(Please read the Scripture passage before reading the homily.)
The author is writing to Christians. He first praises God for his wonderful mercy and then drives home to them the fact that being Christians comes from the fact that God has had mercy on them. We Christians tend to forget this and we need to remember this.
It is easy to judge others if we believe that our good fortune comes from our own hard work and our own goodness. It is easier to respect others if we believe that our good fortune comes from the benevolence of God and not from ourselves.
If we are rich because we have received an inheritance from our parents or a rich aunt, we should not boast of the wealth because it comes from a source different from ourselves.
We praise and bless the God who has made possible what we are today. This praising and blessing of God is a very Jewish thing, something we have inherited from our Jewish heritage, something that comes from outside ourselves. Praising and blessing God is a gift just as much as believing in God is a gift from God.
At the very beginning of his letter to us, the author makes the point that we are what we are and do what we do because of the gifts we have received from God. We are not our own; we belong to one who has made us and given to us.
This is the power of the merciful God, that we can love the One whom we have not seen, Christ Jesus. We may add that it is because we love Christ whom we do not see, that we can also love others whom we do not see. In this time of pandemic and of war, we must love them, whether they be
sick, unvaccinated, Russian or Ukrainian, Black, white supremacist, or political opponent. It is because of God’s mercy that we know Christ and it is because of God’s mercy that we are called to love everyone else.