3/22 Lenten Midweek: Blessed are the merciful

Our Lenten series at St. John's is focusing on the Beatitudes, with a different speaker and topic each Wednesday evening. I'll be speaking on March 22 on, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy," which appealed to me because of my fascination with Dorothy Day, who often talked about "acts of mercy." The following are some of my notes for getting my bearings.

• Neil Douglas-Klotz writes in Prayers of the Cosmos that there is a connection in Aramaic between the word translated as "mercy" and the word for "womb". This leads me to think about how mercy is a creative act, requiring relationship, as well as (usually) pain and sacrifice that are well worth it for the effects they produce beyond ourselves.


• We can learn about mercy by contrasting it with judgment. A quote from a recent issue of Sojourners comes to mind:
  

  
  Jesus never asked anyone how he or she got sick--only the Pharisees did...If your compassion level goes up when you know it wasn't someone's fault, then there is something wrong. [from Kay Warren in the context of her work with her husband Rick to address the AIDS crisis in Africa]
  

  
  ...which also makes me think of Portia's speech in The Merchant of Venice.


• It seems as though, while "acts" of mercy and "disposition" of mercy can be distinguished from one another, they inform and reinforce one another. This brings to mind C.S. Lewis' idea that if we don't love someone, acting as though we do will lead to the emotion of love. If we don't feel merciful toward others, will acting merciful lead to the disposition of mercy?


• What does it mean to "receive mercy"? I think that rather than creating a "reward system" whereby one earns mercy from God and others by being merciful, this refers to the cultivation of an economy of mercy. Our actions and attitudes live and have the power to change people and communities. God--Ultimate Reality--is merciful and we welcome that reality when we embody it. This is another way of talking about cultivating the Kingdom. From Thomas G. Long's commentary on Matthew:
  

  
  The Beatitudes proclaim what is, in the light of the kingdom of heaven, unassailably true. They describe the purpose of every holy law, the foundation of every custom, the aim of every practice of this new society, this colony of the kingdom, the church called and instructed by Jesus.
  

  
  This comes back again to the notion of mercy as a creative act. When we cultivate mercy, it becomes, it lives. So when we are "fruitful and multiply" mercy, the reality (not the reason) in the Kingdom is that we will experience it ourselves.