Divine Mercy and the Sacred Heart
A Scholastic Treatment
Mercy has its genesis in love. By love, we become drawn to the good of another. Mercy flows from love when evil afflicts another person. From love, when we view that another is afflicted by evil, mercy arises to dispel that evil from another and restore that good which love draws us towards.
Among men, there are two principal acts of mercy. First, upon viewing the misery of another person, we commiserate. We are afflicted by passions of sorrow for that other person insofar as they are afflicted by evil. Hence, Jesus wept for the coming destruction of Jerusalem, so certain by His prophetic gaze that He wept for it as if it were already present. This is the mercy that is affective as touching the affections.
Second, we will to remove that evil from the other person. Hence, when we see another in great desolation and poverty, mercy leads us not only to weep for the evil that afflicts him, but also to will to remove that person from those evils. The spiritual and corporeal works of mercy are acts of mercy insofar as they are meant to remove certain spiritual or corporeal evils from men.
It is precisely this distinction that will become so important for understanding the Sacred Heart and how such devotion fulfills St. Paul’s understanding of the Incarnation as an act of supreme mercy.
When we raise our minds to contemplate the Deity, the notion of mercy has often been hidden from the gaze of men. To those groping around in the darkness of Paganism and with only the tools of reason, it is quite easy to understand how this was to come about. Two errors arose in this matter. First, there were those who, considering the great evils that beset creation, could not understand how God was merciful, seeming quite content with the evils that afflict us. Second, there were those who, due to their more sublime notion of God, understood the impassible tranquility of God. Hence, it quite reasonably followed that mercy could not be present within the Deity. For, if mercy involved the commiseration of one with another, then how could God, who is devoid of passions, be merciful unto creatures?
It is only by the illuminating light of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ that mercy was enthroned as one of the chief attributes of God, so that every Catholic has on his lips the refrain miserere mei, Deus.
In the sense of effective mercy, we can easily see how this applies to God. The will to remove evil from another and pour goodness upon him is constantly and liberally experienced throughout all creation. It is the merciful God who equally pours out rain on the evil and the just. Those in sorrow are comforted by His mercy. It is His mercy that sustains and raises up those in deep affliction. The Psalmist expresses this mercy in varied and rich expressions, as if to make an entire book extolling the mercy of God. Why does the Psalmist speak so much of his sorrow? So he can speak so much of God’s mercy.
In fact, many theologians are so bold as to posit that mercy, in this sense, is one of those “simply simple” perfections of God that are attributed to Him in the full and proper sense, rather than metaphorically. This seems to be the opinion of St. Thomas, who states that: Unde et misereri ponitur proprium Deo, et in hoc maxime dicitur eius omnipotentia manifestari (ST II-II, Q. 30, A. 4). This is supported by the divine Cajetan in his commentary on this passage, who especially notes the appeal to the manifestation of God’s omnipotence by His mercy. For, lack is opposed to perfection. Hence, the greater the lack, the greater the opposition to perfection. Therefore, God is most merciful as most omnipotent insofar as He is the sole ultimate reason for the very being of things and all their modes. Not only redemption, but even creation is a supreme act of the mercy of God, dispelling the poverty of non-being. It is for this reason that the Psalmist sings that His tender mercy is over all His works. Yet, we must note with St. Thomas in ST I-II, Q. 113, A. 9 that the justification of a single sinner is an even greater work than the creation of the entire universe of creatures: Greater than these shall he do (John 14:12).
It is in the second act of mercy that things begin to get complicated. While it is perfectly sensible to attribute to God effective mercy (removing evil by pouring out goodness) the same cannot be said of affective mercy. It is a crude error of the Pagans to attribute human passions to God, imagining as if God were in possession of sense appetites. Hence, it is quite clear that God cannot commiserate in Himself. For, God in His sublime tranquility remains ever blessed in Himself. It would be the starkest blasphemy to assume that the changing motions of human hearts were present in the Deity.
Yet, this seems so abnormal, so cold to the hearts of men. How are we to love one who cannot commiserate with us? In this, we should make a distinction. There are two ways of lacking some created perfection. On the one hand, we can imagine that someone lacks this created perfection because he is imperfect. Hence, we condemn the cold-hearted man who is not touched by the suffering of another. This is a privation for him since it is of his nature to be merciful. Yet, on the other hand, we can imagine that someone “lacks” this created perfection because he is more perfect. Hence, rather than being devoid of the goodness of such a created perfection, he possesses it in an eminent degree. He simply lacks the imperfections and limitations of possessing that created perfection as such. To give a remote analogy, it is true to say that the peasant and the king both “lack” legislative power, yet for obviously different reasons. The peasant lacks because he has no power. The king lacks because his power is of a completely higher order than a mere legislator. Thus, when we say that God “lacks” affective mercy, we do not mean this in a complete sense, but only insofar as affective mercy implies limitation and imperfection. Indeed, theologians are happy to attribute even affective mercy to God, yet with the qualifier that this is not properly and formally, but virtually. Hence, God possesses such an abundance of perfection that He possesses everything that is true and good about affective mercy without any of the creaturely limitations. Not only that, but He is the source of all affective mercy, pouring out this good upon all.
It is precisely here that we see the relevance of the Sacred Heart for our meditation. God not only possesses those formal perfections (truth, goodness, being, etc.), but also those virtual perfections that He communicates to creatures. The former are communicated in their full and proper nature in the eternal generation of the Word. Yet, the latter remain as if “stunted” in nature. We look around us at these virtual perfections as they naturally exist and see only defective and partial views of them. It is as if we looked around us and only saw heat without fire. We see shadows and images of these perfections without the pure and natural exemplar. Even God only possesses these virtually and eminently, presenting the perfections of these attributes without their proper natures.
It is in light of this that the Incarnation relieves this tension. While we said that God cannot cannot commiserate in Himself, i.e., in His Deity, God can commiserate outside of His Deity, i.e., in the human nature united to Himself. Those manifold perfections of the God-Man are not only virtually present in His humanity, but even formally present in His humanity as they properly and naturally exist. This is especially evident in the Sacred Heart, whose feast we celebrate today.
Before the Incarnation, the purity of affective mercy was lost upon us. What we saw among men was its nature, but imperfectly expressed. What we saw with God was the perfections, yet without its nature. In the God-Man, we see a pure and perfect commiseration — a mercy most sublime. For the first time, creatures are able to gaze upon affective mercy that is both concrete and natural, yet avoids the imperfections of creatures.
Truly, we are able to say with Gonet that only in the Sacred Heart of Jesus is God perfectly merciful. For, as St. Paul says, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, that He might become merciful. The Sacred Heart of Jesus, union of divine and human love, is where the perfectly effective mercy and the perfectly affective mercy find their union.