Be you merciful as your Heavenly Father is Merciful (Lk 6:36)

Article no. 3 by Jo O’Donovan rsm

Having sourced our understanding of the God in the biblical God of relationship, and having addressed the persistent human question – does God actually suffer for us and in us? – Kasper now asks what does it mean for us to be merciful? His final chapters look at the practice of mercy in the world today. But leading into them is chapter 6. This is a rich and dense bit of writing, but worth staying with it, if only to reflect on the four principles which in my reading seem to underlie the meaning of being merciful.

1. Mercy is of God:
The words from the Beatitudes come to mind here – Be you merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful (Lk 6:36) and indeed of St. Paul who tells us: Be imitators of God (Eph 5:1-2). These are daunting demands, because in being ‘thrown upon God’ we are launched into more than we can understand. Kasper is implying here that there is a largesse about mercy that only association with the divine holiness sustains. When Jesus tells us to imitate the Father’s mercy in our relationships with each other, he is intimating that there is a model – the crazy, unlimited love of the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son (See Lk 15). This is not the tit-for-tat love that can rule my life. This is a gift of love that frees from the prison of the self and empties us out into a new space, a space of divine mercy that is a taste of ‘beyond the self’. It is interesting to note that such a space, though formulated differently, is also at the core of other religions. While Buddhists do not speak of God, they do speak of wisdom and compassion, or to use the words of the Dalai Lama, they speak of the ‘Good Heart’. I have never forgotten the teaching of a Buddhist abbot I heard one time in US during a retreat. He said we westerners latch on to Buddhist practices such as meditation/mindfulness techniques and to moral precepts as helps for a spiritual life during times of alienation, but we forget that the heart of Buddhism is the transformative practice of generous giving. It is transformative because it is a more direct onslaught on the self, even more direct than long hours in meditation. Simple, short gestures of spontaneous giving are sharp attacks on the ego and for the Buddhist they are necessary ‘beyond-the-self’ spiritual practices. They purify the mind and help to engender compassion. For the Christian this ‘beyond-the-self’ experience is a divine gift. It reveals God as the Other, the ‘holy essence’, the one who alone can teach what love and mercy are (p.51). But this divine gift of love and mercy has become more tangible for us in the person of Jesus.

2. Jesus – the Model of Mercy
We can turn to the gospels where we learn about the life and teaching of Jesus. But Kasper warns that Jesus is more than simply a teacher to be listened to or a model to be imitated; he is more than a holy man. As God’s Son he is given to us as a ‘pro-existence’ of pure divine mercy, and he calls us to identify with him, to be his representatives. It was the self-emptying of Jesus, his way of being him turned toward the Father, that attracted the amazed disciples to him, and still attracts us. Through his self-emptying we like them come to understand his suffering and death and his continued risen presence as the ultimate gift of the largesse of divine mercy. One can read the gospel accounts of the actions and teachings of Jesus as concrete expressions of the presence of divine mercy, But Kasper chooses two, particularly, which push the boundaries of the self. If I interpret him rightly, they are the following:

3. Mercy in love of enemies
Here Kasper points out that the apex and highest expression of love and mercy is the command to love one’s enemies in the Sermon on the Mount. Here Jesus goes beyond the |Jewish tradition, and also beyond every human measure. ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’(Mt 5:44) Jesus calls us to this extremity of behaviour on the basis that that is how the Father of mercy has dealt with us enemy-sinners, and we must be imitators of the Father. This fully realized love of enemy was very much in focus with the Church Fathers: Kasper quotes Clement: ‘Whoever does not love the one who hates him or her is not a Christian’; and Chrysostom for whom love of enemies is ‘the highest instantiation of virtue.’ But Kasper goes on to detect a new note, especially in Augustine who says that ‘the highest form of almsgiving is to pardon those who have wronged us.’ (p.139). Thus as we know, there is an inseparability between love of enemies and forgiveness. As in enemy love, so also in forgiveness we turn to something outside and more than ourselves, and we trust that that reality will be gracious to us. Sometime ago I had an altercation with another Sister, and I knew that I had hurt her. Fearfully, I went to apologise but I need not have worried. ‘Forget it, Jo; that’s alright’ she said. With her there was no ego to be hurt. My burden lifted. I knew I had touched on something special. I called it her nobility. But then also I knew that through her I had met something of God. Enemy love and forgiveness stretch our boundaries and are imitations of divine mercy, as also our service of the poor and needy.

4. Mercy in love of the poor and needy
Kasper gives some time to what I call this fourth principle – the discovery of what mercy is in our relationship to the poor and needy. It is a great and innovative teaching of the Judaeo-Christian tradition that love of God and love of neighbour are indissoluble. As believers in God and Christians we can never be indifferent to the other. He/she as simply human is our neighbour. But Kasper says we can be more starkly faced with this truth, this demand to love, when we encounter those who need us in some way. Starkly, because for many of us, we usually meet them at the wrong time; they never seem to fit into our programmes. They shake us up and make us question. But even more deeply, citing the beautiful prayer of Mother Teresa (p. 149), Kasper reminds us that ‘mercy in relation to the poor and needy is not a question of morality but is primarily an encounter with Christ in and through those who suffer.’ And citing Augustine he writes: ‘Christ is needy when the poor are needy. . . Expect to meet him when lying under the bridges; expect him when he is hungry and shudders from cold; expect him as a stranger’ (p. 148). He goes on to show that the Corporal and Spiritual Works are based in this inseparability of love of God and neighbour, and interpreting these great traditional precepts in the language of our times he finds in them four types of poverty:

1. Material or physical poverty: lacking in necessary food and shelter;   unattended illness, unemployment.

2. Cultural poverty: illiteracy and reduced chances for education and participation in social and cultural life.

3. Poverty due to breakdown of relationships; loneliness, loss of partner family and friends. Discrimination and marginalisation, being trafficked.

4. Mental or spiritual poverty – a particular problem in the west, where individualism suppresses any need for community and can see works of mercy as symptoms of weakness. Suffering from a meaninglessness of  existence; loss of soul.

Kasper says that these dimensions of poverty will ultimately demand a holistic and multidisciplinary response, for mercy must also operate in a humane way that decreases dependence and put simply, it must help people to help themselves. These questions he will attend to in the last chapters. But following chapter 6, we have been asking what does the call to mercy ultimately call us to? We have seen that it calls us to the ‘imitation of God,’ and to participation in a divine gift from beyond our purely human abilities. We have seen that it is expressed particularly in a way of love that reaches out to the other, to the enemy and the poor and needy, and also that it is a participation in the self-emptying of Christ who is the exemplar of Divine Mercy. In our times of religious pluralism we cannot deny that mercy also characterises other faiths. We have seen that the signature of the ‘Good Heart’ in Buddhism is the sublime state of compassionate awareness of all other beings as neighbours in our planet, and we know that the key title for God in Islam is the ‘all-merciful’. But that the Holy One is love who is also mercy, and who has revealed himself to us in the self-emptying of the Son, will always be the special witness of Christians. With Christ we are not alone, and as Kasper reminds we also have models in some Christians who were saints and prophets of divine mercy. Among them is St. Faustina, and this is an excerpt from one of her prayers (cit., pp. 144-5):

Help me. O Lord, that my heart may be merciful so that I may feel all the sufferings of my neighbour. I will refuse my heart to no one. I will be sincere, even with those who, I know, will abuse my kindness. And I will lock myself up in the most merciful heart of Jesus. I will bear my own suffering in silence. May your mercy, O Lord, rest upon me

Jo O’Donovan rsm
South Central Province