Where Humiliation Abounds, Mercy Abounds Even More: July 27, 2025

Humiliation and Mercy. God in His mercy is with us in all places and at all times. He abides with us in the question. At this holy altar he turns a place of starvation to a place of feasting.

Table of Contents

Where Humiliation Abounds, Mercy Abounds Even More

“On the day I called, you answered me; you increased the strength of my soul.”
(Psalm 138:3)

“The humiliation of humanity.” These are the words I recall our brother Łukasz Wiśniewski using to describe the 20th century, when he preached for the Mass of the Holy Spirit, beginning our general chapter. He was describing such places of 20th-century humiliation as the concentration and extermination camps of Auschwitz, which we friars will visit this afternoon. On my flight from the United States to Europe, I pondered another 20th-century humiliation of humanity in the film Oppenheimer, about the invention and use of the atomic bomb. It is easy to distance ourselves morally from what happened at Auschwitz, especially with the passage of time and the firm judgment of history, but there remains an ominous allure to what happened in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the human mind and human ingenuity in the realms of empirical science and the development of technology were tested to limits that, despite the passage of time and the vantage of history, yet arouse wonder in us at our capacity for nearly-incredible invention, even as we shudder at the discovery that we have indeed “…become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. Of all the earthly creatures of this world that we know, only the human animal can humiliate himself so!

Going back to the remark that it is easy to distance ourselves from what happened at Auschwitz, I would add that it is too easy. God only knows what we would have done had we been there. How many heroes are there among us? With that thought, I pause here in this holy place simply to beg God for His mercy! For the sake of your sorrowful passion, Lord Jesus, bless us with heroic virtue in the face of evil. It is tempting to pretend that the evil people insidiously committing their evil deeds are not us. They are the others. But I recall the words of the Russian dissident of the Soviet era, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote in his work, The Gulag Archipelago, that he had gradually learned in life that “…the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”

Our eminent brother, Timothy Radcliffe, reminded us in his remarks last Thursday evening that God invites us into questioning with Him. In his negotiation with God, seeking justice for the innocent people of Sodom, few though they may be, Abraham engages in profound questioning with the Lord. It is not a matter of Abraham persuading God to do justice where He might otherwise fail to do it. Rather, it is a matter of this questioning revealing in Abraham, and to him, the image and likeness of God within the depths of his soul. It may seem that it is Abraham leading God, which makes the story more intriguing, because the apparent confusion of roles—who is leading whom?—suggests an intimacy in the relationship between the divine and the human that astonishes us. But in the questioning, it is God leading Abraham to see more clearly the line between good and evil in his own heart, and clearly enough, moved by the Lord, to choose freely the side of justice. Again as Timothy reminded us, as the story from Genesis confirms, and in imitation of our teacher, St. Thomas Aquinas, we live best by living in the question and refusing all the wrong answers.

Living in the question is difficult. As we gather in the Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy, in anticipation of our visit to Auschwitz, we cannot help but experience immediately the difficulty of abiding in places where no easy answers are possible. The 21st century, most of which still lies ahead, will provide many such places. We fear that the power of our technologies may take us to the place of final humiliation. We are afraid that a mass of snakes and scorpions the likes of which humanity has never encountered will finally overtake us.

But the Lord Jesus promises bread. He tells us to pray to our Father as we live in the question. The “friend” in the Gospel today may give his visitor loaves because of the visitor’s persistence, but we may be confident that God will feed us out of friendship. To ask, to seek, to knock—this is to live in the question. Jesus promises in His friendship with us that we will receive, that we will find, and that the door will be opened. He completes this pledge and brings it to fulfillment on the cross, the place where Jesus enters with us into the humiliation of humanity, obedient to the Father even unto the final humiliation: death, death on a cross. In the letter to the Colossians, St. Paul reminds us that in baptism we are buried with Jesus in his humiliation on the cross, but that we are also raised with Him. Even in death, we are brought to life. The bond against us was nailed to the cross, and the humiliation of humanity is itself humiliated!

God in His mercy is with us in all places and at all times. He abides with us in the question. At this holy altar he turns a place of starvation to a place of feasting. Communing with Him in the question, and by the grace of His mercy, brothers, let us go forth to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, confident that the Lord turns every humiliation to exaltation, and proclaiming: “Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.”

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update. You can subscribe to our podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.