Unfailing Mercy
Matt. 5:7
New Revised Standard Version: Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
The Message: You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.
Showing care and compassion to others, being full of care for others, is hard, demanding work. Showing mercy is demanding because it challenges our tendency to put ourselves first. Recognizing that living out care and mercy is difficult and draining, has led to widespread conversations about caregiver burnout, and the need to have personal boundaries. These conversations invite people to put limits around their caring in order to be able to care for the long-term.
Jesus with this Beatitude offers a different way forward in the face of the burden of caring for, showing mercy to, others. Jesus would invite those who worry that their lives are filled with care for others – that is, “care-full” – to discover the moment when they feel themselves upheld by a care, by a mercy, they had not experienced before. That in giving ourselves in care for others, we find the care of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – sustaining us, flowing to us. Often as we care for others, we realize we are receiving so much more than we give.
A slightly different angle: Present society is unforgiving and merciless. We are invited by Jesus to live a different way; to be people who offer mercy and forgiveness. And when we do that, to find ourselves surprised by the mercy that others are willing to offer to us. Jesus suggests that mercy, showing care, is something that grows. If we offer it to others, they are more likely to offer it to yet other people, who may offer it to still others. Our acts of mercy, of care, are seeds planted in the hope that they will yield a crop of mercy and care in our neighbourhoods, community, places of work, churches, schools, etc.
PRAYER:
God of mercy, your mercy never fails, and we are filled with gratitude. Turn us into channels of your mercy so that it might flow through us to those around us. These things we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.