Mercy

I've been thinking a lot lately about mercy - specifically, how much God has for me and how little I have for others.

This is, all to often, the state I am in:

I have found (to my regret) that the degrees of shame and disgust which I actually feel at my own sins do not at all correspond to what my reason tells me about their comparative gravity. Just as the degree to which, in daily life, I feel the emotion of fear has very little to do with my rational judgment of the danger. I'd sooner have really nasty seas when I'm in an open boat than look down in perfect (actual) safety from the edge of a cliff. Similarly, I have confessed ghastly uncharities with less reluctance than small unmentionables -- or those sins which happen to be ungentlemanly as well as unchristian. Our emotional reactions to our own behaviour are of limited ethical significance.

C.S. Lewis

I have no idea how much my sins hurt God.  But He pours His infinite mercy on me nonetheless.  So how can I be so merciless?


This lack of mercy is not good, you see...
For he who said, "You shall not commit adultery," also said, "You shall not kill." Even if you do not commit adultery but kill, you have become a transgressor of the law.  So speak and so act as people who will be judged by the law of freedom.  For the judgment is merciless to one who has not shown mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
James 2: 11-13

It does not matter how much good I do in this life if I do not show mercy towards my neighbor.


Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.  Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.
Luke 6:36-38


If I wish to win souls for Christ at Columbia, I must live mercy.  Father Jacques Phillipe, in his wonderful little book, Interior Freedom, suggests:
We do more to help others experience conversion and make progress by encouraging them in the positive aspects of their lives than by condemning their errors.

I believe this is true, as Saint Paul says in Corinthians, Love is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.

A lack of mercy limits our freedom and makes us less capable of loving, which is the deepest desire of our hearts.  Lord, have mercy on me!