Blessed are the
merciful, for they shall obtain mercy
Matthew 5:7
Reflection – Well, this is either
the easiest beatitude for me to write about or the most difficult. Easy,
because I’ve written an entire
book on the subject. Difficult, for the same reason—what else could I
possibly say that I haven’t already said.
I have decided to take the easy route today,
slightly bleary with sleep as I am still. Here is a section from my book Going
Home, from the last chapter called, indeed ‘Blessed’. I have been
meditating on the parable of the prodigal son all through the book. Here, I am
in the person of the elder brother, grappling with the revelation of the father’s
mercy, and struggling to know how to make it my own. I hope you enjoy this
excerpt, and if you do, that you buy the
book:
Meanwhile, speaking of endings,
have you ever noticed that the parable of the prodigal son has no ending, happy
or otherwise? The father and the older son are left there, standing outside the
house, waiting. Waiting for his final decision, the final choice of the son to
enter or to turn away. I too wait with God upon my final decision. Will I
receive mercy or choose to go my own way in the world? What ending will I write
for my story? Because God lets us do this; his grace is everything and
accomplishes everything in us, but the end of the story is mine to choose.
Choose your adventure!
Standing at the door, trying to
decide… the sounds of music and dancing, the laughter of the servants, the smell
of the banquet, the warmth of the house wafts out at me. For a moment, the
bitterness, the sadness, the envy of the perpetual outsider, the one who never
quite makes it, never quite gets there, wells up in me.
I see the prodigal in there,
blast him, all washed up and gleaming in his new duds. He looks a bit
embarrassed, a bit shamefaced, but he is just starting to smile. He is eating,
drinking, dancing. Gazing at him, I realize with a start what I had long
forgotten—how much he looks like me. We’re practically identical twins…
It is evening, and the sun is
setting. It feels like the Father and I have been standing there together in
silence for some time now. It will be dark soon, and the coolness in the air
already promises that the night will be a cold one.
Will I go in? Will I, simply,
ask for mercy? Receive mercy, knowing that I will then have to (as best I can)
practice mercy? A stab of yearning goes through me. I long for the embrace of
my father, a childish desire to be held, carried, comforted. Blessed—that’s
what I want. I want to be blessed.
“Blessed are the merciful, for
they shall receive mercy” (Matt 5: 7). This is our hunger: to be blessed. To
receive happiness as a gift of love from Another. To have our life made
beautiful – not just this little bit or that little moment, this little fling
or that little party, but our whole life rendered into something beautiful,
something good, something solid and true and whole. To be blessed by the
Lord—this is what we long for. No matter how old we are or how mature, no
matter how jaundiced and cynical life may have made us, there’s part of us that
always yearns for this, I believe. Yearns to have our Daddy love us and tell us
it’s all going to be all right, and He makes it right, because that’s His job.
Blessed are the merciful. We’re
not home yet, but there’s a way marked out. There are signposts. We’re not
home, but we’re not lost, either. We can ask for directions, if we need to.
Indeed, direction has been given: mercy, to be merciful, to live in and by
mercy.
The life of mercy: our home
away from home, the way home itself, and the constant choice that brings us
there. The awesome inestimable reality of God’s mercy, the truth of His tender
love and compassion, given to us so we can give it to others. And yet, as I
have often said throughout this book, how hard it is for us to believe in this,
to really accept it, to absorb it into our very being.
“The problem is that we cannot
absorb this. This is how it seems to me. And the only way we can try to absorb
it is to act like He does.”[1]
Oh, so that’s the key! We can only absorb this deep truth of mercy by
practicing it ourselves. To be merciful, as the Lord reveals to us, is
blessedness itself, since it is by being merciful that we absorb the awesome
joyous truth of God’s mercy to us, and are opened to receive this mercy into
the depths of our being.
To be merciful – what is it?
What does it mean to be merciful? Well, I don’t think it’s complicated. It is
to be as generous as we can with whatever share of life’s goods we possess; it
is to honestly try to refrain from judgments, harshness, accusation of our
neighbors; it is to forgive our enemies from our hearts; it is to strive to
become free of all anger, hatred, jealousy, bitterness, violence. To be merciful:
it is the life of joy and freedom and beauty, even now, even while we still
wait outside that final Door:
What joy we feel when we really forgive our enemies. I mean it’s a joy that fills us. We are free, we breathe. It’s by loving that we… begin to feel the love of Christ for us. It is a sort of a contact with God.[2]
I think I have to read this book.
ReplyDelete