The Quality of Mercy is Not Strained

Written by Jeff Alexander

After the “big” holy days, how do we deal with the inevitable letdown of emotions? How do we hold onto the impact of these celebrations throughout the year and truly become changed beings? These were the challenges presented to us by Katherine Speeckaert this past Sunday. Easter is the high point of the Christian calendar, and the services – starting with Palm Sunday, and through Holy Week to Good Friday and Saturday vigil and ending with Easter Sunday – burst with meaning and emotion. The passion story reads like the quickening of a heartbeat as Jesus “set His face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), where He knew He would suffer and die. Horribly. Shamefully. Alone.

I find it essential to really experience the deep sadness of this day, as an inheritor of and accomplice in the sin of humanity. My sin and your sin made it necessary that Jesus Christ died on the cross, an act of mercy like no other in the history of creation.

The depth of this sadness makes the joy on Sunday morning all the sweeter. But what about the overwhelming mercy in the act of self-sacrifice? Is this lost in the emotional gear-shifting, and then left behind after the last Easter chocolates have been devoured?

I think I speak for the majority of the congregation in admitting never having celebrated or even heard of the Feast of Divine Mercy, the designation of the second Sunday after Easter which Kat underlined. A knee-jerk reaction would be to dismiss the story of St. Faustina and her vision of an image of Jesus with beams of light emanating from Him (see picture) as a Catholic observance that seeks to focus on the bad while ignoring the good. But the two emotions – the sadness of Good Friday and the joy of Easter Sunday – are intertwined, and are both crucial to remember as we live under God’s mercy throughout the year. By extension, as Kat said, we first received His mercy and are therefore called to be merciful to others. How can we make mercy a cornerstone of our lives if we do not appreciate its full value?

The above title is the first line of one of Shakespeare’s most beautiful and well known bits of dialogue, from The Merchant of Venice. It ends with the following: “And earthly power doth then show like God's / When mercy seasons justice.” I pray that God will help me to soften my justice, when I feel self-righteous, morally indignant and victimized, with the same mercy that He showed in giving up His only Son to die on a cross.