The Lord is kind and merciful.
August 1, 2023 - Tuesday,
Memorial of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Psalm 103:6-13
Psalm 103 speaks about the love of God manifested in the forgiveness of sins, healing, prosperity and renewal. We hear that God’s steadfast love is “as high as the heavens are above the earth” and he removes our iniquities “as far as the east is from the west” (Ps 103:11-12).
At the heart of the Old Testament is a confession of faith in God, who is merciful and just. We read in Exodus 34:6-7: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
It is interesting to note that the biblical figures beginning from Moses often ignore God’s punitive attributes mentioned in the second part of verse 7 in Exodus 34, and only quote His magnanimous attributes. Moses did it while pleading for God’s mercy after the incident with the golden calf and so does the psalmist in Psalm 103:8: “Merciful and gracious is the LORD, slow to anger and abounding in kindness”.
According the the biblical scholars, Psalm 103 belongs to part of the Psalter that responds to the crisis of the Babylonia exile in the year 586 BC. The destruction of Jerusalem and the exile were the consequence of their sins. But by quoting Exodus 34:6 in verse 8, the psalmist aims to instil hope in people’s hearts. God “will not always chide, nor does he keep his wrath forever” (Ps 103:9). The exile would not last forever. As God’s steadfast love and compassion triumphed over judgment in the life of the generation of Moses, so it would triumph in the life of those who experienced the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile. They would return and rebuild the city and the temple.
Kindness and compassion describe God's character. Both terms describe love that never fails. According to Saint John Paul II “this love is faithful and invincible”. In spite of our infidelity, this love “saves from dangers, forgives sins and, promises to fulfil God’s plan of salvation“. The psalmist tells us that the Lord is kind and merciful. And Saint John Paul II answers why: “It is precisely because sin exists in the world . . . that God, who "is love cannot reveal Himself otherwise than as mercy”.