The Rosary Light & Life - Vol 58, No 6, Nov-Dec 2005

The Beatitudes, Part IV
Blessed Are The Merciful for They Shall Obtain Mercy

By Father Reginald Martin, O.P.

       And Jesus said, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."

       In the fourth beatitude Jesus says that those who hunger and thirst for justice will be satisfied. Hunger and thirst are almost certainly not the first things we think of when we consider our obligation to treat others justly. And that may be why God has made the reward so complete and so attractive. If He offered less than the promise of fullness of justice to us, we might be far less inclined to seek it passionately for others.

       God is a superb psychologist. He knows that we hesitate to reach out to others because we fear that by doing so we may lose something that belongs to us. Thus, the beatitudes lure us into sympathy with others by promising what St. Thomas describes as a reward, "... in correspondence with the motives for which men recede from" doing some good work.

       St. Thomas makes the same point regarding the next beatitude, saying,

Some, again, recede from works of mercy, lest they be busied with other people’s misery. Hence Our Lord promised the merciful that they should obtain mercy and be delivered from all misery.

       Mercy is one of those words that, these days, has nearly lost its meaning. It means compassionate sorrow for another’s distress coupled with the practical will to do something about it. Tears alone do not make us merciful - we are not being merciful when we cry at a movie. To be merciful, our sorrow has to be expressed in some positive action.

       The Catechism tells us,

The works of mercy are charitable actions by which we come to the aid of our neighbor in his spiritual and bodily necessities. Instructing, advising, consoling, and comforting are spiritual works of mercy, as are forgiving and bearing wrongs patiently. The corporal works of mercy consist especially in feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and burying the dead (CCC 2447).

       Once we rescue mercy from the sugar coating under which it so often struggles, we see very clearly that it is a very demanding enterprise. St. John Chrysostom says - and the simple clarity of his words help explain why he became unpopular at the Imperial Court in Constantinople - "Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs."

       St. Gregory the Great is usually quite moderate, but on this point he, too, is quite severe. He says,

Those who neither desire what belongs to others nor bestow what is their own are to be admonished to consider carefully that the earth out of which they are taken is common to all... Vainly, then, do those suppose themselves innocent, who claim to their own private use the common gift of God; those who, in not parting with what they have received, walk in the midst of the slaughter of their neighbors... For when we administer necessaries of any kind to the indigent, we do not bestow our own, but render them what is theirs; we rather pay a debt of justice than accomplish works of mercy (Pastoral Rule, III. 21).

       Taking up the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, Gregory says,

... the rich man in the Gospel who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and feasted sumptuously every day, is not said to have seized what belonged to others, but to have used what was his own unfruitfully; and avenging hell received him after this life, not because he did anything unlawful but because by immoderate indulgence he gave up his whole self to what was lawful (Ibid.).

       St. Augustine reminds us that we stand in the same relation to God that those in need stand to us.

... thou art at once in abundance and in want - in abundance of temporal things and in want of things eternal. The man whom thou hearest is a beggar, and thou art thyself God’s beggar. Petition is made to thee, and thou makest thy petition... Thou art at once full and empty; fill the empty with thy fullness, that thy emptiness may be filled with the fullness of God.

       Eternal life with God is the goal of our life as Christians. The invitation to show God’s mercy to God’s creatures is an invitation to refine the image of God in us - which is why St. Thomas Aquinas can say that the happiness of an active life, which is a life of fair and compassionate dealing with those around us - prepares us here on earth for everlasting life in heaven.

       In his sermon on the beatitudes, St. Leo the Great put this very succinctly.

Recognize, Christian... what rewards thou art called, and by what methods of discipline thou must attain thereto. Mercy wishes thee to be merciful, righteousness to be righteous, that the Creator may be seen in His creature, and the image of God may be reflected in the mirror of the human heart expressed by the lines of imitation (XCV.A, vii).

       In our life as Christians, God’s Spirit continually challenges and invites us to look at the world around us and see signs of our future glory in heaven. Our practice of justice and mercy allows us to glimpse a future in which everyone is perfectly satisfied.

       This is the sacramental characteristic of our worship as well, and our late Holy Father, John Paul II reminded us that while the Eucharist is

a straining toward a goal, a foretaste of joy promised by Christ (cf. Jn. 15:11)…Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life; they already possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness... (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 18).

       Pope John Paul calls this "the eschatological tension" in which the Church’s prayer on earth "reinforces our communion with the Church in heaven" (Ibid., 19). The Eucharist is the source of our virtuous behavior, so it should not surprise us that when we perform deeds of mercy and justice we touch the world, here and now, with a sign of God’s love.

       But we also touch the world with God’s power. The opening prayer for one of the Sundays in Ordinary Time begins, "Father, you show your almighty power in your mercy and forgiveness...."

       We ordinarily consider God’s power in terms of creation, curing the sick, and raising the dead. Of the works of mercy, most of us could probably name feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, sheltering the homeless and clothing the naked. We may need to be reminded that also among the works of mercy is forgiveness.

       Married couples participate in God’s act of creation, but none of us brings something into existence from nothing. None of us can raise the dead. But each of us can forgive. Almsgiving requires money, instruction requires particular knowledge, feeding, clothing and sheltering require specific material goods to give away or share. Each of these requirements sets a limit on the mercy we can offer, but the only limit to forgiveness is the limit we place on love.

       Fr. Paul Duffner, who edited these pages for many years, summed this up very eloquently. He said,

Forgiveness is the one type of alms we can always give. It is a form of charity that can be exercised at any time by any one, be he rich or poor, young or old, sick or healthy. If we cannot manage this type of almsgiving, our poverty is much greater than being in want of money, food, clothing, or shelter.

       When Matthew records Jesus’ great Sermon on the Mount he places Jesus in a huge crowd. But although everyone present must have been able to hear him, Matthew tells us that Jesus spoke to his disciples, with whom we are called to identify ourselves.

       The words "disciple" and "discipline" come from the same root, a word that means "learner," so those whom Jesus directs his words to are those who had already begun to submit to his teaching, although Matthew tells us, their training began only a short time before.

       Jesus addressed this message to his disciples precisely because he could not expect anyone to embrace it who had not already surrendered to grace and begun to follow him. The important words here are "surrendered" and "begun." The perfection Jesus demands of his disciples is a lifetime achievement rewarded only in another world, and our surrender to discipleship is the first step, not the last. This first step is necessarily uncertain.

       St. Matthew does not tell us this, but I think we can imagine that the crowd who heard Jesus stuck around to see how the disciples would respond. Two thousand years later the world understandably wonders how we - having heard these words in our day - are also going to respond.

       To be merciful demands sacrifice, at least the sacrifice of forgiveness, and that may make it the most costly of the works our Savior asks us to undertake. The old admonition before marriage reminded us that the sacrifice essential to our salvation is usually "difficult and irksome." So, unfortunately, is trust. To obtain mercy means giving it. It also means placing ourselves altogether in the hands of a being we cannot see and whose ways are frequently anything but clear.

       To live this beatitude is to find ourselves at the heart of the penance the Church calls us to embrace and practice. Traditional penitential practices are prayer, fasting, and works of mercy. Another of the early Church theologians, St. Peter Chrysologus, preaches that this is not a multiple-choice menu. Our faith is a "both - and" proposition, so St. Peter says we must practice all three of these works, for,

These three are one, and they give life to each other....If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God’s ear to yourself (Sermon 43).

       God provides the model and the example for our actions, but we set the standards by which God’s love touches the world. And the gospel reminds us over and over that if the standard of our dealings with others is not particularly generous, then we should not expect God to be generous with us. In this regard, the Lord’s Prayer contains some of the most frightening words we can say - "forgive us as we forgive others."

       The English language contains something like half a million words, but the scariest of them is one of the smallest, "as." "As" means "in the same way" or "to the extent that," and it is terrifying to consider that we tell God every day that we want Him to be merciful to us in the same way, or to the extent that we are merciful to others. St. Peter goes on,

Offer your soul to God, make him an oblation of your fasting, so that your soul may be a pure offering, a holy sacrifice, a living victim... whoever fails to give this to God will not be excused, for if you are to give him yourself, you are never without the means of giving.

       This brings us back to Fr. Duffner’s words. The only limit to mercy is the limit we place on our love. God has given us a great deal, and He reasonably expects a return on His investment. "Give to the poor," St. Peter Chrysologus says, "and you give to yourself. You will not be allowed to keep what you have refused to give others."

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