THE ESSENTIALNESS OF FORGIVENESS

Pope Francis insists that mercy is at the very top of the Christian hierarchy of great truths  and everything falls apart whenever mercy is displaced by anything else or anything less. - Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," August 3, 2018

Mercy - Compassion or forgiveness given when it is within one's power to punish.

I suspect our tendency is to think of extending mercy only in the biggies of life...for the murderer of the babies at Sandy Hook, of the church people at Mother Emanuel. And our "to think of extending mercy" is to wonder how in the world to do that...or, more honestly, how to ever want to. Who's kidding whom? That's what preachers and popes are for. But there it is, our cross to bear: to ever want to.

The saying that old age ain't for sissies is just as true for mercy. Mercy is never on our bucket list, but neither old age nor forgiveness is a choice if we're doing it right.

Just like old age, which comes on us in an instant, and there we are all unprepared, the need to be merciful needs preparation...a lot of preparation...and still we're often caught flatfooted when the need arrives.

We need to start preparing early on. Not for mercy per se, but for the willingness to change our way of thinking...to detach from reliance on our reasoning mind in order to seek the spiritual mindset.

The secret is in the need (God's word) to use mercy as our every-day-in-every-way yardstick. Ah...there's the key to the peace of mind we seek. Which we cannot get without giving.

We get peace of mind by extending mercy to the snarker (don't respond in kind), the bore (pull up  our unused patience), the cut-in-line one (extend a silent thank you)...which we fail more often than not.

And there's our gift!...we receive God's mercy. We learn to extend mercy by our very need for it.

Thank you.