Mercy Does Not Wait
There are moments when the right thing is obvious before anyone has finished explaining the rules.
A child falls. Someone reaches down.
A car slides into a ditch. Someone stops.
A neighbor becomes ill. Someone goes.
This morning’s Gospel presents precisely such a moment. A suffering man stands before Jesus while a room full of intelligent and religious men watches to see what Jesus will do.
They know the law. They know the arguments. They know that it is the Sabbath.
Jesus sees something even more immediate.
He sees the man.
Let us begin the morning there.
OPENING VERSE
Lord, open my lips.
And my mouth shall declare thy praise.
INVITATORY
Antiphon: Come, let us praise the Lord; in him is all our delight.
Psalm 94 (95)
Come let us praise the Lord with joy: let us joyfully sing to God our saviour.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and make a joyful noise to him with psalms.
For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
For in his hand are all the ends of the earth: and the heights of the mountains are his.
For the sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.
Come let us adore and fall down: and weep before the Lord that made us.
For he is the Lord our God: and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.
Today if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts:
As in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness: where your fathers tempted me, they proved me, and saw my works.
Forty years long was I offended with that generation, and I said: These always err in heart.
And these men have not known my ways: so I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: Come, let us praise the Lord; in him is all our delight.
PSALMODY
Psalm 50 (51)
Antiphon: A humble and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy. And according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity.
Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me.
To thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before thee: that thou mayst be justified in thy words and mayst overcome when thou art judged.
For behold I was conceived in iniquities; and in sins did my mother conceive me.
For behold thou hast loved truth: the uncertain and hidden things of thy wisdom thou hast made manifest to me.
Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed: thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow.
To my hearing thou shalt give joy and gladness: and the bones that have been humbled shall rejoice.
Turn away thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
Create a clean heart in me, O God: and renew a right spirit within my bowels.
Cast me not away from thy face; and take not thy holy spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and strengthen me with a perfect spirit.
I will teach the unjust thy ways: and the wicked shall be converted to thee.
Deliver me from blood, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall extol thy justice.
O Lord, thou wilt open my lips: and my mouth shall declare thy praise.
For if thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would indeed have given it: with burnt offerings thou wilt not be delighted.
A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
Deal favourably, O Lord, in thy good will with Sion; that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up.
Then shalt thou accept the sacrifice of justice, oblations and whole burnt offerings: then shall they lay calves upon thy altar.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: A humble and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
Canticle — Habacuc 3:2–4, 13a, 15–19
Antiphon: When thou art angry, O Lord, thou wilt remember mercy.
O Lord, I have heard thy hearing, and was afraid. O Lord, thy work, in the midst of the years bring it to life: in the midst of the years thou shalt make it known: when thou art angry, thou wilt remember mercy.
God will come from the south, and the holy one from mount Pharan: his glory covered the heavens, and the earth is full of his praise.
His brightness shall be as the light; horns are in his hands: there is his strength hid.
Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people: for salvation with thy Christ.
Thou madest a way in the sea for thy horses, in the mud of many waters.
I have heard and my bowels were troubled: my lips trembled at the voice. Let rottenness enter into my bones, and swarm under me. That I may rest in the day of tribulation: that I may go up to our people that are girded.
For the fig tree shall not blossom: and there shall be no spring in the vines. The labour of the olive tree shall fail: and the fields shall yield no food: the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls.
But I will rejoice in the Lord: and I will joy in God my Jesus.
The Lord God is my strength: and he will make my feet like the feet of harts: and he the conqueror will lead me upon my high places singing psalms.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: When thou art angry, O Lord, thou wilt remember mercy.
Psalm 147:12–20
Antiphon: Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem: praise thy God, O Sion.
Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem: praise thy God, O Sion.
Because he hath strengthened the bolts of thy gates, he hath blessed thy children within thee.
Who hath placed peace in thy borders: and filleth thee with the fat of corn.
Who sendeth forth his speech to the earth: his word runneth swiftly.
Who giveth snow like wool: scattereth mists like ashes.
He sendeth his crystal like morsels: who shall stand before the face of his cold?
He shall send out his word, and shall melt them: his wind shall blow, and the waters shall run.
Who declareth his word to Jacob: his justices and his judgments to Israel.
He hath not done in like manner to every nation: and his judgments he hath not made manifest to them. Alleluia.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem: praise thy God, O Sion.
SHORT READING
Ephesians 2:13–16
But now in Christ Jesus, you, who some time were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ.
For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh:
Making void the law of commandments contained in decrees: that he might make the two in himself into one new man, making peace,
And might reconcile both to God in one body by the cross, killing the enmities in himself.
SHORT RESPONSORY
The Lord hath done good things for us; in our need we cry unto him.
He is our strength and our peace.
In our need we cry unto him.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
The Lord hath done good things for us; in our need we cry unto him.
GOSPEL OF THE DAY
Luke 14:1–6
And it came to pass, when Jesus went into the house of one of the chief of the Pharisees, on the sabbath day, to eat bread, that they watched him.
And behold, there was a certain man before him that had the dropsy.
And Jesus answering, spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying: Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day?
But they held their peace. But he taking him, healed him, and sent him away.
And answering them, he said: Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fall into a pit, and will not immediately draw him out, on the sabbath day?
And they could not answer him to these things.
BENEDICTUS
Antiphon: Through the mercy of our God, the Orient from on high hath visited us, to direct our feet into the way of peace.
Canticle of Zachary — Luke 1:68–79
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; because he hath visited and wrought the redemption of his people:
And hath raised up an horn of salvation to us, in the house of David his servant:
As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets, who are from the beginning:
Salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us:
To perform mercy to our fathers, and to remember his holy testament,
The oath, which he swore to Abraham our father, that he would grant to us,
That being delivered from the hand of our enemies, we may serve him without fear,
In holiness and justice before him, all our days.
And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways:
To give knowledge of salvation to his people, unto the remission of their sins:
Through the bowels of the mercy of our God, in which the Orient from on high hath visited us:
To enlighten them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death: to direct our feet into the way of peace.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: Through the mercy of our God, the Orient from on high hath visited us, to direct our feet into the way of peace.
INTERCESSIONS
Christ our Lord came among us not to admire suffering from a safe distance, but to enter it and heal. Trusting in his mercy, we pray:
Lord Jesus, teach us the freedom of mercy.
For the Church throughout the world: that she may proclaim truth without fear and practice charity without calculation.
Lord Jesus, teach us the freedom of mercy.
For bishops, priests, deacons, religious, and all who serve God’s people: give them wisdom to distinguish fidelity from mere habit and courage to place every rule at the service of truth and love.
Lord Jesus, teach us the freedom of mercy.
For those entrusted with authority in nations and communities: give them laws that defend human dignity and hearts that never forget the persons whom laws are meant to serve.
Lord Jesus, teach us the freedom of mercy.
For our work today: keep us honest in our duties, patient with interruptions, generous with colleagues, and attentive to the person who may need us more than our schedule does.
Lord Jesus, teach us the freedom of mercy.
For our homes and families: heal old grievances, soften stubborn silences, and help us notice the needs that have become so familiar that we have ceased to see them.
Lord Jesus, teach us the freedom of mercy.
For the sick, the lonely, the anxious, the grieving, and all who find themselves fallen into a pit they cannot escape by themselves: send them help, consolation, companionship, and hope.
Lord Jesus, teach us the freedom of mercy.
For those who have died: forgive their sins and bring them into that eternal Sabbath where every wound is healed and every faithful labor finds its rest.
Lord Jesus, teach us the freedom of mercy.
For ourselves: save us from becoming so concerned with being correct that we fail to be good; give us clean hearts, clear eyes, and hands ready to help.
Lord Jesus, teach us the freedom of mercy.
OUR FATHER
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Amen.
CONCLUDING PRAYER
Almighty and eternal God, increase within us faith, hope, and charity. Teach us to love what thou commandest and to recognize thy law as the road to freedom rather than an excuse for hardness of heart.
Give us the eyes of Christ, that we may see the person before the problem, the suffering before the argument, and the opportunity for mercy before the convenience of delay.
May the good work thou hast begun in us be brought to completion in Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.
Amen.
BLESSING
May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life.
Amen.
THE PARADOX OF THE DAY
The law is most perfectly honored when it makes us free enough to do the good for which the law exists.
CHESTERTON FOR THE MORNING
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
— G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World, “The Unfinished Temple” (1910)
A CHESTERTONIAN MEDITATION
The Man in the Pit
There is something wonderfully clarifying about a pit.
A man may have extraordinarily complicated theories about responsibility, property, safety, prudence, liability, schedules, jurisdiction, and whether this is really the best time to get involved. But if his ox falls into a pit, an astonishing theological simplification occurs.
He gets the ox out.
Jesus knows this.
That is why his question in today’s Gospel is so funny and so devastating.
The Pharisees are watching him. That detail matters. They are not merely present. They are watching.
And there is an enormous difference between looking and watching.
Looking sees a man who is sick.
Watching sees a test case.
Looking asks, “Can I help him?”
Watching asks, “What will Jesus do?”
It is possible to become so interested in being right that we cease to notice reality.
That is one of the peculiar dangers of intelligent people. A stupid man may fail to help because he does not understand what is happening. An intelligent man can understand exactly what is happening and then produce seven excellent reasons for doing nothing about it.
Christ cuts through all seven.
There is a man standing there suffering.
So Christ heals him.
The Sabbath question is real. Jesus does not dismiss the law of God as foolish. He does something far more radical: he reveals what the law is for.
The Sabbath exists because man is not a machine.
He must stop.
He must worship.
He must remember that the universe continues turning while he sleeps. Wheat grows without committee meetings. The sun rises without our permission. Our hearts continue beating through the night without receiving a single emailed instruction from us.
The Sabbath is a weekly declaration of dependence.
We stop working partly to remember that God has not.
And therefore it would be very strange indeed if the day established to remind us of God’s goodness became the one day upon which goodness could not be done.
This is the comic contradiction Christ exposes.
The Sabbath is holy, therefore we cannot heal a man.
The Sabbath celebrates God’s mercy, therefore mercy must wait until tomorrow.
The Sabbath declares that man is more than his labor, therefore the suffering man before us must remain a theological abstraction.
No.
Jesus simply takes him and heals him.
There is a magnificent directness about the action.
No symposium.
No committee.
No carefully balanced position paper entitled Preliminary Considerations Concerning Hydropic Persons and Sabbath Observance.
He takes him.
He heals him.
He sends him away.
The man enters the story sick and leaves it well.
Everyone else is still arguing.
That may be one of the great tests of religion: What happens to the man in front of us?
Chesterton’s remark about the Christian ideal is especially useful here. Christianity has often been accused of being impractical, and Christians have frequently helped the accusation by failing to practice it.
But Christianity is startlingly practical.
Feed him.
Visit her.
Forgive them.
Tell the truth.
Keep your promise.
Welcome the stranger.
Care for the sick.
Bury the dead.
Give to the poor.
Love your enemy.
These are not vague sentiments. They are almost embarrassingly concrete.
The difficulty begins when the concrete person interferes with the abstract principle we had been enjoying.
It is easy to love humanity.
Humanity never telephones at an inconvenient hour.
Humanity never spills coffee in the car, forgets an appointment, misunderstands an email, or needs a ride to the doctor.
Our neighbor does.
And Christianity has made the outrageous decision to insist that the neighbor counts.
Today’s Gospel is therefore not an attack upon rules. It is an attack upon hiding behind rules.
Rules are necessary precisely because good things are worth protecting. A fence around a garden exists because there are flowers inside. But if we become fascinated by the fence and forget the flowers, we have misunderstood both the fence and the garden.
The Pharisees have become fascinated by the fence.
Jesus points to the flower.
Or, more accurately, he points to an ox in a pit.
This makes the lesson impossible to keep safely in the first century.
Every one of us has pits.
They appear in workshops and kitchens, offices and classrooms, marriages and parishes.
Someone makes a mistake.
Someone needs five minutes when we have none.
Someone is embarrassed.
Someone is carrying grief invisibly.
Someone has failed in a way that is genuinely his own fault.
And suddenly we discover how much easier justice is when it means explaining why we are not required to help.
But mercy does not begin by asking whether the ox was foolish to fall into the pit.
It begins by getting a rope.
This does not mean pretending that wrong is right. Christ never does that. Mercy is not moral confusion. Indeed, mercy requires truth because only something real can be healed.
A doctor who tells a sick man that he is perfectly healthy is not merciful.
A friend who watches another destroy himself and calls it affirmation is not merciful.
But neither is the man who possesses the truth and uses it chiefly as a reason to stand safely at the edge of the pit.
Christianity insists on the outrageous combination.
Truth and mercy.
Law and love.
Justice and forgiveness.
The clean heart of Psalm 50 and the helping hand of Luke 14.
Perhaps that is why the Christian ideal remains difficult.
It would be easier if Christianity merely commanded niceness.
It would also be easier if Christianity merely supplied rules.
Instead, it gives us Christ.
And Christ has the disturbing habit of asking what the rule means while a real human being is standing in front of us.
That question follows us into Friday morning.
There will be schedules today. Deadlines. Responsibilities. Rules. Meetings. Obligations. Things that genuinely must be done.
Christianity does not require us to despise them.
It asks something harder.
It asks us to remain awake.
To notice.
To remember that the purpose of an ordered life is not that nothing unexpected will ever happen. The purpose is that when something important does happen, we are free enough to respond.
Perhaps somebody will fall into a small pit today.
Not a dramatic one.
A discouraged coworker.
A tired spouse.
A confused student.
A stranger struggling with a door.
A friend who has gone strangely quiet.
Perhaps the interruption will arrive at precisely the wrong time.
Mercy has a talent for that.
And when it does, we can remember the strange little dinner at the Pharisee’s house.
Everyone was watching Jesus.
Jesus was watching the man.
That difference changed everything.
The world has plenty of spectators.
Today, ask God for the grace to notice the person in the pit.
And then get the rope.
CLOSING
Lord Jesus Christ, give us eyes that notice, hearts that answer, and hands that do not postpone the good that can be done today.
May we honor thy commandments not by hiding behind them, but by becoming through them the kind of people who recognize mercy when mercy is required.
And when someone falls into a pit, may we remember what thou didst do.
Take hold. Heal. Set free.
Carry that mercy into the day.
Chesterton Radio