Because of the tender mercy of our God

2 Sam 7,1-5.8b-12.14a.16; Ps 88,2-5.27.29; Lk 1,67-79.
24 DECEMBER

The history of salvation is the fruit of the tenderness and mercy of God. Tenderness and mercy begin with the Lord’s dialogue with the serpent. They continue with Abraham and with all the prophets. It is always the Lord who promises, prophesies and swears. Everything is established by him with an eternal decree. The tenderness and mercy of God find their climax on the wood of the cross. The sending of the Apostles to the world for the evangelizing mission is also the fruit of the love of our God. The whole of Scripture is the attestation of this divine charity. But it is always man in Christ, with Christ and for Christ, the instrument of God’s tenderness and mercy. If man withdraws his surrender to God, He cannot manifest himself in all the strength, truth, light and justice of his divine charity. God asks that man gives himself entirely to him so that he gives all of himself to man. God gives himself to the extent that man gives himself to him.

Then the Lord God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you shall be banned from all the animals and from all the wild creatures; On your belly shall you crawl, and dirt shall you eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel” (Gen 3,14-15). Again the Lord’s messenger called to Abraham from heaven and said: “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you acted as you did in not withholding from me your beloved son, I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies, and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing – all this because you obeyed my command” (Gen 22,15-18). For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God (Jn 3,16-21).

This is the tenderness and mercy of our God: the will of universal salvation and the incarnation of his Eternal Word with end of working human redemption. Mercy is not only the will of good, but it is the will and the implementation of it. The will of good is of no use if one does not have the faculty or the means to implement it.

Then Zechariah his father, filled with the holy Spirit, prophesied, saying: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, for he has visited and brought redemption to his people. He has raised up a horn for our salvation within the house of David his servant, even as he promised through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old: salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to show mercy to our fathers and to be mindful of his holy covenant and of the oath he swore to Abraham our father, and to grant us that, rescued from the hand of enemies, without fear we might worship him in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God by which the daybreak from on high will visit us to shine on those who sit in darkness and death’s shadow, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

John the Baptist is an instrument of the tenderness and mercy of God because he is full of the Holy Spirit. Christ is also an instrument, mediator and fulfilment of the salvation of the Father because he is filled with the Holy Spirit. If the disciple of Jesus wants to be an instrument of the mercy of the Father, in Christ the Lord, through the work of the Holy Spirit, he must also be filled with the Holy Spirit, growing uninterruptedly in grace and wisdom. A Christian without the Spirit of the Lord in his heart might never become an instrument in the hands of the Father and never might salvation be fulfilled in one heart for him. If the world today is far from Christ it is because the Christian is very far from the Holy Spirit.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints, make us instruments of true salvation filled with the Holy Spirit.