Mercy Me!

Tuesday of the 3^rd Week of Lent

Daniel 3:25, 34-43

Psalm 25

Joel 2:12-13

Matthew 18:21-35

A couple years ago, when I bought my little VW Jetta Wagon I really thought it was kind of novel.  But then they were everywhere.  Certainly it wasn’t because they heard I got one;)  Ever since Pope Francis called for the Year of Mercy, I see Mercy in every reading!  Mercy didn’t just appear but the call to pay attention to it changes my vision.  It is evidence of the subtleness of seeing what we expect to see.

Today I wonder what it takes to be moved with compassion.  That’s the difference between the two “lenders.”  There is a physical side to compassion.  It isn’t remote.  Perhaps sympathy is a better word for the remote variety…the hallmark card, the e-mail, the plea on television.  But to be moved with compassion happens in the proximate.  The suffering…the passion…of another is palpable in the tone of voice, in the body language, in the raw fear.  So, to be moved with compassion is to be in sync with another/others and to take on their pain as one’s own. 

So what it takes to be moved with compassion is to believe that to do so is constitutive to my humanness and not to do so is a diminishment, and to believe that it is possible to absorb, at least a tiny portion, of another’s suffering by being open to that physical and proximate companionship. 

To be moved with compassion is a sacrament of God’s palpable and merciful presence.  May I be so moved.