What God wants

I ran across the prayer printed below authored by the late Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917-1980) of San Salvador who was a prophetic voice for the poor and was ultimately martyred at the altar by opposition soldiers of the country while celebrating Mass   It strikes me as a perfect prayer for this Jubilee Year of Mercy:

What God wants

Your sovereignty over all makes you pardon all.

You govern us all with great indulgence

because you can do all that you want to do. 

It would seem to be the other way around. 

Just because you can do all that you want to do, 

you could trample us,

you could walk over us,

you could torture us,

you could treat us cruelly. 

But no. Just because you can do what you want to do,

you love us - 

because you have the resources to be merciful

and to hope that people will return

to the right way. 

How different from the justice of human beings!

When humans acquire power, how they trample others!

But only God can do whatever he wants, 

and this God governs us with kindness. 

In a weak person, power becomes cruelty;

a sense of inferiority

is carried to the level of brutishness. 

God has no sense of inferiority.

God is sovereign.

God can do all, 

and so he judges even his felons,

even his sinners,

with kindness and mercy. 

But this just and merciful God also sanctions,

because his mercy is not weakness. 

(Archbishop Oscar Romero, The Voice of Love)