Today’s Responsorial Psalm has the refrain, “His mercy endures forever.” It is an important refrain that we need to keep repeating because as we pray these words, we are not only talking to God but God is talking to us, telling us what kind of a God He is. He is a God whose mercy endures forever. The psalm tells us that God is good, the supreme God and Lord of all.
Sometimes you and I have a different image of God. We create God in the image of world tyrants and dictators and we give God the worst of human characteristics, e.g., vengefulness, anger, pettiness, and lacking in mercy. Instead of creating our own image of God we need to listen to the refrain of this Psalm: “His mercy endures forever.”
What does a merciful God look like? Jesus! Jesus is the Word made flesh and God sent Jesus into the world because He loves us. Jesus shows us in concrete terms what a merciful God looks like by His words and especially by His actions. He seeks out the lost sheep; He embraces the leper, the outcast, and the foreigner.
The Word became flesh so that we could know the one true God and experience the one true God as we listen to Jesus’ words in the Gospel. We are the disciples who go about with Jesus. Sometime we understand Him; other times we are people of little faith like those first disciples. Jesus is always patient with us because like His Father, Jesus’ mercy endures forever.