You never know, how far God's Mercy will -- and can -- reach.

Ask Raphael Ferreira de Brito, a young Brazilian with curly hair and a vivacious demeanor.

Raphael was born as the result of a violent rape. His mother, Ruth, was the tender age of sixteen when a twenty-five-year-old man from Barretos assaulted her and then disappeared.

Barely surviving a very premature birth -- along with his mother, who, from other complications, was also expected to die -- he was baptized by a nun when it didn't look like he would be long for this world. His mother wanted to name him Marc Aurelius, but the nun insisted on "Raphael," so the child would enjoy angelic protection.

Growing up, Raphael dearly missed having a dad. On Father's Day, he'd watch forlornly as his classmates drew pictures for their dads, while he drew nothing.

Straying for a while into drugs, alcohol, and wanton sex, the young man was asked one day to accompany a friend to Mass -- his friend was receiving Holy Communion -- and to Raphael's shock (and anger), during the Mass a boy who was asked to say a few words from the pulpit mentioned fathers and requested everyone to say a prayer for them -- for this also happened to be another Father's Day.

Very painful.

Pray for fathers -- his father?

As far as Raphael was concerned, Father's Day was the most sinister day of the year.

Then that boy on the pulpit read from Jeremiah 1:5:

"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

The words deeply resonated. Raphael fell to his knees and burst into tears. For it was a passage that he had happened upon once before when he had opened a Bible and randomly and read the very same passage -- realizing, at the time, that God was his true Father.

While kneeling, he heard a loud voice in his heart:

"Raphael, you are my son! Get up, change your life, and follow Me!"

What?

The Voice was real.

He had to follow it.

So he did.

And he persevered -- despite a godfather who practiced black magic and beat him when the young man insisted on going to church.

At one point, bloody and upset -- December 31, 1999 -- he made it to Mass and, to his amazement, for a third time, there was the reading from Jeremiah.

"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." 

The following Gospel was about loving one's enemies -- and so, remarkably, when Raphael got home, he took that violent godfather into his arms and began to pray for him.

His godfather collapsed -- and experienced an instant conversion!

Perceiving a spiritual gift, Raphael spent a year with a religious community, trained now to minister to homeless. He was approaching his twenties and visiting with his mother in Barretos when one day he wandered to the town's central square and there saw five beggars. Raphael invited them for meals and accommodations but only one accepted -- the most pitiful of the group. 

Raphael washed, shaved, and dressed the indigent, then invited him for a meal, just the two of them. As Raphael demonstrated warmth, the man opened his own heart.

During that trusting conversation came the lightning bolt: the man described a rape he had once committed.

It was a woman named Ruth.

He was Raphael's father.

Raphael stared in a stupor and then burst into tears. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. His heart skipped a beat. In shock, he began to kiss his dad -- meanwhile, thanking His True Father, God, for this unimaginable gift.

A broken fatherless heart was now healed. So was the heart of his earthly dad.

As it happens, the man didn't have much time left on this earth. But before he died, Raphael was able to evangelize him also.

God is faithful to His servants -- remarkably.

He is faithful to us all.

It is a time of year when we meditate on His Mercy.

This all comes to us from an excellent new book, Scandalous Mercy, by the well-known author Sister Emmanuel, a book with a different such story in each chapter. "Will the wonders of God's mercy stop there?" she asks. And then says:

"To think that, would be to misunderstand our Creator!"

It would also be to misunderstand His endless abilities to pull off what we can't dare to hope or even imagine.

[resources: Scandalous Mercy]