Postmortem 23

Dichosos los compasivos, porque serán tratados con compasión.

In English, please:

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

I prefer the Spanish translation, because they use the word compasivo, which translates directly to the English word compassionate.  Compassion is beautiful.  It says that you are feeling with someone else the pain they are living.  It is almost like empathy, it's even lovelier sibling.  Very different from the word mercy, which suggests noblesse oblige, the lofty upper classes deigning to be kind to the undeserving poor and unfortunate.

I have often struggled with the word mercy, when it is used between persons.  Although at times it is necessary, oh so necessary, I rather prefer the word justice, but even justice has rather a cold, shall we say judicial ring.   I have tried to simplify the concept somewhat.  When it comes to our interactions with one another as humans, it is about justice.  When it touches upon God's interactions with us, as humans, then it is always going to be mercy.

And if our acts of justice are not predicated by compassion, then really we are not interested in justice but in some kind of petty or ethically-sanitized vengeance.  But what makes us compassionate?  Well, here we have the order of the Beatitudes.  We begin with poverty of spirit, and what do we get?  no less than heaven.  From there we move on to mourning and weeping, and behold, comfort and consolation.  This is followed by a hunger and thirst for justice.  Notice that the Spanish translation mentions the word justicia, which can mean both righteousness and justice.  And our promise is that we shall be satisfied.  because there is no hunger so pure, so good, so beautiful, and so noble as the hunger for justice, even while we are bewailing that we are persons of unclean lips that live among a people of unclean lips.

The next outcome is humility, a sense of real perspective on our place in the universe, of our low status in the order of things, and that we are all, regardless of wealth or poverty, or social class or marginalization are all at the beginning and at the very end equally naked.  and it is from that awareness of our lowliness and smallness that gives birth to compassion, because we see and accept and love in the other the very fragility and lowliness of being that makes us all so uniquely, so equally and so authentically human.

And this is the very heart of  the Gospel, because it is the very heart of Jesus, and that is why I still weep sometimes when I remember those poorest of the poor whom I was privileged to meet while recently in Colombia who became thorns from the Crown of Jesus piercing into the very depths of my soul.  And this is why I am coming even to love the wealthy Anglican burghers that inhabit my Anglican parish church, not because they are anything special, but because with eyes of love I can see past their pretense and status and come to love the poor, delicate and naked little children that inhabit their souls, maybe not that far beneath their lovely expensive clothes and their ageing white skin.  and to also see and respond to that very human desire that they, that we all have,  have to be accepted and loved unconditionally.