Reflection on the issue of struggling and mercy performed an necessary function each within the instructing of John Paul II and within the philosophy of Józef Tischner. The considered each centered on the human being: John Paul II targeted on man and his acts, Tischner on man within the context of the dialogical drama. Struggling and mercy are, subsequent to like and hope, probably the most human of experiences. With time, their theoretical reflection was deepened by private expertise. After their final assembly at Wawel (on June 17, 1999) John Paul II—himself struggling—wrote a wonderful letter to Tischner on the struggling of Job:
The Vatican, July 3, 1999
Expensive Father Józef,
We had the assembly at Wawel, however all too rapidly. That complete journey by way of Poland was one nice rush. However with Father Professor [Tischner] I would like an extended convention. May he come to Rome? It’s arduous to think about that now. Already the final session came about with out him. So I meet him, continuously, however with out phrases. And it’s a assembly with Job. Human struggling, sudden struggling, struggling which says “why” to God: it’s the Ebook of Job. Job’s interlocutors gave mistaken solutions to his questions. The enough reply was given solely by Christ. For a while now, your existence, Father Józef, has additionally been inscribed between Job’s questions and Christ’s reply. All those that accompany you at this stage—and I attempt to be amongst them—know that they can not give solutions just like these given by Job’s interlocutors. We attempt to keep silence stuffed with deep concern. And we ask Christ to talk. For less than he has the phrases of everlasting life. Please settle for this from us, pricey Father Józef. Settle for this from me. I thank Christ for all the great that we skilled by way of you.With a blessing
With a heartfelt blessing
John Paul II
Earlier than I current the views of Tischner and John Paul II with regards to struggling and mercy, I would love first to sketch out the strain between the conceptions of struggling revealed within the opinions of those two giants of thought. These two conceptions are troublesome to reconcile.
The primary defines struggling nearly as good, deserving, and invaluable in itself. Simone Weil, amongst others, was of that opinion. She believed that God turned incarnate as a result of he was jealous of man’s struggling. This conception assumes that God desires struggling, that he visits struggling on particular folks, and even, in response to some interpretations, causes it himself. God was incarnate because the God-man, the Son of God, to in the end seal and make sure the worth of struggling. Struggling is redemptive, and when it’s accepted as redemptive it multiplies the infinite retailer of religious items on which the Church can draw. All who are suffering with Christ full his agony, and Christ’s struggling itself is a compensatory sacrifice for our sins and an atonement for them.
The second conception of struggling declares that struggling is evil, that God doesn’t need it, doesn’t enable it, and doesn’t trigger it. God was incarnate and got here to earth because the God-man to accompany man on his journey by way of the darkish valley of struggling and loss of life. Incarnation is thus an act of God’s solidarity with man. It doesn’t ennoble struggling or lend it dignity, however it permits man to bear it extra simply. Thus, man is saved not due to struggling however regardless of it. He’s saved due to love and never due to struggling. If within the former conception God was the supply of struggling (at the least as he agreed to permit it, as within the case of Job), right here, there isn’t a reply to the query of the place struggling comes from and why it exists, particularly the struggling of the harmless.
In his statements, John Paul II doesn’t unequivocally help both of those conceptions, though he does appear to emphasise the previous greater than the latter. Tischner appears to help the latter, however he additionally appears to hesitate. The language of the primary of those conceptions is extra acceptable for individuals who can not reside with out the sense of that means and secure grounding. The language of the latter is for individuals who can settle for thriller.
Each conceptions confront us with a query about God. Who is that this God that permits struggling? Is he god-the-merciless? Who is that this God that wants the worth of struggling to redeem humanity from evil and sin? Is he not a weak God if he must cut price with evil? Questions on struggling lead us to the very secret of God’s mercy.
Józef Tischner
Struggling
“The place does struggling come from?” asks Tischner. Our imaginative and prescient of the world is not the imaginative and prescient of Jan Tauler, for whom love was the precept of the world. For us, this picture is darkened, for we’re the youngsters of the instances of Auschwitz and Kołyma. In response to Tischner, the issue of evil is an everlasting metaphysical downside associated to the situation of human existence. In an axiological interpretation of the parable of the Platonic Cave, he says:
What does this expertise disclose to us? It reveals the truth that the world wherein we reside isn’t the world it might and ought to be. The first axiological expertise doesn’t inform us that one thing ought to be that isn’t. Neither does it inform us that I ought to do one thing and abstain from doing one thing else. All of this seems to be secondary. Solely that is main: there’s something that shouldn’t be. The seen world is an phantasm of a world. Prometheus hangs nailed to the wall, however why, for what? All of us reside within the cave stuffed with shadows. Why have we been thus chained? Why do the righteous undergo? Why did Socrates die the best way he did? What’s all the time main is that this: there’s something that shouldn’t be.
Struggling is expounded to like. Out of those two components, positioned in relation to one another, Tischner places a particular emphasis on love. He asks:
When does love enhance itself? Is it when it may possibly bear an increasing number of sacrifices for itself? When it may possibly bear a better cross? When it may possibly turn into Job’s love? When it may possibly turn into a prayer on the manure of existence? It is a nice misunderstanding. Already, Norwid warned us in opposition to it when he talked in regards to the true progress of affection. The true progress of affection shouldn’t deliver extra of the cross; it ought to deliver extra knowledge. “The entire secret of human progress is determined by the best, the one, the ultimate weapon that’s martyrdom, turning into unneeded on earth by way of the unconditional manifestation of goodness and revelation of reality.” Fact is reached by numerous routes. Allow us to concede that there are additionally truths to be reached by way of martyrdom. A kind of truths is that when struggling, we undergo with Christ. We don’t reside for ourselves and we don’t die for ourselves. Whether or not we reside or die, we belong to God (St. Paul). On discovering this we will take part within the divine dignity of struggling. However, it isn’t struggling that’s necessary right here. It isn’t struggling that carries. Fairly conversely, struggling all the time destroys. What carries, lifts up, attracts upwards, is love.
In response to Tischner, we will illuminate the key of struggling solely within the context of God’s incarnation. The essence of the incarnation is the act of the Phrase taking over the human situation. The human situation includes border conditions, resembling guilt, the selection of 1’s personal God, and an encounter with one’s personal loss of life. The Phrase-become-flesh entered the very core of human border conditions. There isn’t any theoretical reply to the query in regards to the particular sense of struggling. The one reply is the incarnation. From the start it has revealed the drama of human existence. The start of Jesus was accompanied by homicide of harmless youngsters. Tischner acknowledges the entire drama of this example: “We could simply think about the despairing mom who, having misplaced her little one, blames not solely Herod, but additionally . . . Christ: ‘Why have you ever been born? Why have you ever provoked the felony?’”
It was not necessary for Tischner whether or not such accusations have been really made. Suffice it to say that they might have been made. What was Jesus’s consciousness when he was instructed in regards to the occasion?
We have no idea what levels human guilt has undergone in Jesus’s soul. We solely know guilt was not overseas to him. He was instructed on the river Jordan: you’re the Lamb of God, you’re a reside bearer of human guilt. It is going to be mentioned about him, repeatedly: “He bore the guilt of the entire world.” Jesus is revealed to us because the saint and the responsible one on the similar time. From the border scenario wherein man must both settle for or reject guilt, Jesus will emerge with the sensation of the deepest sanctity and the deepest guilt.
Tischner goes audaciously far in his interpretation: it isn’t moms who misplaced their youngsters which are responsible. They aren’t responsible of the truth that we reside in a world wherein the despair of moms is feasible. It isn’t God that dies for man first, however man who dies for God. God is born in a world of loss of life. “His life . . . is the property of the innocently murdered and all others like them.” And elsewhere, he writes:
The incarnation of the Phrase, realized in such a world as all of us inhabit. needed to finish in tragedy for a lot of causes. The logic is inexorable once more. If God is love, if the Son is within the Father and the Father is within the Son, if human despair locations God beneath indictment, the Son has to share until the tip the destiny of those that are despairing. The accusations of the despairing solely then can unfastened their drive once they hear the voice from the cross: “My God, My God, why have you ever forsaken me?”
In response to Tischner, the loss of life of Christ can also be a theodicy argument. Jesus defends his Father. The Father isn’t chargeable for the struggling and loss of life. The act of defending the Father is fulfilled in Jesus’s loss of life. “Then he’ll carry the cross to indicate that God not solely created the world but additionally died for the world.” This protection doesn’t erase the key. Nevertheless it crops hope in man. It’s the hope for love: “All of us await for it. That it’s going to come and free us from the duty of providing sacrifice.” It’s the hope for love freed from sacrifices, love unburdened by struggling and loss of life.
Tischner presents a unique conception of the incarnation and, consequently, of struggling, in his later article, “Mit samopoświęcającego się bóstwa” (The Fable of a Self-sacrificing Deity). The article is a polemic with a e-book by Helena Eilstein, Uwagi ateisty o micie ukrzyżowania (An Atheist’s Remarks Concerning the Fable of the Crucifixion). However Tischner’s pointed remarks and polemic regarding delusion and demythologization, one can not totally disagree with Eilstein’s concern associated to the idea of expiatory sacrifice and atonement. Tischner himself admits that he had problem with the idea of “sastisfactionary atonement”:
After I heard about it years in the past throughout lectures on dogmatics, I used to be torn. I assumed that Scholastics “overdid it” subjecting God to the principles of arithmetic. How can finite man offend an infinite being? How can the offence perpetuated by a finite being purchase infinite character? How can love be subjected to calculations wherein the burden of the offense and the burden of atonement is being calculated?
Regardless of these early doubts, Tischner determined to defend the Anselmian idea of atonement. It presents the essence of the incarnation in a wholly totally different mild. To the query: Why God turned human? (Cur Deus homo?), St. Anselm responds roughly within the following method [as summarized by Tischner]:
Aside from love for man within the Holy Trinity, there may be additionally the love of the Son for the Father. Doesn’t the insulted Father—or the Father’s love insulted by sin—“deserve” some “atonement”? God liked and man spurned . . . Man’s evil—evil generally known as “sin”—struck into love. Mustn’t love be compensated with some worthy atonement? How is that this to be executed? The Son of God finds an answer: right here he’ll himself turn into human, in order that what must occur could occur . . . The Son of Man takes upon himself the sins of the world; together with his—each human and divine—sacrifice he provides the one compensation of its sort.
Tischner defended the thought of atonement. He tried to reinterpret it, understanding it as an act of affection and a deification of man. “Who stands up for us, ‘lifts’ us upward—pulls us as much as his stage. When the Son of God ‘atones’ for man’s sin, the very act of atonement will likely be at least the start of the deification of man.”
But, at this level, doubts come up. I imagine that the issue lies not within the delusion of self-sacrificing deity, however within the query whether or not the Christian understanding of sacrifice differs from the understanding of sacrifice in different religions. Can the thought of atonement thus conceived be reconciled with mercy? Does it not in the long run lead again to an apotheosis of struggling? Tischner was conscious of that, as a result of he later wrote about Abraham’s struggling: “An Different-God calls for a sacrifice (a demon is dominated out, although God who calls for the sacrifice of a son reveals a extremely ambiguous face).”
The story of Job is a crucial facet of Tischner’s reflections on struggling. Nonetheless, once we attempt to reply the query of the place evil comes from, one factor appears positive—there exists no rational reply, particularly once we are confronted with such evil that not a lot threatens and lures, however stuns. Such expertise appears to annul Tischner’s distinction between evil and adversity. True sufficient, the adversities that befell Job weren’t evil in Tischner’s understanding, for there was no perpetrator. Subsequently, they weren’t “dialogical” like evil amongst males. Job, nonetheless, had a quarrel with God who allowed evil, even when he didn’t perpetrate it. From the angle of theodicy, and thus in relation to God, adversities are additionally evil.
Tischner devoted 4 quick texts to Job’s expertise. Two are introductions to literary works: of the Ebook of Job in Czesław Miłosz’s translation (1982), and of Karol Wojtyła’s drama Job (1991). The arguments he makes in these two texts are standard and, so far as I’m involved, totally inadequate. Within the former he claims: “The Ebook of Job is a e-book in regards to the loyalty of man put to the take a look at.” Within the latter he argues that struggling, even when impenetrable, creates a scenario wherein man’s mature religion can develop.
The third of the texts is a fraction of a dialog with Ewelina Puczek. The Ebook of Job exhibits two potential options regarding struggling. One is represented by what Job’s spouse suggests to him: “Curse God and die.” The opposite is the place of Job himself, who bears every little thing in persistence. I want to level out two points raised by Tischner’s argument. One emphasizes the customary angle to struggling, nonetheless current in non secular discourse: “Job fulminates with anger, however the comforter counsels that he shouldn’t complain; quite the opposite, he ought to give thanks.” The second, closing assertion exhibits how problematic is the scenario wherein man finds himself:
We can not actually admit—and we don’t need to—that every little thing ends nicely. Actually, the scenario is extraordinary from the moral standpoint . . . The query arises whether or not sure boundaries haven’t been crossed that ought to by no means be crossed. All the Ebook of Job talks about the truth that for a while God withdrew his safety of Job and allowed Job to turn into a plaything within the fingers of some undefined forces. Whose duty is it, then? God’s or his opponents? The query why Job turned God’s sufferer stays unanswered. One factor is certain: Job’s horrible destiny is a harbinger of the destiny man can go to on the Son of God. One might say that, in a way, God was jealous of man’s struggling and loss of life.
The fourth textual content on Job from Spór o istnienie człowieka (Controversy Over the Existence of Man) is equally dramatic. Having skilled evil (or “calamity,” in Tischner’s language), Job is a monad with out home windows. He’s an different to others, and remoted from them. He’s an different additionally to God. He’s separated from his “pals” by evil, by the suspicion that he has sinned. “True otherness has its supply in evil, in participation in evil.” On this approach Job turns into a closed monad. His pals attempt to console him. “However the extra the consolations multiply, the deeper the otherness turns into.” That’s the reason Tischner describes evil as “anti-gravity.” Evil pushes away everybody and every little thing:
However Job has a quarrel not solely together with his pals. Above all he’s in battle with that Different. “Job carries the Different inside him. He carries the Different as his important struggling. On the basis of the physique’s ache, beneath the layer woven out of wounds, on the supply of calamities that befell him, lies Job, the one who’s different, as different as human ache and struggling. . . . The Different is “different” and but he’s in him, in Job. The Different is his personal struggling, his personal curse. The Different invaded the monad and slammed its home windows shut. The monad isn’t a lot “with out home windows” as its “home windows are shut.” The Different is ache which doesn’t enable one to own oneself. It’s inconceivable to reside with out the Different, however it is usually inconceivable to reside with him.
In reply to the query “why evil?” we thus attain the bounds of the exceptional. “Why does the Different seem to him within the variety of ache? Why does the Different stop the one who’s for-himself to be at peace with himself and to be himself? Why is the opposite in opposition to Job and forcing Job to be a being-against-itself? There aren’t any solutions to those questions,” says Tischner. Job thus lives on the boundary between retaliation and silence. On the one hand, retaliation is feasible; his spouse suggests: “Curse God and die.” On the opposite, there may be silence: “The home windows of the monad have been slammed shut. Silence fell. Solely from time to time the silence is full of a criticism, with a unhappiness of the view, with a hopelessness of overgrown paths that after have been traveled by somebody who got here to knock on the window.”
Mercy
For Tischner mercy is a “revelation of affection.” Mercy is this type of love by way of which the one who loves directs himself towards human “misery,” towards those that are deserving of mercy. Mercy is the ache of hope. Tischner juxtaposes God’s mercy with Robespierre’s mercy and Nietzsche’s will-to-power: “Robespierre’s mercy is expressed by way of unbounded terror. Sister Faustina’s mercy is expressed by way of forgiveness with out bounds.” Robespierre’s place is the place of hatred within the identify of mercy. “Who weeps over a hungry little one, shouldn’t move indifferently by the sight of those that are satiated.” Tischner additionally exhibits that mercy stands up in opposition to the will-to-power. It isn’t an expression of an embitterment. “The facility that doesn’t serve mercy, leads man into the wilderness.” Mercy is an expression of the powerlessness of affection:
What’s the essence of mercy? Have you ever ever struggled, pricey Reader, with your individual love? Have you ever felt the helplessness of powerless love? Such love was skilled by those that have been admiring the greatness of Jerusalem doomed to destruction. So did Jair. So did Lazarus’s sisters. Now it’s time for Christ. Taking a look at man misplaced in misery, God participates in powerless love.
Mercy is above all God’s angle towards man. Mercy enacts the key solidarity with the accused. God’s mercy isn’t expressed solely in compassion, within the hope for reformation, however in bearing the blame collectively. With Jesus, “All solidarity primarily based on compassion, or no matter else, is secondary in character; what’s most necessary is participation in bearing the blame.” Such solidarity can also be an angle of man towards God. Merciful love carries with it the burden of repentance. “‘Repentance’ is the burden of ‘rubble’ which stays within the soul after the botched-up development of so many Towers of Babel. It’s the weight the Prodigal Son felt, to then return to the home of his father.” It’s most hanging that mercy in response to Tischner can also be the angle of man towards God. Mercy is, lastly, an angle of man towards man. The angle of mercy is feasible solely when crossing boundaries. It isn’t potential within the angle of the possessor of the sacred.
At this level an extra divergence occurs between the roads of “the possessor of the sacred” and the One who “handed by doing good deeds” (the Good Samaritan). The possessor constructed a wall round his property. All the world’s evil remained outdoors the wall. Inside the partitions there are solely those that are “one’s personal.” No person has contact with the heretics, no person desecrates the Sabbath, no person rebels in opposition to energy, all rejoice in “the brand new freedom”—the liberty that operates in response to the possessor’s needs. Additionally, “real love” prospers right here: love of “one’s personal.” In every of “one’s personal,” the mark of the possessor is seen, of the one who “tamed” this piece of the world. However right here, if vital, girls are stoned “who have been discovered fornicating.” What’s the angle of the “possessor of the sacred” to the world past the partitions? It’s an angle of ever-renewed suspicion. The evil of the skin world is the extra evil, the extra it hides behind the pretense of the great. That’s the reason one must be suspicious. Can’t the wolf costume in sheep’s clothes? . . . Have been he “with us,” he would have allowed the girl to be justly punished for her sins.
What’s, then, the that means of struggling? In Christianity, the one reply to that query is the incarnation and loss of life of Christ as an expression of God’s mercy. Mercy adjustments the that means of the idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice is not the worth, buyout, a ransom. “My ache is a bridge to your ache. I can now carry out the necessary act of sacrifice: I can supply God my ache for the salvation of the world.” This isn’t, nonetheless, a satisfactionary sacrifice. Struggling isn’t the worth of salvation:
To make an providing is to not give it some thought: what has been provided doesn’t concern me any extra, however belongs to the one that acquired the present. Ache isn’t necessary right here. What’s necessary is the love that performs the act of sacrifice. Man saves himself primarily based not on the quantity of the ache he has suffered, however primarily based on love that brings happiness and helps to bear the ache.
John Paul II
Struggling
In his official statements, particularly within the sermons for the sick, John Paul II praised struggling. He emphasised the worth of struggling. He mentioned: “Along with your struggling you full the agony of Christ.” He known as upon them to supply their struggling to the Lord as participation in his work of Salvation. In response to John Paul II, religious struggling transforms itself right into a salvific good. Within the resurrection of Christ struggling acquires its dignity, as a result of it casts off its uselessness. Struggling is an act of salvific love. No struggling is wasted. Ache is the priceless drive of religious fertility. Sickness exalts and dignifies. Struggling is a present. Struggling linked with Christ’s struggling purifies the Church. Struggling accepted and born with resignation turns into the supply of grace. Struggling can and ought to be the present within the intention. In struggling God embraces us. Struggling contributes to the victory of fine over evil. The pope spoke to the sick: “You to your half ought to act in such a approach as to show your sickbed into an altar the place you supply your self in all of your devotion to God to his better glory and for the salvation of the world.”
Alternatively, John Paul II talked in regards to the thriller of being tried by God. It’s obscure struggling. Human struggling is such that nobody can declare he has reached its limits. When strolling within the pavilions of Piccola Casa, he mentioned: “One experiences all too clearly its immense dimensions. After which the query is raised ‘why?’” The sick should not chargeable for the evil of the world.
This twofold conception of struggling is seen additionally within the apostolic letter Salvifici doloris. The language of struggling stretches right here from “the necessity of the center” and “the crucial of religion.” The necessity of the center calls for that we fall silent within the face of struggling; the crucial of religion calls for that we clarify it. The letter begins with the fragment of Colossians 1:24: “In my flesh I full what’s missing in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his physique, that’s, the Church.” This, because the pope observes, reveals the salvific worth and sense of struggling. Struggling is the worth of redemption. Alternatively, nonetheless, struggling intimidates as a result of it incorporates the greatness of a particular thriller, “Man, in his struggling, stays an intangible thriller.”
Struggling is inexpressible and never transferable. It calls for, nonetheless, posing radical questions and searching for solutions. John Paul II lists various totally different sorts of struggling: the loss of life of kids, childlessness, persecution, mockery of the struggling, loneliness, unfaithfulness, ingratitude, problem in understanding why the depraved prosper and the simply undergo. Struggling is expounded to the query about evil. “Let’s imagine that man suffers due to a superb wherein he doesn’t share, from which in a sure sense he’s minimize off, or of which he has disadvantaged himself. He significantly suffers when he ought—within the regular order of issues—to have a share on this good and doesn’t have it.” Struggling is the expertise of evil.
The pope acknowledges the burden of the query in regards to the sense of struggling, as a result of struggling itself, particularly the struggling of the harmless, obscures the picture of God and his creation. The Ebook of Job is an expression of this query. Searching for the sense of struggling, John Paul II refers to conventional motifs. One in all them is the tutorial facet of struggling: struggling is a trial, a religious tempering. It serves conversion. The concept of satisfactionary struggling is kind of totally different.
The pope additionally employs the language of the salvific economic system: the Church attracts from the infinite retailer of Redemption. Lastly, he refers back to the concept of Unique Sin, as a result of struggling is the results of Unique Sin. Allow us to pose the query, nonetheless, whether or not that’s clear for the mom who misplaced her little one. It’s clear if we determine sin with creation. The creation, as Simone Weil noticed, paradoxically sinned as a result of it wished to be created. For creation is all the time beneath God. Struggling and loss of life thus belong to the situation of creation. It’s unclear once we ought to begin in search of the hyperlink between struggling and sin—not solely private, however Unique Sin. I can not think about going to the mom and telling her: “Your little one died due to ‘the sin of the world,’ ‘from the sinful background,’ of ‘the social processes in human historical past.’”
The pope is, nonetheless, conscious that no clarification is ample. “Love can also be the richest supply of the that means of struggling, which all the time stays a thriller: we’re aware of the insufficiency and inadequacy of our explanations.” The papal language of struggling thus reveals an insurmountable pressure between the notions of justice and love. On the one hand, the narrative of Job breaks the relation between struggling and punishment. Within the eyes of Job’s pals, struggling “can have a that means solely as a punishment for sin, due to this fact solely on the extent of the justice of God who repays good with good and evil with evil.” The pope’s commentary on the place of Job’s pals strikes in opposition to the thought of reparative justice: “The opinion expressed by Job’s pals manifests a conviction additionally discovered within the ethical conscience of humanity: the target ethical order calls for punishment for transgression, sin, and crime.” However Job has not sinned. His struggling is the struggling of the harmless. The Ebook of Job presages Christ’s struggling. Thus, on the one hand, the Pope ruptures the hyperlink between sin and struggling. “Christ suffers voluntarily and suffers innocently.”
The Pope, similarily to Tischner, writes, “The cross is probably the most profound condescension of God to man and to what man, particularly in troublesome and painful moments, seems to be on as his sad future. The cross is sort of a contact of everlasting love upon probably the most painful wounds of man’s earthly existence . . . Redemption includes the revelation of mercy in its fullness.” Alternatively, nonetheless, the pope doesn’t totally abandon the language of satisfactionary justice and of the salvific economic system. “Within the ardour and loss of life of Christ—in the truth that the Father didn’t spare his personal Son, however ‘for our sake made him sin’—absolute justice is expressed, for Christ undergoes the fervour and cross due to the sins of humanity. This constitutes even a ‘superabundance’ of justice, for the sins of man are ‘compensated for’ by the sacrifice of the Man-God.” The “worth of the Ardour” and “the worth of the loss of life of Christ” seem once more.
Mercy
When writing in regards to the evil of the 20th century, John Paul II, just like Józef Tischner, argues for the necessity to preach mercy: “The 20 th century, regardless of undisputed achievements in lots of fields, was peculiarly marked by the ‘thriller of iniquity.’”
God is an inexhaustible supply of mercy. When preaching these phrases, the pope reminds us that “mercy is the best of the attributes and perfections of God.” His perfection is especially revealed in Christ’s love. Christ’s love is “an efficient love, a love that addresses itself to man and embraces every little thing that makes up his humanity.” Mercy is revealed in two features: within the expertise of guilt and within the expertise of struggling. David is the consultant of the previous and Job the consultant of the latter.
Mercy is an indispensable dimension of affection; it’s love’s second identify and, “on the similar time, the particular method wherein love is revealed and effected vis-à-vis the truth of the evil that’s on the earth.” The overabundance of mercy is the one potential reply to the enormity of evil on the earth. John Paul II illustrates this with the parables of the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and the Good Shepherd.
The parable of the Prodigal Son is especially attention-grabbing on this context. Max Scheler, whose work John Paul II knew, wrote in his commentary on this parable that the forgiving father got here out to fulfill his son with out understanding the motive for the son’s return and with out setting any circumstances or asking for amends. “Once more, within the parable of the Prodigal Son, it isn’t the very fact of the son’s already full repentance which is the explanation and situation of his father’s forgiving him and receiving him with love; it’s the astonishing realization of his father’s love which brings in regards to the overwhelming repentance.” The echo of this commentary is audible within the following phrases as nicely: “It turns into extra evident that love is reworked into mercy when it’s essential to transcend the exact norm of justice—exact and sometimes too slender.” Mercy is joyful, generously bestowed upon the prodigal particular person. Solely mercy opens to reality and purifies.
For John Paul II, as for Józef Tischner, mercy is a threefold relation. God is its supply. It’s a relation of God to man. As such it ought to turn into the supply of interpersonal relations. “God’s mercy finds its reflection within the mercy of individuals.” That’s the reason the Pope requires social relations to be primarily based on mercy, not solely on justice. He requires witnessing mercy. He calls on us to think about mercy. However mercy can also be the relation of man to God. Additionally, God himself appears to deserve mercy and name for mercy.
The expertise of mercy in John Paul II thus exceeds the remnants of the language of satisfactionary justice and the salvific economic system, that are nonetheless current in his reflection in regards to the sense of struggling; and even when it doesn’t transcend them, it mitigates them. “True mercy is, so to talk, probably the most profound supply of justice,” says the pope.
If, in his evaluation of struggling, Józef Tischner differs from John Paul II, it’s in that Tischner describes struggling in additional dramatic language [see: his recently translated The Philosophy of Drama] and is open extra typically to the thought of thriller. But, they share the identical language of mercy. Mercy doesn’t reply the query of the place the evil of struggling comes from, however it factors to the one potential approach this evil could also be overcome.
EDITORIAL STATEMENT: That is an excerpt, with out footnotes, from an unpublished translation of On the Evanescence of Life, translated by Zbigniew Kruczalak. The translator is presently in search of a writer.
