Mercy, mercy, mercy

In a priest's daily prayers, the Breviary, there's a psalm that never fails to warm my heart. It is a beautiful hymn on divine mercy, meant for us to learn also, since our Lord said: "Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful." It goes:

"Give thanks to the Lord for he is good / for his mercy endures forever. / Let the sons of Israel say: / 'His mercy endures for ever.' / Let the sons of Aaron say: / 'His mercy endures for ever.' / Let those who fear the Lord say: / 'His mercy endures for ever…" (Ps 118)

Of course, there's in the psalms a certain element that makes us flow in a prayerful stream of thoughts. Its lilt makes us recollected in peace, making us feel at home with the one who is precisely our original father-God. I hope many of us can rediscover the beauty of the psalms.

Divine mercy is the culmination of God's love for us. It shows us who we truly are to God. We are not just any creature. We are no just even the best creature in the material world, able to know and choose.

We are God's children, created in his image and likeness, endowed not only with the best the natural world can give. We have been gratuitously raised to share in the very nature and life of God! This happens through grace.

It is this innate, original dignity we all have that, in a way, does not allow God to ever forget us, no matter how bad we have been. We can even say that the more mean we are, the more God shows his love for us.

Remember what our Lord said to Simon who thought ill of the woman who washed our Lord's feet with ointment: "Many sins are forgiven her, because she has loved much. But to whom less is forgiven, he loves less." (Lk 7,46)

Many practical considerations can spring from this fundamental realization of who we are. One is that we have to learn to be truly patient, eagerly forgiving and open to all. We deserve nothing less than this as we deal with one another.

No matter how different one may be from us, especially in terms of culture, mentality, attitudes, and even of morality and spirituality, we need to be patient, quick to give excuses and to forgive, hardly taking any offense.

That's why we have to be very open and strong, staying away from being overly sensitive and rigid in our own ways and styles. Flexibility is always a mark of a strong man. Far from weakening our personality, this attitude enhances it as it makes us more like Christ.

Thus, we have to learn the soft and gentle skills of being affable and likeable to all. Good manners, refined ways, warm dispositions, details of urbanity are always worth cultivating. Same with highlighting the positive and the unifying.

This, of course, does not do away with the requirements of justice and truth. Mercy demands justice and truth, but somehow it goes beyond them, purifying them and setting them in their proper place and context.

Mercy does not allow justice to lapse to revenge, anger, irritation. It does not allow truth to be cold, unfeeling, heartless. It provides the proper solution for justice and truth to serve the ultimate good of man.

Where justice tends to give a defined, focused picture of a situation, mercy gives the large picture and perspective. Where truth tends to be precise and exacting, mercy protects it from being discriminatory and self-righteous.

Mercy reminds us all that we are always brothers and sisters to one another, whatever may be our condition, differences and conflicts. It reminds us to love one another the way our Lord loves us. Even the enemy is object of such love.

Mercy, in the end, elevates justice and truth to the level of God, taking it away from being mere play things and instruments of clever men. We have to learn the ways of mercy! That's the need today.

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