From the Archives: A Man of Mercy

27 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by Jerry Robinson in Advent, Christmas, Mercy

Tags

Advent, Faith, Forgiveness is a Miracle, Jason Gray, Jesus, Joseph, Love, Man of Mercy, Mercy, Year of Mercy

With the Jubilee Year of Mercy ending last Sunday and the season of Advent beginning today, I thought I would resurrect this post from December of 2013. As we begin preparing ourselves for the birth of Jesus, the following perspective of what might have been going through Joseph’s mind and heart in the days before that blessed event serves perfectly to bridge the gap between the Year of Mercy and Advent. In his song Forgiveness is a Miracle (A Song for Joseph), Jason Gray paints for us a profound example of the mercy that was offered by Joseph, and, in the last verse, gives us insight into the divine wisdom of God.

When I originally posted this I did not include a link to the lyric video of the song. I am including it here Forgiveness is a Miracle (A Song for Joseph) so you can actually hear the song and feel the meaning within. I hope you enjoy it and that it helps you prepare your heart to be offered as a gift to our Lord on His birthday. Let me know what you think.

God bless you and may this be your best Advent ever!

A Man of Mercy (Reprinted from 5 December 2013)

About this time last year I was listening to a new CD I had purchased by my new favorite singer/songwriter, Jason Gray. The CD is called Christmas Stories: Repeat the Sounding Joy. One particular song on it, “Forgiveness Is A Miracle (A Song For Joseph)”, caught my attention because it was so different from any other Christmas song I had ever heard. Plus, its subject was something which I had never considered: what was going through Joseph’s mind and heart prior to, and during, his wife giving birth to not his son, but Jesus, the Son of God?

I discovered that Jason Gray had written an article for The Rabbit Room describing the story behind the song and he explores this difficult situation in which Joseph found himself. I have re-posted his article below and included a link to The Rabbit Room’s website. I hope you find it as thought provoking as I did.

http://www.rabbitroom.com/2012/10/the-story-behind-forgiveness-is-a-miracle/

The Story Behind “Forgiveness Is a Miracle”

by Jason Gray on October 16, 2012

As I approached writing songs for each of the characters in the Christmas story, I felt particularly protective of Joseph, who I think sometimes doesn’t get the attention he’s due. At the very least I know that I’ve been guilty of not really “seeing” him for the remarkable man that he was, and I wanted to amend that. I enlisted my friend Andy Gullahorn, one of the most masterful storytellers I know, to explore a particular moment in Joseph’s story with me.

Taking my cue from Frederick Buechner’s book, “Peculiar Treasures,” in which he breathes new life into biblical characters who have grown so familiar to us that we no longer experience them as real human beings, I hoped to recapture some of the humanity of the people in the Christmas narrative. It was also important to me to try and write songs that were relevant beyond the four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas day. I wanted to tell timeless human stories, and with Joseph we have the makings of just that with a love triangle, a question of revenge or forgiveness, and the age old drama of fathers and sons.

As I read his part in the narrative, I found that more than just a foster parent without much to do (as he was often relegated to in my mind), Joseph is revealed as a man after God’s own heart. Faced not only with the news that his fiancée is pregnant, but also with her incredulous story of how it was God’s doing, Joseph’s character is tested and laid out for all of us to see. What will he do? Will he hurt the one who has hurt him? Will he forgive? This is his moment, and all of history waits and watches in wonder.

There are few things more painful than the betrayal and rejection by the one you love most, so we know it must have deeply wounded him—shattering the dreams he may have had of a future with the girl he loved. Pain is like a lightning bolt striking with a violent energy that can’t be held in the human heart for long. It looks for a way out. The way it usually passes through us is in the all too common progression of hurt turning into anger and then into vengeance. Unless the miracle of forgiveness takes place in a person’s heart to absorb it, the pain we experience will pass through us and be visited upon others.

There is debate as to whether it was within Joseph’s power to have her stoned—while Jewish custom might have allowed it, Roman rule did not. However, if not to her body, we know he still could have done violence to her reputation and her heart. But I believe that Joseph did the hard work of bringing his pain to God rather than letting it pass through him, and that God graced him with the miracle of forgiveness. The narrative tells us he was a “godly man” and that instead of doing her harm, “he decided to dismiss her quietly” so that she wouldn’t be publicly shamed. He took the full force of the blow and–acting as the husband he might have been–became a covering over her supposed sin.

It’s hard for us to experience the tension in Joseph’s story since, as the reader, we know from the start that she isn’t guilty of what he naturally supposes and that God is up to something beautiful that the world has never seen before. But to see Joseph for who he is, I have to remember that he couldn’t know these things in real time. It was only after he had given himself to the work of forgiveness that the angel appeared to him in a dream to tell him that what Mary had said was true after all, and that he should marry her.

It occurred to me that perhaps this is where Joseph’s heart was proven—if not to God who already knew his heart, then perhaps to himself. (I haven’t met a man yet who isn’t daunted by the responsibility of being a father, let alone a father to the Son of God. Maybe this was a test to reveal to Joseph what kind of man he could be.) In this moment he is found to be a man of mercy, which I imagine to be just the kind of man that God was looking for to be the earthly father of his son Jesus. In a way, we see that Joseph carries in his heart the same world changing power of forgiveness that Mary carried in her womb.

It’s also meaningful to me to think of how Joseph forgiving Mary is part of the story that leads to the birth of the savior in whom Joseph would find forgiveness for his own sins. Perhaps it’s the narrative form of Jesus’ teaching that as we forgive we find ourselves forgiven.

As we wrote the song, it was good to be reminded that forgiveness is a kind of miracle. I could be wrong, but I’m not sure that we can muster up forgiveness on our own. It seems to me to be a supernatural force of renewal that we participate in as we point our hearts toward it, pray for it, and make room for it in our lives, but that ultimately we receive it as a gift from God, in his due time.

Forgiveness Is A Miracle (A Song For Joseph)

Jason Gray / Andy Gullahorn

from Christmas Stories: Repeat the Sounding Joy

Love can make a soul come alive

Love can draw a dream out of the darkness

And blow every door open wide

But love can leave you broken hearted

Did she dare to look you in the eye

Did her betrayal leave you raging?

Did you let her see you cry

When she said the child was not your baby?

Pain can turn to anger then to vengeance

It happens time and again

Even in the best of men

It takes a miracle to save us

When love is like an open wound

There’s no way to stop the bleeding

Did you lose sleep over what to do?

Between what’s just and what brings healing

Pain can be a road to find compassion

When we don’t understand, and bring a better end

It takes a miracle to show us

Forgiveness is a miracle

A miracle

And a miracle can change your world

Forgiveness is a miracle

An angel in a dream spoke into your darkest night

So you trusted in the Lord and you took her as your wife

But the forgiveness that you gave would be given back to you

Because you carried in your heart what she was holding in her womb

Love was in a crowded barn

There you were beside her kneeling

You held it in your arms

As the miracle started breathing

Forgiveness is the miracle

The miracle

And a miracle will change your world

Forgiveness is the miracle

The miracle

A miracle will save the world

Forgiveness is the miracle

Blessed Joseph

Your heart is proven

And through you the Kingdom has come

For God delights in a man of mercy

And has found an earthly father for his son

(From the Archives: A Man of Mercy was first published on the blog Reflections of a Lay Catholic)

©2016 Reflections of a Lay Catholic. Reposting and sharing of material in its full and original content is permitted, provided that full and clear credit is given to the author(s) and Reflections of a Lay Catholic.

The Jubilee Year of Mercy – Biblical Jubilee

02 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by Jerry Robinson in Grace and Mercy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Charity, Grace, Jubilee, Mercy, Year of Mercy

Year of Mercy

I am truly blessed to have many friends who go out of their way to help me in my faith journey. After my post on Monday, The Jubilee Year of Mercy – The Basics, a good friend emailed me about an article she read in the December 7-14, 2015 edition of America magazine about the Jubilee Year of Mercy. It is a very informative article; I’m sorry I missed it in my research, and I’m glad she cared enough to send it to me.

The article, Proclaim the Jubilee by Marc Tumeinski, gives a biblical account of why there are jubilee years, how jubilee years were tradition in the Jewish culture, and what they ought to mean to us today. It is an excellent article worthy of being read in its entirety. It provides much more background and insight into the “whats” and “whys” of Jubilee. To access the article, click on the article title link above.

If anyone would like to comment and share anything they are doing in particular to celebrate the Jubilee Year of Mercy, please do so. I look forward to hearing from you.

God bless.

The Jubilee Year of Mercy – The Basics

01 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by Jerry Robinson in Grace and Mercy

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Charity, Grace, Jubilee, Mercy, Year of Mercy

For the last few months I’ve occasionally seen in Catholic publications and on social media that we are in the Jubilee Year of Mercy. But, not much has been preached from the pulpit, nor has anything serendipitously crossed my path and grabbed my attention, to offer sufficient insight and explanation about what the Jubilee Year of Mercy actually is and why Pope Francis declared it to be this year.

The name itself, The Jubilee Year of Mercy, implies it to be an important event about which we Catholics ought to know at least the basics. Obviously, I needed to learn more about it which meant I needed to do some research. In this post, I hope to summarize the basics of what I have learned and break it down to be not only informative but easy to understand. Then, in upcoming posts, I will get deeper into the details. My hope is that I will bring some clarity to those of you who are in the situation I was in.

What is a Jubilee Year?

A Jubilee year is when the Catholic Church devotes a year to a special intention that focuses on healing and forgiveness. It is intended to help Catholics strengthen their faith, grow spiritually, and unite with other Catholics and non-Catholics in encouraging service.

Jubilees normally occur every 25 years. They include pilgrimages and special celebrations, and the faithful are called to receive God’s grace through the sacraments of Reconciliation and Holy Communion.

Occasionally, there is an Extraordinary Jubilee Year, such as our current Year of Mercy. These may be declared more frequently than 25 years but offer the same opportunities for additional grace. The last Extraordinary Jubilee year was in 1983 when St. Pope John Paul II honored the 1,950^th anniversary of Jesus’ death. It is only the fourth Extraordinary Jubilee since the tradition began 700 years ago.

Why is this the Year of Mercy?

Pope Francis called for this Year of Mercy because he saw the urgent need for mercy and healing in the world. It is his hope that Catholics around the world will take this time to ask for and reflect on receiving God’s mercy, focus on forgiveness to others, and be “Witnesses of Mercy” by practicing corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

In Pope Francis’ homily on Divine Mercy Sunday last year, he answered the why question:

“Here, then, is the reason for the Jubilee: because this is the time for mercy. It is the favorable time to heal wounds, a time not to be weary of meeting all those who are waiting to see and to touch with their hands the signs of the closeness of God, a time to offer everyone, everyone, the way of forgiveness and reconciliation. May the Mother of God open our eyes, so that we may comprehend the task to which we have been called; and may she obtain for us the grace to experience this Jubilee of Mercy as faithful and fruitful witnesses of Christ.”⁽¹⁾

When is the Jubilee Year of Mercy?

The Jubilee Year of Mercy began on December 8, 2015, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, and it will end on November 20, 2016, the Solemnity of Christ the King.

Where will the Jubilee Year of Mercy be celebrated?

Unlike most jubilees, this is the first to be celebrated world-wide instead of only in Rome. Pope Francis desired that it be celebrated in every diocese in the world thereby making it more easily accessible to all Catholics.

What does the Church do to celebrate the Year of Mercy?

In Rome, there will be more than a dozen celebrations scheduled for the Jubilee Year of Mercy in 2016, giving pilgrims the chance to celebrate their own holy year with Pope Francis. The year-long extraordinary jubilee will include a number of individual jubilee days, such as for consecrated men and women, catechists, the sick and disabled, [children], and prisoners.⁽²⁾

Pilgrimages by the faithful are encouraged during jubilee years. To facilitate these pilgrimages, the Church has opened “Holy doors” at churches in each diocese around the world to serve as destinations for one’s journey. “The open holy doors are an invitation to all the faithful to come and enter into the compassion, love, mercy, and consolation of God. They become a Door of Mercy through which anyone who enters will experience the love of God who consoles, pardons, and instills hope.”⁽¹⁾

In addition, Pope Francis will focus monthly on the 14 “Works of Mercy”, acts which are intended to serve as forms of both penance and charity. These works of mercy consist of the seven “corporal” works of mercy and the seven “spiritual” works of mercy (more about these in another post).

Is there anything special about making a pilgrimage?

Those making pilgrimages during the jubilee year, whether it’s a pilgrimage to Rome or passing through the Holy Doors in your own diocese, will receive a plenary indulgence which, provided the recipient goes to confession, receives Communion and prays for the pope, will remove all temporal punishment due to sins committed up to that time.

What’s next?

So, those are the basics – the purpose, actions, and effects of observing and participating in the Jubilee Year of Mercy. In future posts I will: discuss what mercy is and how one can show mercy; explore and clarify plenary indulgences and the remission of temporal sin; examine the corporal and spiritual works of mercy; and any other nuggets of knowledge I pick up from my research that I think you would like to know.

Parting thoughts

The best way to sum up what I’ve learned so far is to quote Pope Francis. He said, “This jubilee is to be a journey that starts with a spiritual conversion….a journey of walking closer with God and discovering moments of grace and spiritual renewal”⁽¹⁾.

What it isn’t is a process or event to replace our everyday piety, study and action. Rather, it is a supplement which, when understood and practiced, will bring us, and those with whom we interact, additional mercy and grace from God.

I don’t know about you, but I can use a little more of that in my life.

_________________

Sources:

(1) United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

(2) Apostles of the Holy Spirit, Bulletin, Winter 2015-16

(3) The Catholic Telegraph, Archdiocese of Cincinnati, February and March 2016

________________

(The Jubilee Year of Mercy: Part 1 – The Basics, was first published on the blog Reflections of a Lay Catholic)