Sep 17, 2017

Follower of Jesus (37)

Blessed are the merciful,

For they will be shown mercy. (10)

Matt. 5:7

The Name of God is Mercy

We have spent the past two and a half months looking at the beatitude that can be considered the definition of how God operates: being merciful. I would like to summarize each week so we can see the path of this beatitude: the merciful love of God.

Week 1: We are called to be the face of God on earth, the very likeness of God personified in you, or me. We are made in the ”Image and Likeness of God”, as spoken by God during the creation narrative of Genesis 1. We are the image of God by our creation, but to be the likeness of God requires some effort on our part. Since, as Pope Francis entitled has book, “The name of God is Mercy”, our being merciful is central to being the Likeness of God, as is our created nature in essence.

Week 2: Jesus and I, you, are one (see John 10:30). This simple message just blows us away, and we find we cannot comprehend this “good news” that Jesus came to tell us. We have no problem claiming Jesus and the Father are one, putting Jesus on the golden throne, claiming his kingship – despite his refusal of that mantel of kingship clearly when the crowd wanted to proclaim him king. But this God of the humble, the poor, the destitute, lived and ate with the despised ones of Israel we find that too difficult to follow, and we habitually reject the God proclaimed by Jesus: a God of the poor and humble, in favor of that God claimed by the emperor of Rome: a God of majesty and superiority.

Week 3: If we are to be able to accept mercy, we have to practice mercy ourselves. We cannot conceive of something we have not experienced in some way: as the prayer attributed to Jesus says: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We live in our own hell, the pain of life is of our own creation, not the outward manifestation of our life. Only when we forgive, and forgive always as a way of life, will we be able to accept the total forgiveness of God in our life.

Week 4: God is only love. But God is our very essence; we are only love. We fail in discerning what and who we are, and our task in this life is to uncover the essence of what and who we are. We cannot run or hide from it; it is the purpose of this life. God, in the form of Jesus the Christ, give meaning to all the pain and suffering in this world by crying out “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” It is this cry of forgiveness in the midst of pain and suffering that shows us the path to awakening to our purpose in life, and it is through, in general, pain and suffering and humiliation that we can let our ego go to proclaim our very being: love.

Week 5: Our shadow and our pain really slows us down, especially when we receive personal or group pain from another. How can we proclaim “I forgive, for they do not know what they do” in these situations? Our “justified” anger boils up and desires to inflict maximum injury to these others, whose internal pain is so overwhelming that all they can do is strike out blindly. Our reaction is almost always a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction, ready to strike in like manner in retaliation, or to put it more bluntly, in revenge. We fail to forgive, for it is only through forgiveness that we can reach out and perhaps start a process of healing. The eagerness with which we punish people, especially people that appear different from ourselves, overlays our national psyche and prevents us from growing as a people, as we are now witnessing from the expressions of hatred and intolerance that has become our official national stance in many ways. Can we change? Let us hope that these recent expressions of intolerance by our government will act to wake us up as a nation.

I will continue this summarization next week.

Meditation

O Spirit of Love, I place myself in Your arms of Joy. I surrender my ego-self fully at this moment, knowing that I will probably take up this shadow (ego) in the next moment; but still for this moment I surrender to Your Love. I ask Your aid in seeing You in the face of every being I meet, especially those whose outward appearance and manners brings out my prejudices and fears. I surrender my need to always be right and to always know the right answer. I ask that I may always see Your Image that is in every created thing, alive or not. I am grateful to be alive, and am thankful for all the blessings that have filled my life, especially all that I did not recognize.