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http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/i..._Credit_Bohumil_Petrik_CNA_12_9_15.jpgVatican City, Dec 10, 2015 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- At the opening of the Year of Mercy called by Pope Francis, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has granted to CNA an exclusive interview touching on mercy in several of its aspects.
Please find below the full text of the conversation:
CNA: What is mercy for a theologian?
Cardinal Müller: Above all the theologian, every theologian, is a human being, a baptized person who experiences mercy just as does everyone else. Without this in mind, without the living experience of mercy, paraphrasing what St. Paul said on charity, even our words that were spoken would be like “a resounding gong,” as a mere breath of sound… Mercy for us is inseparable from the face of Jesus. That Jesus who first made himself known to us through the face of the families into which we are born and then in the context of the Church that we have lived. After, we learn to know him in Scripture, in the Sacraments, through the life of his witnesses, of the saints more or less known that are present in history in every age. And then also through the teaching of the great ecclesial tradition, with the word of theologians, of teachers and doctors of the Church, through the teaching of the Magisterium. But all of this is necessary in reference to a vital experience, with the aim of making us deepen that experience and the the deep gaze that we have over that experience.
So the theologian is an aid in deepening this gaze on that fact which is the mercy of God, a fact which is manifested to us in many ways, so that the field of God’s action is the entire world. It can be manifested with the gesture of someone who supports us or corrects us, or even with the fact that they remind us to live in the truth of our existence. In any case, mercy is for me an event through which my life is called with renewed strength to the good and to truth, with which I feel called to live in that goodness and in that truth, which recreates my life and re-energizes in me that interior face that I received from God and which puts me into relationship with him, continuously opening me to the good of my brothers and sisters. The mercy with which Jesus invests our hearts, at times strongly, a times with tenderness, is a surge of goodness and of truth with which he urges us to change our lives for the better and to be open to those around us, making them feel close, like a neighbor. Mercy makes us continuously know that God who is revealed in Jesus and who increasingly reveals us to ourselves and to others. And it teaches us to look, to love ourselves and others in that perspective of goodness and truth with which Jesus himself looks at us.
In this sense, the act of sacramental confession is for me paradigmatic of mercy: each time that we confess, we get closer to the Lord with a gaze burdened by our sins and we can leave rejoicing, affected by his gaze upon us, a gaze that is just and good at the same time, which doesn’t give cheap discounts, yet never abandons us to the mercy of our miseries. A gaze that demands much from us because it knows we can give a lot when we receive from him; but he does it like a good father who knows how to be patient with his children and never tires of accompanying them and therefore never abandons them.
CNA: God frees us from sin with mercy. Is this the only true liberation theology?
Cardinal Müller: This is the first liberation theology, from which many others result. When the heart is freed from sin, then also the rest of our personality receives the benefit. Freedom begins to dilate and take on its true dimensions, which are sustained and powered by the intellect and the will. Thanks to forgiveness and mercy, man learns to accept that his freedom begins by depending on God, learning the taste of gratuity, to recognize that everything he has was not his right but was given, and to love the good and the truth more than his own comforts and immediate advantages, to desire life without end … that is, to already love the things of heaven while on this earth! All the works of mercy, both spiritual and corporal, that the Church teaches and which educate us, tracing their origins from here: we can live mercy only because we have first received it.
Full article…
Please find below the full text of the conversation:
CNA: What is mercy for a theologian?
Cardinal Müller: Above all the theologian, every theologian, is a human being, a baptized person who experiences mercy just as does everyone else. Without this in mind, without the living experience of mercy, paraphrasing what St. Paul said on charity, even our words that were spoken would be like “a resounding gong,” as a mere breath of sound… Mercy for us is inseparable from the face of Jesus. That Jesus who first made himself known to us through the face of the families into which we are born and then in the context of the Church that we have lived. After, we learn to know him in Scripture, in the Sacraments, through the life of his witnesses, of the saints more or less known that are present in history in every age. And then also through the teaching of the great ecclesial tradition, with the word of theologians, of teachers and doctors of the Church, through the teaching of the Magisterium. But all of this is necessary in reference to a vital experience, with the aim of making us deepen that experience and the the deep gaze that we have over that experience.
So the theologian is an aid in deepening this gaze on that fact which is the mercy of God, a fact which is manifested to us in many ways, so that the field of God’s action is the entire world. It can be manifested with the gesture of someone who supports us or corrects us, or even with the fact that they remind us to live in the truth of our existence. In any case, mercy is for me an event through which my life is called with renewed strength to the good and to truth, with which I feel called to live in that goodness and in that truth, which recreates my life and re-energizes in me that interior face that I received from God and which puts me into relationship with him, continuously opening me to the good of my brothers and sisters. The mercy with which Jesus invests our hearts, at times strongly, a times with tenderness, is a surge of goodness and of truth with which he urges us to change our lives for the better and to be open to those around us, making them feel close, like a neighbor. Mercy makes us continuously know that God who is revealed in Jesus and who increasingly reveals us to ourselves and to others. And it teaches us to look, to love ourselves and others in that perspective of goodness and truth with which Jesus himself looks at us.
In this sense, the act of sacramental confession is for me paradigmatic of mercy: each time that we confess, we get closer to the Lord with a gaze burdened by our sins and we can leave rejoicing, affected by his gaze upon us, a gaze that is just and good at the same time, which doesn’t give cheap discounts, yet never abandons us to the mercy of our miseries. A gaze that demands much from us because it knows we can give a lot when we receive from him; but he does it like a good father who knows how to be patient with his children and never tires of accompanying them and therefore never abandons them.
CNA: God frees us from sin with mercy. Is this the only true liberation theology?
Cardinal Müller: This is the first liberation theology, from which many others result. When the heart is freed from sin, then also the rest of our personality receives the benefit. Freedom begins to dilate and take on its true dimensions, which are sustained and powered by the intellect and the will. Thanks to forgiveness and mercy, man learns to accept that his freedom begins by depending on God, learning the taste of gratuity, to recognize that everything he has was not his right but was given, and to love the good and the truth more than his own comforts and immediate advantages, to desire life without end … that is, to already love the things of heaven while on this earth! All the works of mercy, both spiritual and corporal, that the Church teaches and which educate us, tracing their origins from here: we can live mercy only because we have first received it.
Full article…