world in which we live – an effective love, a love that addresses itself to man and embraces everything that makes up his humanity. This love makes itself particularly noticed in contact with suffering, injustice and poverty…

Christ then, reveals God who is Father, who is “love”…Christ reveals God “rich in mercy”…This truth is not just the subject of a teaching; it is a reality made present to us by Christ. Making the Father present as love and mercy is, in Christ’s own consciousness, the fundamental touchstone of his mission as the Messiah…

…Christ, in revealing the love-mercy of God, at the same time demanded from people that they also should be guided in their lives by love and mercy. This requirement forms part of the very essence of the messianic message, and constitutes the heart of the Gospel ethos…

The Old Testament

4…the Lord revealed his mercy from the very beginnings of the people which he chose for himself, and, in the course of its history, this people continually entrusted itself, both when stricken with misfortune and when it became aware of its sin, to the God of mercies…

…the Old Testament teaches that, although justice is an authentic virtue in man, and in God signifies transcendent perfection, nevertheless love is “greater” than justice: greater in the sense that it is primary and fundamental. Love…conditions justice and, in the final analysis, justice serves love…

The Parable of the Prodigal Son

5. An Analogy

6. Particular Concentration on Hunan Dignity

...The parable of the prodigal son expresses in a simple but profound way the reality of conversion. Conversion is the most concrete expression of the working of love and of the presence of mercy in the human world. The true and proper meaning of mercy does not consist only in looking, however penetratingly and compassionately, at moral, physical or material evil: mercy is manifested in its true and proper aspect when it restores to value, promotes and draws good from all the forms of evil existing in the world and in man…

The Pascal Mystery

7. Mercy Revealed in the Cross and Resurrection

…If, in fact, the reality of the redemption, in its human dimension, reveals the unheard-of greatness of man…at the same time the divine dimension of the redemption enables us…to uncover the depth of that sacrifice of the Son, in order to satisfy the fidelity of the creator and Father towards human beings, created in his image and chosen from “the beginning,” in this Son, for grace and glory…

The divine dimension of redemption is put into effect not only by bringing justice to bear upon sin, but also by restoring to love the creative power in man thanks to which he once more has access to the fullness of life and holiness that come from God. In this way, redemption involves the revelation of mercy in its fullness…

Believing in the crucified Son means “seeing the Father,” means believing that love is present in the world and that this love is more powerful than any kind of evil in which individuals, humanity or the world are involved. Believing in this love means believing in mercy…

8. Love More Powerful Than Death, More Powerful Than Sin

…the cross of Christ, on which the Son, consubstantial with the Father, renders full justice to God, is also a radical revelation of mercy, or rather of the love that goes against what constitutes the very root of evil in this history of man: against sin and death…

The paschal mystery is Christ at the summit of the revelation of the inscrutable mystery of God…

Here is the Son of God, who in his resurrection experienced in a radical way mercy show to himself, that is to say the love of the Father which is more powerful than death. And it is also the same Christ, the Son of God, who at the end of his messianic mission – and, in a certain sense, even beyond the end – reveals himself as the inexhaustible source of mercy, of the same love that…is to be everlastingly confirmed as more powerful than sin…

9. Mother of Mercy

…Mary…is the one who has the deepest knowledge of the mystery of God’s mercy. She knows its price, she knows how great it is. In this sense, we call her the Mother of Mercy…

It was precisely this “merciful” love, which is manifested above all in contact with moral and physical evil…that Mary shared in. In her and through her, this love continues to be revealed in the history of the church and of humanity. This revelation is especially fruitful because in the mother of God it is based upon the unique tact of her maternal heart, on her particular sensitivity, on her particular fitness to reach all those who most easily accept the merciful love of a mother…

“Mercy…From Generation To Generation

10. An Image of Our Generation

We have every right to believe that our generation too was included in the words of the mother of God when she glorified that mercy shared in “from generation to generation” by those who allow themselves to be guided by the fear of God…

11. Sources of Uneasiness

…(The) picture of today’s world in which there is so much evil both physical and moral, so as to make of it a world entangled in contradictions and tensions, and at the same time full of threats to human freedom, conscience and religion – this picture explains the uneasiness felt by contemporary man…This uneasiness…the fundamental problems of all human existence. It is linked with the very sense of man’s existence in the world, and is an uneasiness for the future of man and all humanity; it demands decisive solutions, which now seem to be forcing themselves upon the human race.

12. Is Justice Enough?

It is not difficult to see that in the modern world the sense of justice has been reawakening on a vast scale…

The church shares with the people of our time this profound and ardent desire for a life which is just in every aspect…

And yet, it would be difficult not to notice that very often programs which start from the idea of justice and which ought to assist its fulfillment among individuals, groups and human societies, in practice suffer from distortions…The experience of the past and of our own time demonstrates that justice alone is not enough, that it can lead to the negation and destruction of itself, if that deeper power, which is love, is not allowed to shape human life in its various dimensions…

The Mercy Of God In The Mission Of The Church

…The church of our time…must become more particularly and profoundly conscious of the need to bear witness in her whole mission to God’s mercy…

13. The Church Professes the Mercy Of God and Proclaims It

The church must profess and proclaim God’s mercy in all its truth, as it has been handed down to us by revelation…

The church lives an authentic life when she professes and proclaims mercy – the most stupendous attribute of the creator and of the redeemer – and when she brings people close to the sources of the Savior’s mercy…

Therefore, the church professes and proclaims conversion. Conversion to God always consists in discovering his mercy…

Authentic knowledge of the God of mercy, the God of tender love, is a constant and inexhaustible source of conversion, not only as a momentary interior act but also as a permanent attitude, as a state of mind…

14. The Church Seeks to Put Mercy into Practice

Jesus Christ taught that man not only receives and experiences the mercy of God, but that he is also called “to practice Mercy” towards others: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy…”

This authentically evangelical process is not just a spiritual transformation realized once and for all: it is a whole life-style, an essential and continuous characteristic of the Christian vocation…

In this sense Christ crucified is for us the loftiest model, inspiration and encouragement. When we base ourselves on this disquieting model, we are able with all humility to show mercy to others…An act of merciful love is only really such when we are deeply convinced at the moment that we perform it that we are at the same time receiving mercy from the people who are accepting it from us…

The Prayer Of The Church In Our Times

15. The Church Appeals to the Mercy of God

The church proclaims the truth of God’s mercy revealed in the crucified and risen Christ, and she professes it in various ways. Furthermore, she seeks to practice mercy towards people through people, and she sees in this an indispensable condition for solicitude for a better and “more human” world, today and tomorrow. However, at no time and in no historical period – especially at a moment as critical as our own – can the church forget the prayer that is a cry for the mercy of God amid the many forms of evil which weigh upon humanity and threaten it. Precisely this is the fundamental right and duty of the church in Christ Jesus, her right and duty towards God and towards humanity. The more the human conscience succumbs to secularization, loses its sense of the very meaning of the word “mercy” moves away from God and distances itself from the mystery of mercy, the more the church has the right and duty to appeal to the God of mercy “with local cries…”

In continuing the great task of implementing the Second Vatican Council, in which we can rightly see a new phase of the self-realization of the church...the church herself must be constantly guided by the full consciousness that in this work it is not permissible for her, for any reason, to withdraw into herself. The reason for her existence, is, in fact, to reveal God, that Father who allows us to “see” him in Christ…

Joannes Paulus II