Surprisingly—or maybe not, when you think about it—we’ve heard or read very little about justice lately, not since the beginning of our Jubilee Year of Mercy. On the face of it, that shouldn’t be any surprise. After all, this isn’t the Jubilee Year of Justice.  But the absence of the word has already become noticeable. That may be because justice is perceived as antithetical to mercy.

That’s not only incorrect, but also a little unfortunate. It would be a shame to go through an entire year dedicated to mercy while understanding its meaning only partially; for however inspirational that “partial” meaning may be, without pairing it with the meaning of justice, we risk its rendering as a mere transient sentiment, bound to pass more quickly than the year itself.

When we’ve been profoundly wronged, or when an innocent creature is unjustly hurt, we crave justice. We want, we even demand, justice, which has to be inferred as punishment for the wrongdoer. We want it to be fair and equitable (“just”), of course, but we demand the condemnation of the evil deed and the evildoer.

When we are the wrongdoers, we plea for mercy. What we mean by that is forgiveness. We can’t ask forgiveness, however, if we don’t perceive our wrongdoing, a perception utterly dependent on conscience—dependent, in fact, on our sense of justice. Without that perception, there can be no mercy.

It’s the simple things that are always the most difficult to grasp. There’s a problem with an attempt to focus entirely on mercy to the exclusion of justice. Without justice, mercy has no meaning. We can go further: Without justice, there is no mercy. Justice can exist with or without mercy, but mercy cannot exist without justice, its origin and source.

It’s no good just referring to Portia and intoning Shakespearean lines about the un[re]strained quality of mercy. Yes, it’s a fathomless ocean as St. Faustina tells us, but that observation is unintelligible without a sense of justice. How do we comprehend “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” unless we dare to look upon him whom we have pierced?

When Christ pronounced, “Let the one among you who is without sin cast the first stone,” he did not deny justice; on the contrary, the law is his very means of granting forgiveness. Without justice, the woman caught in adultery would have gone away unforgiven. St. Paul rattled this around in his mind until at last he understood the contingency of mercy on the absoluteness of the law.

As we contemplate mercy this jubilee year, unless we first acknowledge the primacy of justice, it will be meaningless, at best.