Let Mercy Rule

            There have been so many tragedies recently.  All of the storms that plagued the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Florida and Texas not to mention Ireland and the British Isles; the earthquake in Mexico and the terrible fires in California that have left so many people without homes and possessions.  We had the horrible shooting in Las Vegas that killed so many people who were simply attending a country music performance; the terrorist driving a truck into the bike lane in New York, killing eight people and injuring a number of others, and the shooting at the church at Sutherland Springs, Texas that killed 26 people. The grieving over all of this has taken us over as a nation and has caused such pain in so many lives.  It is as if we have embarked on a new era, an era of hatred and misery enhanced by egotism and people who just don’t care about law and order and want to create chaos wherever they are.  This is also applicable to the natural disasters that we are seeing since we don’t seem to care about climate change and continue to permit inordinate pollution of our atmosphere.

               In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus begins his sermon on the mount by telling his apostles the beatitudes.  These are great phrases that really sum up the expectations that God has for all of us. One of them reads: blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.  Mercy isn’t an easy thing to either give or receive.  Often when we pass a beggar on the street, we do just that:  pass them.  We ignore their signs, their position on the street, frequently sitting down against a post, dressed in shabby clothes and all of the things that tell us of their difficult position in life.  We don’t really think of mercy in these moments, we think only of getting on with what we are doing. 

            Mercy is a two-way street.  I love the verse that goes:

                       

                                                Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat

                                                Please to put a penny in the old man’s hat.

                                                If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do

                                                If you haven’t got a ha’penny, God bless you!

Here is mercy coming back from the beggar.  We really don’t think of that most of the time either, we are still set on doing what we are about.  But this is the reality of mercy.  It is the interaction that we have with each other, caring for each other, paying attention to our needs, and being aware of the condition that each of us are in.  It is fairly easy to do this with our friends and our relatives, but when it comes to strangers, it is a bit more difficult.  I know that our Lord wants us to care for each other, to be merciful and loving to each other.  When we do this we lessen the amount of stress and hatred in this world and make it less likely that events such as we are seeing in the news will keep happening.  Love one another as I have loved you, said Jesus to all of us when he expressed the commandments of God.  That is our mission as the children of God.  God loves every one of us.  Let us try as hard as we can to love one another.