Article by Karoline Ihlenfeldt, published on the Blog of Alphonsian Academy
This post continues the series on the keywords of the Jubilee 2025, conceived in a dialogue form: a first contribution by a lecturer of the Alfonsianum is followed by a second contribution written by a student. Fourth keyword: Mercy – Post 2/2.
Fidalgo’s examinations, which trace the extremely close connection between divine grace, the Christ event, and mercy can also include the concept of responsibility. God’s grace comes to the whole world; even its fallen and sin-dominated state does not prevent God from feeling responsible for it, i.e. he does not leave his creation to itself, to chance or even to the powers of darkness. He continues to see it as his task to open up a path to salvation for his creation and his people. Of course, for God, such a sense of responsibility is not based on a sense of duty towards any authority, as he himself is the highest authority there is. Rather, his sense of responsibility stems from his love for his creation. Love as a feeling of connection, responsibility as an acknowledgement that caring for others is one of my duties, and mercy as loving devotion and self-donation – all these concepts are closely linked and overlap greatly in terms of content. I think that if we want to reinforce mercy as an active outreach to the poor of this world and an indictment of the injustices of which they have become victims, we must also feel responsible for the poor of this world, i.e. we must understand it as a task to be taken seriously and as one that directly concerns us. Thus we should not feel responsible simply because someone told us to, but rather out of love in God’s image. But what does such a sense of responsibility entail?
I think that if you feel responsible for something or someone, this is mostly accompanied by the need to be well informed about the matter or person in question. You want to know about strengths, weaknesses, challenges, achievements, risks, etc. so that you can intervene and avoid damage if necessary. In this sense, I believe that it must be part of mercy and of responsibility to create as detailed a “map of reality” as possible. If we feel responsible for denouncing injustice and standing up for the poor of this world, then we must take a thorough look at what these injustices consist of and who these poor people are. We must not make the mistake of assuming that the poor of the Bible are the same as the poor of our time. By this I mean that today, for example, we are more sensitive to the situation of various marginalized groups that are hardly highlighted in the biblical writings. Furthermore, the way in which many people are in need may also have changed; beyond the acute giving of alms, for example, more complex help may be needed to improve people’s lives in the long term.
I would like to point out that it cannot be taken for granted that people are able to accept help in the first place. So the fact that people seek and accept support, that their life situation improves, that they are grateful: none of this is automatic. Nevertheless, the knowledge of this difficulty should not stop us from engaging with our world, informing ourselves and, where possible, standing up for the weak. If practical support is not possible or is not accepted, we always have the option of entrusting the people in question to God in prayer and remembering the source of all love, responsibility and mercy, which does not lie in us or our abilities, but in the one God who loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten Son.
