“Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy”
The leaves are scattered on the wind and the rain. The splendor of yesterday’s golden glory lies in scattered heaps. And, yet, in the soft dying of nature’s year, when the colours of blazing reds, bright yellows and vibrant oranges have been dimmed to burnished gold, there is a gathering; a gathering into glory far greater than any spectacle of nature.
There is a gathering of the scattered leaves of our humanity, and like the gathering together “into one volume” of the scattered leaves of Sybil’s oracles, as the poet, Dante, puts it, the gathering has to do with our remembering, with the quality of our recollection. There is a gathering of scattered minds into unity and order, a unity and order which signals the redemption of our humanity in the truth of its diversity. The Feast of All Saints is the great autumnal festival of spiritual life, the great celebration of the redeemed community of our humanity.
All Saints recalls us to the spiritual community to which we belong. It signals the vocation of our humanity, both individually and collectively considered. We are called to holiness even in the face of our sinfulness.
The text which is central to this recollective gathering is at once provocative and paradoxical. It is The Beatitudes, the blessednesses, from The Sermon on the Mount. They have, it seems, an inexhaustible content that challenges us because of the quality of uncompromising objectivity.
The Beatitudes are not the happinesses – something partial and passing – but the blessednesses, something objective and complete. They are about something more, though not less, than what belongs to the subjective “devices and desires of our own hearts.” They are, we might say, God’s answer to the question about the Summum Bonum, the greatest or the highest good that we all seek in one way or another, even in the scattered ways of our wayward hearts. As such they speak to the culture of scattered minds and even to a turbulent world of unease and discontent, a world of despair and dismay, a world of violence and destruction, within and without the Church.
Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy upon us. This is the Church’s constant prayer, the recurring and repeated theme of our liturgy and life. At the heart of The Beatitudes, there is mercy, the mercy that compels and constrains us to mercy. “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy”.
And, if we are not merciful? What then? Then, there is no mercy for us, perhaps. You get what you give, it seems, and not otherwise. If you don’t give, you won’t get, it seems. Why?
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (appointed for Trinity XXII) illustrates what it means not to show mercy. In that parable, one servant, forgiven a great debt, refuses to forgive the much smaller debts owed to him by others. The kingdom of God is likened, not to that unforgiving servant, but to the king “which would take account of his servants,” since justice cannot be ignored, and who had forgiven this servant his great debt. But upon hearing that this forgiven servant was then unforgiving in return to others, the king has him delivered to the tormentors “till he should pay all that was due unto him.” Heaven is not about cheap grace. You can’t get if you don’t give. Forgiven and unforgiving.
What is the problem here? It is the problem of the refusal of mercy. In not showing mercy to others we negate the mercy that has been shown to us. The logic is simple and clear. The unforgiving servant has, in effect, negated the mercy that has been shown to him. It is a refusal of grace.
There is a further wonder here. The occasion for Jesus’ telling this parable is Peter’s question. “How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?” Jesus response is “not until seven times but until seventy times seven.” Then he tells the parable of the unforgiving servant. It is told to convict our calculating and conniving hearts and to deepen our sense of mercy.
Divine forgiveness is an infinite quality. It is not really capable of being reduced to mere finite calculation. When Jesus says “seventy times seven” he is not just adding more numbers – four hundred and ninety, to be exact. No, it is a deliberate exaggeration that signals the infinity of grace, something beyond number. At the same time, as the parable indicates, the mercy that has been shown to us requires a response in us, a kind of equation of equality; in short, mercy for mercy, for only then is mercy truly mercy in us.
Mercy is precisely something more than justice, more not less. Mercy pays the price which is owed by another. Such is the richness of mercy, a richness which we bankrupt and deny when we fail to show mercy. Mercy costs and we empty mercy of its power and truth when we deny its cost, a cost which is nothing less than the cost of the cross.
The kingdom of heaven is about our openness to the redeeming and perfecting grace of God without which we are not and cannot be partakers of that heavenly society of the blessèd ones. The Beatitudes signal the perfections of God’s grace in us which enroll us in that heavenly society and not otherwise. Together they are the mercies of God toward us and in us, if we will let them have their gracious way with us in our lives.
This beatitude is at the heart of the Beatitudes.The others are mostly about the paradox of difference. The blessing for “the poor-in-spirit” is “the kingdom of heaven,” as it is for the eighth beatitude, the blessing of “those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” Humility and suffering for the truth are alone open to the rich things of God, no matter how poor and persecuted we may be. Those who “hunger and thirst after righteousness” shall be filled; their emptiness contrasts precisely with the fullness they desire. Those who mourn shall be comforted – strengthened and invigorated in and through their experience of sorrow and loss. These are all scenes of contrast. Blessedness is found in the paradox of difference.
But with this beatitude, the blessing is found in the paradox of the same, mercy for mercy. It highlights the greater and more abundant quality of divine mercy present in all of the beatitudes which cannot be constrained to a finite equation, the point which the parable of the unforgiving servant so wonderfully illustrates.
It remains the great lesson for each and every age; the great and hard lesson of learning what it means to act out of the mercies of Christ and not out of the follies of human judgment and presumption. The first beatitude is precisely the check to human presumption and pride. To be poor-in-spirit is precisely not to be full of ourselves.
The mercy of the Beatitudes is the condition of charity which constitutes The Communion of Saints. Here is the great Christian manifesto, the manifesto of charity that turns the world on its head. It puts the world on a whole new foundation, the foundation of grace. In this central beatitude we are reminded of the radical nature of the mercy of God which compels and constrains us to act out of the same mercy that has been shown to us, a mercy that is infinite in power and in scope, a mercy that seeks its resonance in us by showing mercy for mercy; the mercy that fills and fulfills.
Without that mercy we are empty and scattered in disarray. With that mercy, we are merciful, full of the mercy that abounds unto prayer and praise. Mercy begets mercy and is never empty but always full; in short, blessèd, and in the company of the blessèd ones. Such is the communion of saints, come what may in the up and downs of our lives.
“Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy”
Fr. David Curry
All Saints’ (transf)
Christ Church, Oct. 31st, 2010