The joy of mercy: reflections on Amoris Laetitia

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1878)

Beginning one of the greatest works of Western literature, the nineteenth-century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy asserted an abiding principle of family life. For Tolstoy, familial bliss occurs in the same way always and everywhere whilst domestic discord manifests in a myriad of specific ways.

Although the quotation probably represented a comment on the relative tedium of happy families in contrast to the distinctive difficulties that haunt unhappy families but enthrall their audiences, it does raise an intriguing question beyond the gripping fortunes and misfortunes of the Oblonskys, Karenins and Levins: what, if any, are the common factors affecting family life that can be said to assure peace and joy, and how does this relate to a Catholic understanding of marriage and family life as the individual pursuit of the general calling from God to become a saint?

Marriage and family life have been central themes of the life of the Church during this year dedicated to reflection on the 2016 Apostolic Exhortation from Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love). Following in the footsteps of the Synods on the Family held in 2014 and 2015, Amoris Laetitia expounds on the successes and struggles of family life, from the real witness of the Holy Family to the “evil” of divorce, in an exhortation brimming with knowledge and wisdom.

Towards the close of the introduction, Pope Francis stresses that “families are not a problem; they are first and foremost an opportunity”. For the Pope, this is ultimately an opportunity to love as widely and deeply as possible in imitation of Christ’s own merciful love for us. 

In response, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW) have released a series of reflections on themes from across Amoris Laetitia to invite individuals, families and parishes to reflect, discuss and pray on their experiences of the ups and downs of marriage and family life. These reflections engage with five major themes that reveal the mysterious mixture of joy and sorrow in family life: joy, love, mercy, realities and discernment, and mission. As the document suggests, “relationships and family life are rarely simple and can be troubled, as well as full of laughter and affection…yet this family way of life is also and always a call to a love which is deeply joyful”. 

Remembering Tolstoy and the Anna Karenina principle, what amounts to such deeply joyful love? Are there certain principles or practices that maximise the opportunity to have a happy family life? Are families truly either happy or unhappy, or is family life an inevitable combination of both? 

Of the many principles and practices of family life set out in Amoris Laetitia, one stands out in particular: the preferential option for mercy. Released in the Jubilee Year of Mercy (2016), Amoris Laetitia is concerned with the central significance of mercy to marriage and family life from the outset. Pope Francis remarks both that marital and family love is strengthened by the merciful virtues of generosity, commitment, fidelity, and patience, while, at the same time, we are all invited to be “a sign of mercy and closeness” whenever family life encounters difficulties and hardships. Mercy, then, is the hallmark of a family in times of happiness, and the elixir for times of trouble: it is the sine qua non of Christian family life. 

Pope Francis presents mercy as the currency of divine love, freely given and freely received by humanity, which we render in turn to those around us, most especially our families. For Pope Francis, “mercy is not only the working of the Father, it becomes a criterion for knowing who his true children are…we are called to show mercy because mercy was first shown to us”.

Mercy, then, is the foundation of the Christian life; a life lived as a free response to the merciful love of God that creates, forgives, and hopefully saves us. In emphasising the primacy of mercy to both divine love and family love, Pope Francis is very much in line with his predecessor St John Paul II, whose encyclical Dives in Misericordia (Rich in Mercy) underlined that, rather than being in conflict, mercy is ultimately the fullness of justice and the most truthful and loving sharing of God’s endlessly patient and forgiving love for us. 

Mercy, justice, and truth can seem like grand concepts abstracted away from the daily reality of family life in all its triumphs and trials. However, Amoris Laetitia is deeply practical in suggesting how mercy can actually be made manifest in our marriages and familial relations. For Pope Francis, the practice of mercy within marriages and families relies both on our perception and our patience with the unavoidable shortcomings of others who are no less sinful than ourselves.

As the CBCEW reflection on mercy highlights, Pope Francis has consistently depicted mercy as a “gaze”, firstly towards God and His unstoppable merciful love for humanity, and secondly towards the beauty and the brokenness of those around us, from our parents and grandparents to our siblings and children.

Such a gaze of loving tenderness can more effectively orientate our behaviour towards others in our family and inform our decisions on how to treat them. Rather than holding our family members to higher standards of holiness than ourselves, Pope Francis invites us to accompany them, in the fullness of truth, along the route to Christian perfection by encouraging them, patiently and gradually, to live a life that more fully accepts God’s free gift of divine love and invitation to share it with others.

Practically, Pope Francis represents this via caritatis (way of charity) as the continual restoration of inherently frail and fraught relationships taking, as an example, Christ’s forgiveness of the woman caught in adultery, his rebuke of the sins of her persecutors, and his instruction to her to go and sin no more. Mercy, then, does not involve the ignoring of injustice but rather a full and honest account of the wrongs that both we and others invariably commit and endure and an ultimate encouragement in the renewed pursuit of holiness. 

When we take the time to reflect on our experiences of family life, whether as a parent, sibling, child, or otherwise, it may well be helpful to reflect on our experiences of the mercy of God through the loving tenderness of those who can know us so intimately in these settings. For many of us, that experience of patience, understanding, and forgiveness from those who, in a sense, would have the most reason not to love us in those ways, can be a source of deep joy and hope in the possibility of deeper love and unity.

While the Anna Karenina principle arguably misses the nuance of the simultaneous happiness and unhappiness of family life, Pope Francis and Amoris Laetitia do bear convincing witness to perhaps an Amoris Misericordia principle of the absolute indispensability of mercy to happy and healthy marriages and families. 

Naoise Grenham is a policy and research assistant to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.