A Sharing for Divine Mercy Sunday
"Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy..." As a Catholic, I sang that at every mass. But the truth was that for most of my life, my body felt rather frozen when I sang those words because I honestly did not know how to mean them.
Intellectually, I understood that we were all sinners who needed God's mercy. I knew that I was a sinner who needed God's mercy. But this knowledge - this understanding - was always held in my body with tension and fear. Because hovering like a spectre behind it was the knowledge that God could choose to withold his mercy, and if he did, I would be damned. All those years as a "good and faithful Catholic", I never had what psychologists now term a "securely attached" relationship with God. As a result, I knew of God's goodness; I knew I was supposed to trust in his goodness, but I could not trust in his goodness in my embodied self.
I knew of God's goodness; I knew I was supposed to trust in his goodness, but I could not trust in his goodness in my embodied self.
So every time, in any prayer that I had to ask for God's mercy on me and on my fellow sinners, I said the words, willed my thoughts to believe in the words, and numbed my heart until it was over. I could not even bear to dwell on the fact that I needed God's mercy because deep down I believed that I needed to earn the right to have God's mercy. And I was afraid that I would fail.
Growing up, I did my utter best to seek and follow Christ and to be faithful to him and his Church. But I did that with a very fragmented and wounded Self that had never experienced secure attachment. I was not securely attached within myself, and I did not have a secure attachment with my parents or any other significant person. It was only in my mid-thirties after decades of struggling that I learned I had "toxic shame", a "wounded inner child", and even later on recognise that I was a survivor of complex childhood/relational trauma, enmeshment, and spiritual trauma.
Noone, in all my years of faith formation, ever taught me that I needed to heal my emotional wounds to develop spiritually in a healthy and wholly human way.
Noone, in all my years of faith formation, ever taught me that I needed to heal my emotional wounds to develop spiritually in a healthy and wholly human way. Perhaps because I was so passionate and zealous as well as intellectually formed in my Catholic faith, I often rose to leadership roles in ministry. I sincerely loved Christ with all my heart and I strove to love the people around me. But my lack of emotional maturity and interior integration meant that there was always an invisible ticking time-bomb before yet another relational rupture that I was helpless to prevent or repair, and even worse - it meant that I often perpetuated the toxic and dysfunctional dynamics that had formed me onto others without knowing.
My lack of emotional maturity and interior integration meant that there was always an invisible ticking time-bomb before yet another relational rupture that I was helpless to prevent or repair.
It wasn't until I reached the point of my interior journey when God made clear to me that I had grave problems in the foundation of my humanity (my affective, relational core) that I began to truly experience my need for his mercy in a non-fearful way. Because if it was true that I am incapable of healthy relationships at this deepest level, then my inability to trust God would make sense! And it would not be my fault that I could not trust him - which meant that God's mercy was already upon me. It was here that I truly began to be able to acknowledge how helpless and powerless I was to do anything without God's grace because I now experienced it in my body.
For at least a year after this awakening, I found myself spontaneously saying, "Mercy, Lord!" all through the day, every day. I could not have enough of God's mercy because I could see just how handicapped I was from being able to receive and give love freely - from being able to become the disciple I yearned so much to be.
I could not have enough of God's mercy because I could see just how handicapped I was from being able to receive and give love freely - from being able to become the disciple I yearned so much to be.
As I grew in integration through interdisciplinary interior work - through counseling, trauma-informed psychotherapy, spiritual direction and contemplative prayer etc - God took me apart piece by piece and rebuilt me anew. I began to realise how deeply toxic shame had coloured my experience of faith and God's love for me my entire life. I realised why I had been so diligent about being observant and orthodox in the practice of my faith while never ever being able to face the fact of my sinfulness and need for God's mercy without becoming stiff and wanting to remain at a distance from him.
As I became more secure within my relationship with myself and my relationship with God, my weaknesses and even my sinfulness made me feel closer to Christ instead of feeling further away from him! In fact, the more I stumble and struggle, the more I now experience God's tenderness and solicitude for me. This has allowed me to relax into God's love and learn to respond to his first love for me instead of fearfully striving to be good in order to deserve his love.
As I became more secure within my relationship with myself and my relationship with God, my weaknesses and even my sinfulness made me feel closer to Christ instead of feeling further away!
I have found that when I have a secure attachment within myself and with God, I am less afraid of how messy and "wrong" things seem in my life at the present moment. I find that I no longer feel the compulsion to fix myself so that things "look right" externally or align with what I had been taught to believe was right. The whole process of theosis (divinisation) - of being transformed into Christ - must go into the very core of me. It is a process that cannot be hurried or controlled or judged prematurely. It will take my whole entire earthly life and most likely more!
The whole process of theosis (divinisation) - of being transformed into Christ - must go into the very core of me. It is a process that cannot be hurried or controlled or judged prematurely. It will take my whole entire earthly life and most likely more!
Now I am not as afraid as I used to be about making mistakes or of being criticised or judged by others, because shame no longer has that hold it used to have over me. Labels - not even one such as "Catholic" - no longer define me for I can finally open my heart to Christ's unending and infinite mercy. And it is God's mercy that will help me become who I am in, with and through the Risen Christ!
I pray that you too may heal so that Christ's ever-present mercy might be able to enter your innermost core, and so that you may see God without the distortion of trauma and shame!
Journeying with you,
Responses