I once attended a workshop on writing liturgical texts in which the presenter challenged us to take out all the church-y words and see if anything of substance remained.
“Mercy” is one of those words. A throwaway word, overused into gibberish. At least, it has been for me. So a few years ago, when I heard that Pope Francis had proclaimed an extraordinary jubilee year of mercy, I thought, “Mercy? Why mercy? What does that even mean?”*
It was that last question that turned out to be the most important. I had always viewed “mercy” as interchangeable with “forgiveness.” My mind, hearing the word, went straight to sin and unworthiness: I’m a pathetic, undeserving wretch whose sins have been forgiven despite my general loser-li-ness.
Don’t get me wrong. The idea of confronting our own brokenness is really important, especially in these days of “what’s right for you may not be right for me.” Built into our identity as modern men and women is a deeply-held resistance to admitting that we treat ourselves, our fellow human beings, and our world with careless disregard for our/their/its innate dignity.
Mercy speaks to the humility of admitting we are capable of crappy, un-Christlike words and actions… and the thought processes and attitudes that give birth to them. It speaks to the recognition that we deserve just consequences for our actions and instead we’re blessed—in fact, showered—no, deluged—with goodness. Goodness we usually fail to recognize, because we’re too busy asking for more, more, more.
But that isn’t all there is to the word “mercy.” What about those corporal and spiritual works? How do they fit into all this? What do they have to do with undeserved forgiveness?
When I first began wrestling with these questions, I read anything I could find on the topic. This quote stopped me in my tracks:
“Mercy is being willing to enter into the chaos of another.”
I thought, Yes! That’s it! I understand that!
Isn’t that, after all, what God did for us? Jesus, who made the universe, stooped down and entered into the chaos of what it means to be human. The temptation to demand all that you feel you have a right to demand. Bickering, clueless disciples, needy crowds, self-serving authority figures both in government and religious institutions. Fear so profound, it manifested as sweating blood. Pain beyond anything we in our modern, “civilized” world really can’t even grasp.
“Mercy is being willing to enter into the chaos of another.”
It’s far easier to pass judgment on the man or woman on the street corner begging for money. To say, “He/she doesn’t really need it, s/he’s trying to take advantage of people’s gullibility.”
But mercy says, “Okay, I will enter into his/her chaos by contemplating the decades of days and hours and influences I can’t possibly know, the countless steps that brought him/her to this particular intersection on this particular day, and pry my brain open to admit that I simply cannot know whether s/he is or is not truly in need, and as such I am compelled, by virtue of his/her dignity as a human being, to give him/her the benefit of the doubt…and help.”
It’s far easier to cling to the distance separating us from the chaos in the rest of the world, from Ukraine to the Middle East to central and South America, and places we don’t even hear about because our news is edited and/or our attention and empathy is limited. I’m hearing now that people from Russia and China are flying into countries with loose visa requirements and taking the same trek to the U. S. border as people from Central and South America.
Some among us want to lock our proverbial doors and keep people out. And while I totally understand that questions of immigration are complex, without easy solutions—while I recognize that any real solution is going to require compromise and sacrifice of ideals on both sides of our political divide, and that in these days of political polarization and demonization, that’s a hard sell….
While I get all that, here’s what I don’t get. In all those people who believe in God and in Jesus Christ, but who buy into rhetoric about the dangers of immigration, don’t their consciences ever whisper, “Whatsoever you did to the least of these…”?
Mercy responds to worldly prudence and political posturing with a call to dismantle the geographical wall we’ve been hiding behind for two centuries and enter into the chaos that the rest of the world already knows so well.
It turns out that, far from being meaningless, mercy is an enormous, life-altering word. Terrifying, too, because it shoves me out of my safe, familiar, comfortable world full of safe, familiar, comfortable platitudes. To live mercy is to enter into the chaos of families shattered by abuse and grapple with the reality that there is suffering on all sides. To live mercy is to enter into the existence of stomach-turning poverty that, if viewed head-on, would force me–even chintzy, never-spend-a-dime-if-you-can-make-do-with-a-penny me–to confront my own excesses and make changes I don’t want to make.
Mercy, I am beginning to realize, is a shortcut to a darned uncomfortable conscience.
But because of that, mercy can change the world. If we will only let it.
* Longtime readers might find this reflection familiar, as it was first written in 2016, during the Year of Mercy, and I returned to it after starting Intentional Catholic. This time, however, I have updated it. And in so doing, it occurs to me that “mercy” isn’t the only hackneyed word we as people of faith need to grapple with. I can think of another I might want to write a fresh reflection on…