One of the many surprises coming from Pope Francis was his designation of 2016 as a Jubilee Year of Mercy. He has raised the profile and significance of Mercy to a new and compelling level. For us, Sisters of Mercy, this was marvellous and we were really chuffed! Mercy matters! It encouraged us to value more deeply the legacy of Catherine McAuley and to explore afresh what it means in today’s world. But we do not have a monopoly on Mercy – it belongs to every faith and none and indeed it goes to the core of what it is to be human at our best.
What is the mercy tradition? How does it look when it is up and dressed?
In many ways ‘mercy’ has small stature in our society. Often we think of it as something optional or extra and not really necessary for moral living. Other times we regard mercy as mere sentiment, as weakness and as certainly less than justice. ‘At the mercy of’ is a common phrase associated with bankers, politicians, landlords – it connotes danger, insecurity, powerlessness. Those who are powerless among us have to plead for mercy, hurting their dignity and freedom. At the mercy of being on the ‘waiting lists’ comes to mind.
When we search for the authentic source of Mercy (in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions) we find it in the earliest recorded self-disclosure by God to Moses. The Hebrew people were mired in slavery and groaned for relief. In the stunning story of the burning bush (Exodus 3, 34 and Google!) a voice says to Moses ‘I have seen the affliction of my people, I have heard their cry, and I mean to deliver them.’ See, hear and deliver – these are the ingredients of mercy. But Moses is puzzled and asks the voice ‘what is your name?’ The answer comes: ‘I am who I am … God, merciful and gracious, full of compassion, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and steadfast love, granting forgiveness unto a thousand generations’. These words add up to one word – mercy. God does not say ‘I am the almighty, or the all perfect, nor the strict judge’. But rather God’s is the all merciful! And then God says: ‘this is my name forever’. Mercy is God-size. In the original Hebrew text the word for mercy is rachamim (literally womb-love) – a fierce, protective, nurturing love – a love that goes to the heart of what it is to be human. Misericordia (a heart which can hold misery) is God’s very identity; compassion and steadfast love are God’s credentials, the God of the Judean, Christian and Muslim traditions, and indeed of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions also.
In the Christian faith, Jesus Christ is the human embodiment of that Merciful God. He is a doer of mercy. He seeks out the afflicted and rejected of his time – the blind see, the lame walk, the leper is cleansed. He was moved (gutted) with compassion for the crowd, he offered himself as bread for the hungry. Jesus does not compromise on compassion – whether it is to heal on the Sabbath or sweep the money lenders’ tables in the Temple – because for him compassion takes precedence over regulations. In Jesus’ life the authorities, both religious and political, were affronted by his daring depiction of God as merciful. They set out to destroy him. Mercy is always in danger of being destroyed or lost, whether from the establishment, or resistance, or prejudice, or from an uncaring system. It is preserved by advocating, pressing, pushing and making choices in favour of need.
Catherine McAuley and her Sisters were moved by this Godly imperative. It brought us to the frontier in education and healthcare, to challenging places, to new cries for deliverance throughout the world. Today, among the newer activities, we have a Sister in a Dialogue Centre in Auschwitz, a Sister at the UN co-ordinating work round the social goals; we have a centre for families of prisoners in Limerick, a law centre for homeless people in Dublin, and a project against trafficking. Mercy is a driving vision for a better world.
In the 1830’s Sr. Frances Ward was one of the companions of Catherine McAuley and the first Sister of Mercy to be professed after herself. Francis was in her 20’s when Catherine was in her 50’s. Sr. Frances went on to found Mercy convents in Carlow, Wexford, Naas and Westport. Then in 1843, after Catherine’s death, she brought the first Sisters of Mercy to the United States. She opened up to a hundred houses in the midst of the tragedies of the American civil war. In 1879, nearly 40 years later, she wrote to a young sister who was enquiring about Catherine McAuley and said:
“I knew her (Catherine) better than I have known anyone in my life. She was a woman of God, and God made her a woman of vision. She showed me what it meant to be a Sister.”
TO SEE THE WORLD AND ITS PEOPLE IN TERMS OF GOD’S LOVE,
TO LOVE EVERYONE WHO NEEDED LOVE,
TO CARE FOR EVERYONE WHO NEEDED CARE.
Now her vision is driving me on. “It is a glorious thing to be a Sister of Mercy”.
Her simple words are shorthand for mercy and the Mercy tradition.
Pope Francis is doing it before our eyes. Whether he is in the prisons, in the slums, in the war zones, or in Lesbos, he is with people who are very much viewed as second-class in our world. Mercy does not do second-class; in fact second-class is a sin against mercy, and wherever it appears the human spirit is called by God’s abounding kindness to respond with a tender, healing and gracious love that lifts affliction and restores life. Cardinal Kasper says that compassion is the ultimate ethic, the ground of doing right in our world. Compassion/Mercy is the expression of the uttermost in goodness and righteousness – it sees, listens and delivers change and hope for those who are in need.
Mercy is not therefore a weak and timid idea, or a pious option – but the unstoppable power of enabling love. The mercy tradition is not about specific prayers or emblems or dogmas or even faiths as such, (though they have their place in providing meaning, encouragement, community), but it is essentially about assisting one another and passionately advocating for the weakest among us. Catherine says that ‘the kind word and the patient listening to troubles cost nothing’ but may bring great relief to someone in distress.
Mercy Matters!
Helena O’Donoghue rsm
South Central Province April 2016
