On Mercy

Today I want to talk about mercy. Mercy is important, and it is important for us to understand what it is – it is a very rich concept. You may ask what it has to do with being a Benedictine or and oblate. If you look at the rule of Saint Benedict, I think the word mercy shows up just three times. But the whole role of community that is outlined by the Rule of Saint Benedict is suffused with Mercy and is designed to make the people who live in the monastery, according to the Rule, act with mercy. If we are honest with ourselves, we realize how much we all need it.

The meaning of "mercy." If you look in a dictionary, if that is helpful, obviously it is an English word, its definitions being “compassion or forbearance shown especially to an offender or one who is subject to ones power”; also “lenient or compassionate treatment,” “to be imprisoned rather than executed,” or “a blessing that is an act of divine favor or compassion.” So that is the English word. But, our understanding of God and his revelation to us goes back to the Old Testament and to the Hebrew language which is what it was revealed in. And Jews believe that God spoke Hebrew, which he had to speak to them or they would not have understood it! It is in the Lord’s meeting with Moses at the burning bush that he reveals his personal name. He has not revealed that name before, and it is a name just like you and I have a name, but the name of God: “I am who am.” The only one who is. He is being itself, which is both a noun and a verb. So, a God who identified himself as existence. Then he proceeds to explain what that name means (Ex 33:17): “I will proclaim my name, Lord, before you.” If you read the Bible and you see that word, Lord, capitalized, in Hebrew that is where God’s personal name is revealed, and you do not dare to say that name. So it is always expressed in English as “Lord” and in Hebrew as “Adonai.” So, we read: “I will proclaim my name, LORD, before you; I who show favor to whom I will, who grant mercy to whom I will.” So in God’s description of himself, the first thing he comes to is mercy, His most fundamental attribute. And again, the Lord passes before, as he comes down from the cloud to personally meet Moses, and proclaims, “I the Lord, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in love and fidelity.”
 
Hebrew words for mercy. There are three Hebrew words for mercy. Christians primarily use the Greek Old Testament word for mercy, “elios,” which is very important to us. The first word in Hebrew for mercy is “chesed.” It is a masculine word which means, particularly for God, faithful to his covenant. If we know salvation history, the history of the covenant, then we know God is being faithful to the covenant, even if human beings are not being faithful to it, maintaining His loving kindness through that. “Rahamim” Is a particularly powerful word, a feminine word, essentially meaning “gut compassion.” So, it is an intense feeling. It is a particularly powerful word, a feminine word, because the root of that word is the womb. So it is the compassion, the mercy, the love of a mother. It is interesting to note that in Islam – and Islam is a universal form of Judaism that recognizes the Old Testament, and recognizes the prophets, and Hebrew and Arabic are variants of the same language – the trinity of names for God are the merciful, al rahman mercy in essence and rahmin? mercy in action. So the fundamental name of God in Islam, as well as in Judaism, is mercy. The third word in Hebrew, chen, meaning the grace and favor of God, what God does to us and for us
 
The Thirteen Attributes of God. In the book of Exodus where God reveals himself and describes himself, there are 13 attributes of God, which are enumerated in the Talmud from those verses in which he describes and reveals himself. We do not really have anything like the Talmud in Catholicism - maybe the Summa Theologica. It is composed through many different contributors. But the 13 attributes of God (below is a shorter version of the attributes as listed in the slide to the right):

It’s interesting that in the Hebrew there is no one word for sin. The English translation of the bible uses that one word, sin but there are several different Hebrew words that mean different things. So, he forgives those wrongful deeds committed with premeditation, things we deliberately do, God forgives them. God forgives those things that we do when we are in a rebellious spirit. God forgives those things that we do that were in advertently committed. That’s interesting, because in the biblical mindset, the covenant had 613 different “thou shalts“ or “Thou shalt nots.” So, if you know how difficult it is to keep 10, you can imagine how difficult it was to keep 613. So you were bound to break the rules of the covenant without realizing it, And this is however no excuse. If you broke one of those 613 rules, you had send, and God for gave that too...
 
...One of those words, ovan, wrongfully committed with premeditation, in the Hebrew understanding, punishment was built into that. If you are a habitual liar, people aren’t going to believe you, and there’s your punishment. But, God forgives that anyway. So, those are 13 attributes of God that Judaism recognizes,in God’s mercy.

1. יְהוָה YHVH: compassion before a person sins;
2. יְהוָה YHVH: compassion after a person has sinned;
3. אֵל El: mighty in compassion to give all creatures according to their need;
4. רַחוּם Raḥum: merciful, that humankind may not be distressed;
5. וְחַנּוּן VeḤanun: and gracious if humankind is already in distress;
6. אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם Erekh appayim: slow to anger;
7. וְרַב-חֶסֶד VeRav ḥesed: and plenteous in kindness;
8. וֶאֱמֶת VeEmet: and truth;
9. נֹצֵר חֶסֶד לָאֲלָפִים Notzer ḥesed laalafim: keeping kindness unto thousands;
10. נֹשֵׂא עָוֹן Noseh avon: forgiving iniquity;
11. וָפֶשַׁע VaFeshah: and transgression;
12. וְחַטָּאָה VeḤata'ah: and sin;
13. וְנַקֵּה VeNakeh: and pardoning.

The greek word "eleos." The Greek word, “eleos,” we all know from the words in the mass, kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy upon us. It is maybe less nuanced, but the Greek translation of the Bible uses that word together with those Hebrew words, chesed and rahamim, but it implies the relationship between an inferior and a superior, which is certainly true, as God is superior to us. But the thing to keep in mind, to understand the richness of mercy and God, is in gods relationship to us, is also that relationship of a mother, of having the compassion and the emotional attachment to us of a mother. God cared enough about us as human beings to actually become a human being and to become a sacrifice for us. The Greek does not quite capture the richness of that.
 
"Good" versus "broken." The Scriptures make clear God has a heart, a particularly rich word in the Hebrew, as at the core of the human person. People do not understand how the brain works or coordinates all the activities of one’s body and one’s thoughts. It was understood that if the heart is the center of all that a person can feel, then that word for “gut compassion” (rahamim) was the center of God’s relationship with his people. Pope Saint John Paul II spoke much about mercy. You can talk a lot about mercy, but it’s how you live to choose what it means. Mercy means God is love, mercy is God’s second name, the greatest attribute of God. In the picture of Pope Saint John Paul II, and you may not recognize the man whom he is with, but that is the man who shot him in St. Peter’s Square. The pope visited him in prison and forgave him - this was exceptional. It reminds me of a picture I saw last week. If you follow the news, there was a trial in Dallas of a policewoman who went into the wrong apartment and shot someone. She was convicted. There was a picture of the brother of the man she had shot, hugging the policewoman and forgiving her. That kind of forgiveness had to come from divine compassion. We do not often see it in our world. Mercy is God’s response to chaos and sin. God’s plan is to counteract everything that went wrong at the beginning. The Bible says that in the six days of creation, everything that He created was good. And again, the English word “good” that we find in our translations does not truly encompass the meaning of the Hebrew word. The Hebrew word “good” means good in the sense that it was perfect and complete, just the way it was designed and that God wanted it to be. And we broke it. As a matter of fact, the word for evil in Hebrew means “broken.” So, what God is trying to do is fix what we broke, to compensate for it. His mercy is how God provides resistance to evil, despite what we see around us. In mercy, God creates new space for life and blessing. This is like what the mercy and forgiveness of John Paul II made for the man who tried to kill him. I cannot see what it did for the inside of his heart, but it certainly allowed for repentance and the renewal of the spiritual life in that man, as opposed to sitting in prison and being angry.
 
God’s holiness. We try, through the revelation that God has given us, to understand what God is like. Imagine a starfish at the bottom of the ocean trying to imagine what the life of a cow is like. It is beyond our possibilities to understand God as God is in himself. But what he reveals to us about how he is in our world is Mercy. God’s mercy also serves as justice somehow, because he recognizes our fundamental weakness. We can compare ourselves to people whom we recognize as doing evil. We see this in the life of Jesus during his ministry in the Pharisees, who were very judgmental about sinners, and very judgmental about Jesus, who spent his time eating and drinking with sinners. But, whose sin is worse? Who are we to judge whose sin is worse? We are all sinners, and in comparison, in the scale of God’s goodness and righteousness, whether we are a murderer or just someone who is resentful and hateful, in comparison with God, there is not a lot of difference.

God’s justice. God is merciful, and God is just. In human terms in our starfish way of thinking these things seem to be differentiated a great deal, but in God they are combined in the same being. There is a need for justice. Evidence of justice in and unjust world is mercy for the oppressed. If you think of the family of the man in Dallas was home in his own apartment, and someone comes in and shoots and kills him, how does the family of that man feel? That there must be some compensation for the wrong that was done, that is only just. Whether the judge has imposed a just sentence is a question. That there be a rectification, we balancing of the skills for those who are done wrong is necessary. God, for most of us, it’s bad punishment to allow an opportunity for conversion, for change, that we come around, that we grow in virtue and grace. If God punished us immediately every time we did something wrong, most of us would not live very long. But, mercy is God’s grace for conversion.

Justice and Mercy. God’s ultimate act of mercy has discharged that act of mercy for us. He has suffered punishment for us, and it is that that makes us righteous. If we as followers of Jesus Christ want to see how we should be, we just look at the cross. We have a choice: to follow Christ or not. We have a choice always on how we follow Jesus Christ. God is showing us the way, urging us, asking us, maybe even begging us to be more merciful in our relationships with others, particularly those it is not easy to be merciful towards. Going back to that word for mercy, the motherly “gut compassion,” it is very easy to be merciful with family members, perhaps, friends, people we agree with, people we like. But Jesus is urging us to go beyond that. Even sinners forgive those people who do good to them. It is the love of enemies that is the great challenge.
 
God wishes to reveal the love that he has for the world, but his love has to be something that the world can recognize, in spite of the fact that it comes from God, who is totally on the other side of this world. Hans Urs Von Balthasar was a theologian who spoke of the beauty of God in his appeal to our humanity. We are Christ in the world, so if we are not going to be merciful how are people going to understand how God is merciful? Seeing the truth in love, this is difficult. God is truth, God is just: justice, mercy, truth. This is a difficult balancing act for us human beings. When do you get in someone’s face, or do you get in someone’s face and say you are wrong? That requires another attribute of God, which is wisdom. A mode of God’s action is to convince, to demonstrate, to suggest, to nudge, and so to be merciful. Mercy is active, so it is not just a mode of awareness or type of intellectual disposition. It is how we are supposed to act, and the image of the Good Samaritan demonstrates that to us. That is how God asks us to worship him. We are familiar with the Beatitudes. In all of those beatitudes, there is a payoff. If you are like this, you were going to get this added extra value. But not with “Blessed are the merciful.” They will receive mercy – what you give is what you get. So the merciful are living in the significant action of God‘s kingdom, mirroring God’s action, which is mercy.
 

See Luke Timothy Johnson slide - If you read that, what is it a description of? It is a description of life in the rule of Saint Benedict. Monks gather together for prayer, sing the songs and Canticles, practice silence. Practicing silence is key. All the great spiritual writers in the Jewish tradition, the Islamic tradition, and the Christian tradition say that if you talk too much, you cannot help but sin. So, better that you be silent. So, practice silence in the name of charity, confess faults to each other, this Saint Benedict instructs, and to receive strangers as Christ, which is hospitality. This is in the Rule. Let the church always be a place of mercy and hope, where everyone is welcomed, loved, and forgiven.

Father Michael Brunner