Lectio
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew 5:7). We can have the mercy of God whenever we want it, by being merciful to others: for it is God’s mercy that acts on them, through us, when He leads us to treat them as He is treating us. His mercy sanctifies our own poverty by the compassion that we feel for their poverty, as if it were our own. And this is a created reflection of His own divine compassion, in our own souls. Therefore, it destroys our sins, in the very act by which we overlook and forgive the sins of other men.”
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
Meditatio
When Jesus tells us to pray to the Father, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” He hands us a double-edged sword. On one side, the prayer cuts through our sins. We pray that the Father forgives us for all that we have done, said, or even thought against God and our neighbors. This is a relatively easy proposition to accept. If we have any sense of how far we have fallen away from God’s perfect will for us, and grace has stirred even a little repentance in us, of course we will want to be forgiven. On the cross, Jesus reveals the mercy that was always the Father’s will for us.
On the other side, however, this prayer cuts us to the heart. Jesus does not tell us to simply pray that our trespasses be forgiven, but that they be forgiven “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” This puts quite a bit of weight on us to love as Christ has loved us, which is to say to love unconditionally, and in spite of insults, injuries, and injustices, and to forgive in the same way. The Father loves us even when we do not receive His love or extend it outward as He has done for us, and He asks us to let that love move through us. God’s mercy is boundless, but our capacity to receive it is bound up with our willingness to give it. An unforgiving heart closes itself to the Father’s mercy, which was never meant to be kept. It was never meant to be hoarded. It was always a gift to be received and passed on in one communal gesture of love.
But His mercy is already at work in us, and by loving as He has loved, by forgiving as He has forgiven, we consent to the mercy He freely offers us, not because these earn His mercy, but because our mercy is an affirmative response to His grace. By extending God’s boundless mercy to our neighbors, even our enemies, we participate in that same mercy and are thus changed by it. Our merciful thoughts, words, and deeds are never ours alone. They are His mercy reaching our neighbors through us. In this way we become more like Christ, through whom alone we are able to commune with the Father.
The two edges of the prayer Christ taught, it turns out, are a single blade. The mercy we ask of the Father, which cuts through our sins, is the same mercy He uses to open us toward our neighbors. When we forgive, we feel their poverty as our own, and in that shared poverty we find that His mercy is communal. It destroys our sins, in the very act by which He moves us to overlook theirs, and it cuts through the wall of illusion that separates us: the belief that we have the right to withhold the love that was always His gift.
Oratio
Gift Not Contained
an impoverished heart
lacking mercy
hardened by self-interest
self-centered fear
made poor
by its own cravings
all that is gathered
all that is held
giving nothing away
even the gift
that cannot be kept
Love
yet by every prayer answered
like a drop of water on stone
this same heart breaks open
until mercy pours out
an abundance shared
living water overflowing
a gift not contained
for the gift is the Giver Himself
Contemplatio
Call to mind one person you find hard to forgive. You do not have to forgive them now. Simply let the hardness be seen in the light of a mercy that has never stopped being offered to you. Sit in silence, and let Him move as He wills.
Related Scripture
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
— Luke 6:36 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Before We Lift the Plow: Augustine and the Grace That Softens a Hard Heart (Lectio Divina), which sits with the hardened heart and the grace that begins its softening, the same mercy that in the end reaches others through us.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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