June is the month of the Heart of Jesus, and therefore the Year of Mercy "reaches its climax" here. In the spiritual retreat that Pope Francis gave on the occasion of the priestly jubilee (2-VI-2016), the eve of the feast of the Heart of Jesus, he explained what the mercy of God is and how it changes us into merciful people.

Mercy appears above all as an attribute of God (the name of God is mercy), of his "maternal womb" and of his paternal strength and fidelity. It is also the fruit of the covenant with his chosen people. And this comes to us in the forgiveness of our sins through the sacrament of Confession or Penance.

Mercy is poured out, Francis explains, in two ways: the mercy of God towards us and our mercy towards others, which always leads us to receive anew, with a splendid "boomerang" effect, the mercy of God. Two aspects, and at the same time, a single unitive force, the greatest unitive force that runs through the spiritual life.

The Pope makes three initial suggestions for prayer on mercy: to savor with pleasure what God grants us, to thank him for his gifts; to avoid an excessive intellectualization of mercy (which is meant for action, for service and for helping others); to ask for the grace to grow in mercy, that is, to be more capable of receiving and giving mercy. And in this line and as a consequence, the Pope also asks for "institutional conversion, pastoral conversion".

Let us now follow the development of each of the three meditations.

1. From distance to celebration. We should examine ourselves to see where our wounds are, where our distance from God and our thirst for truth, goodness and beauty lie. This will awaken in us, as in the prodigal son, a longing for our Father's house. Thus we will pass "from distance to celebration", from shame for our sins to the dignity of recovering the condition of children of God. And all thanks to the heart of the Father and the heart of Christ that beats in unison with that of his Father.

This experience of "shameful dignity," as a perception of both the heart and the intellect, is good for the priest (and also, I might add, for every Christian); As St. Josemaría said, referring to the common priesthood of the baptized, every baptized person has a "priestly soul," participates in the priesthood of Christ and mediates between God and men in ordinary life, taking care to heal wounds, to be a "good Samaritan," in family relationships, at meeting with people in their work, in their social and cultural life, in all the horizons of their existence).

The Pope invites us to contemplate our sins and so many evils and sufferings in the world: "So many things our mind understands just seeing someone lying on the street, barefoot, on a cold morning, or seeing the Lord nailed to the cross for me!

This should lead us to get involved, to "get our hands dirty", to risk our own comfort and security to help others, to bring them mercy.

It is not," Francis observes, "that mercy does not consider the objectivity of the harm caused by evil. But it takes away its power over the future - and that is the power of mercy - it takes away its power over the life that goes forward. Thus mercy (like the forgiveness to which it is linked) takes power away from death, which is the bitter fruit of sin. Mercy (first God's, then ours) is not naive; for it sees the evil, but forgives completely with the desire that the other may quickly set out on the way, also to give life to others, perhaps more distant, fragile and wounded.   

And a final touch: mercy knows no excesses: "The only excess in the face of God's excessive mercy is to exceed in receiving it and in the desire to communicate it to others".

2. The receptacle of mercy. The mercy of God, says Francis, is poured out precisely on our sin, again and again. God does not tire of forgiving, it is we who tire of asking for forgiveness. Not only that, but God is repairing the wineskin, making it new each time, to pour out the new wine of his mercy so that through us it reaches others. And it is necessary to keep alive the experience of having been the object of mercy, to look at oneself, to tell one's own story, how God has been recreating our hearts.

The wounds of the Lord are a living image of all this, especially that of his "wounded heart. The imprint of sin restored by God is neither erased nor infected, but is, especially in the risen Jesus, a scar. And scars have a special sensitivity: they remind us of the wound without much pain as they heal it.

Arriving here, at the very center of the retreat, Francis' meditation reaches its peak. Thus he describes how the mercy of God makes its "receptacle" in us:    

"Contemplating the wounded heart of the Lord, we reflect ourselves in Him. They are similar, our heart and his, because both are wounded and resurrected. But we know that his was pure love and was wounded because he accepted to be wounded; our heart, on the other hand, was pure wound, which was healed because it accepted to be loved".

In this way each saint receives the mercy of God "in" his sin: Paul in his "thorn" (cf. 2 Cor. 12:7); Peter, in his refusal to follow him (cf. Jn 21:22); Augustine in his nostalgia for having arrived "late" to love; Francis of Assisi in his silent custody of the Order he founded; Ignatius of Loyola in his vanity that is transformed into the search for the glory of God; Bernanos' "country priest" in his acceptance of himself; the "Brochero priest" in his acceptance of his illness with right intention; Cardinal Van Thuan rediscovering in prison the priority of God; and above all, Mary as the recipient and source at the same time of Mercy.

3. The good odor of Christ and the light of his mercy. In the works of mercy we can today feel that good odor and perceive that light.

We priests are instruments of God's merciful love for the sinner, especially in the sacrament of Confession. That is why it should hurt us "if one is lost, or falls behind, or makes a mistake out of presumption; if he is out of place, let us say; if he is not prepared for the Lord, available for the task that He wants to entrust to him".

We must be signs and instruments of his Mercy, with coherence, clarity and understanding, avoiding "self-referentiality" and being available, without ever being "bureaucrats of the sacred". In this way we will not lose the "smell of the sheep" nor will they lose the "smell of the shepherd", so that we will be saved through the flock entrusted to us as a grace.

The Pope encourages all Christians when he reminds us that "to exercise the works of mercy the Spirit chooses rather the poorest instruments, the most humble and insignificant, who themselves are most in need of the first ray of divine mercy". And he adds that, in addition to the concrete works of mercy, we must aspire to a "culture of mercy".

This is, in fact, the feast of mercy that God wants to make, with the help of our freedom and going out to meeting of our misery with his Heart, in our life and in the life of the world.