Jesus Promises Blessing and Happiness to the Merciful

 (Scriptural meditation begins at 4:22.)

Meditating on a “beatitude.”… Happy, makarios, or blessed are the merciful, Jesus says, articulating the laws of sowing and reaping which underlie the universe, and human life.
 Those who dish out mercy, and go through life gently and kindly, have a happier, less stressful experience of life, though they are not immune from the perils of our broken planet, human greed polluting our environment and our very cells, deceiving and swindling us. The merciless and unkind, however, sooner or later, find the darkness and trouble they dish out, haunting them in turn.
 Sowing and reaping, is, of course, a terrifying message for us who have not always been kind and merciful!
 But the Gospel!... the tender Fatherhood of God, the fact that the Lord Christ offered to bear the sentence, the punishment for the sins of the world-proportionate because of his sinlessness.  And in that divine exchange, streams of mercy now flow to us, slowly changing the deep structure of our hearts, minds, and characters.
 And so, we can go through life gently and mercifully, relying on Jesus and his Holy Spirit to begin and complete the work of transformation in us, as we increasingly become gentle, radiant children of God.
 

My memoir: Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India UK USA

Blog: anitamathias.com

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My book of essays: Wandering Between Two Worlds (US) and UK

Transcript

Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy,

Jesus says, articulating a law which underlies the physical universe

—and human life. What you sow you reap. 

I know some gentle merciful ones, and indeed, they are blessed,

beloved, in demand. The kindness they sow, the thoughtfulness

comes back to them with compound interest. 

Their lives are relatively free from the interpersonal conflicts

and enmities which mar so many lives.

The natural law of sowing and reaping: What you plant in

the soil of your life, after a brief or lengthy period of dormancy,

inevitably flows back to you,  thorns and nettles, or apples

and cherries. Life returns sunshine for goodness sown

and darkness and trouble for darkness and trouble sown. 

(Of course, the merciful are not immune from suffering,

in this fallen, cracked world--human greed polluting our

environment, and our very cells, and greedy people swindling us. 

Besides, there are demonic “principalities and powers,

spiritual forces of evil” contending for the soul and shalom

of good people such as Job, or many faithful Christians today.)

But, in the main, those who go through life lightly,

making allowances for human weakness, being kind

in reviews, in tipping, in how they secretly judge others,

 and what they say to or about them, meet with somewhat

 the same gentleness as they go through life. And mercy

 is what we need, we frazzled, frail, forgetful creatures, 

whose spirit is willing, but whose flesh is weak, who 

can so easily give way to unkindness and impulsively say

 and do things we regret. We need mercy as we pilgrim

 through life, and so we must rigorously train ourselves

 to dish it out: Mercy, mercy, mercy.

Blessed are the merciful, Jesus says, using the word makarios, 

Or happy. What is the opposite of being happy or blessed? 

It is to be unhappy, to live with the hatred or curses of others

because of one’s dishonest or cruel actions. Being unmerciful, and

misusing power is an addictive dark pleasure which corrupts

the heart, soul, mind, and body, creating molecules of cortisol

and adrenaline in our brains and body, changing their very chemistry.

Those who step out of God’s protection with cruelty

and unmercifulness inevitably find thorns, thistles

and stumbling blocks on their path through life.

However, sowing and reaping, the merciful finding mercy, 

while the unmerciful find misery is a terrifying message

for us who have not always been merciful, I among them.

So we, who have been unmerciful in speech, in writing,

in our actions, must repent and ask God for forgiveness.

And He will forgive. For in the Supreme Court of God, 

who is the righteous judge of all the world, Jesus Christ,

who is love, voluntarily bore the punishment, the sentence,

that the just laws of the universe, of sowing and reaping,

demand that we suffer. He bore the penalty for our 

eviscerating words, our meanness, our stinginess. 

And in what theologians call the divine exchange, because

he bore the punishment, streams of mercy can flow to us,

streams of good ideas, comfort, the certainty of God’s love,

the certainty of being his beloved child. And the more we cling

to Jesus by faith, reading, meditating on, and almost eating

his life-changing words, the more we experience change

in the deep structure of our characters, not just in what we do,

but in who we are, in the secret places of the heart.

So go through life with as much kindness as you can

while being as wise as a serpent and as blameless as a dove.

Repent of past unmercifulness, and decide once again to follow

 Jesus, to dwell in Jesus, hide yourself in Jesus, and to be merciful.

 And the love of God, and the abundance of his household

 Will flow into you and through you to the world that God so loves. 

Becoming merciful will mean a massive change in the deep structure

Of our hearts and our characters. It is partly a decision.

However, changing who we are needs the Spirit of Jesus in us,

changing us. It needs Jesus himself within us, changing us. So come,

Lord Jesus. We welcome you in. Change us. 

Holy Spirit, please come. Change us.

Veni Sancte Spiritus.

Amen.