Works of Mercy 101

Annamaria on Monday

A sermon:

My parents were good people according to just about any definition of "good."  Especially in how they treated, thought about, and talked about others.

And I went to Catholic school for seventeen years.  My parents were practicing Catholics, but not hyper demonstrative about their faith.  We went to church on Sunday, but they were what I would all calm and reflective, rather than evangelical.  They sent their kids to Catholic school as much for the quality of the education we would receive as for instruction in the tenets our religion.

The nuns who who were my teachers from kindergarten through college - Domincans and Sisters of Charity - taught me a kind and tolerant version of what I was supposed to believe.  Though I no longer practice any religion or believe in the kind of supreme being I was taught as a child to worship, the values I learned when young are still with me.

As the saying goes: "Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man."  In my case the quote - variously attributed to Aristotle, Ignatius Loyola, and Francis Xavier - would have to say "she" and "woman."   The lessons from my parents and my schooling are so deeply imbedded in me that I have no sense within me of where I leave off and they begin.  They are part of the definition of me.

One example  comes from how I was taught, in Philosophy 101, to think about the differences one finds between people, like race, color, national origin.  The nun who was my professor gave a lecture about the difference between "essence" and "accidents" in the philosophical sense.  Essence is the most basic statement one can make about a person or thing.  A chair's essence is chair.  A person's essence is person.  Everything else you can say about them are accidents.  For the chair, for example, what it is made of, what color it is, what size it is, are all accidents.  Regardless of all that, it's still a chair.  So: For a person, his or her essence is not changed by whether he is a he or she is a she, or brown skinned or blue-eyed or old or young, etc..

And so my philosophy professor taught me that being a descendant of a Mayflower passenger or an arrival on yesterday's boat of refugees does not change the nature of personhood. Or the respect due to the individual.  Nor does skin color, nor bank balance, nor anything.  Powerful stuff that has guided me throughout my life, which reinforced and gave philosophical underpinnings to my father's strong lessons of tolerance.

  

When I speak of religion here I have to talk about the one I know best, Christianity.  The brand of it that I see around me in the world today seems to have forgotten what it is supposed to be about.  A code of beliefs begun on the basis of radical love.  John 13:35: By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

My classmates and I were made to memorize two lists called "Works of Mercy."  These were actions that we should take on a regular basis.  Being human, we were not expected to be saintly all the time.  But we could improve our chances of eternal salvation if we performed works of mercy.  There are two sorts.

Corporal:

To feed the hungry;

To give drink to the thirsty;

To clothe the naked;

To harbor the harborless;

To visit the sick;

To ransom the captive;

To bury the dead.

Spiritual:

To instruct the ignorant;

To counsel the doubtful;

To admonish sinners;

To bear wrongs patiently;

To forgive offences willingly;

To comfort the afflicted;

To pray for the living and the dead.

In the face of all these lessons from my past, I have to ask: Who are these people who fill the air around them and the broadcast airwaves with hate, harsh judgment of others, despicable epithets, and too often bullets and bombs?  Do they call themselves Christians?  Or devout members of any true faith?

Imagine the world they could build if they spent their spare time performing works of mercy instead of attending rallies in favor of building walls to keep out the harborless  or in support of an administration that puts children in cages, or cuts funding for medical care for the indigent.

Works of Mercy.

Acts of Kindness.

For all persons regardless of the accidents of their birth.

You don't have to have been raised a Christian to see what an improvement this would be in the society we all have to live in.  We could try it.  It might not earn us eternal salvation, but it could salve a lot of the pain too many people are feeling.

Ya think?