The nature of that quality known as mercy...

Dr Andrew Kania is Director of Spirituality at Aquinas College. In recent times his writing on spiritual themes has begun drawing a much larger audience through the national web publication, OnLine Catholics. His ways of breaking open our spiritual story may be of interest to others responsible for the spiritual development of young people. Particularly appropriate to this issue of ERNN published at Easter time 2006 Andrew explores the nature of the Christian notion of Mercy in this article he entitled "The Chaos of Mercy".

Diarmuid O'Murchu, whom we have mentioned elsewhere in this edition of ERNN, places great store on the importance of story-telling in his writing. Andrew Kania might be described as a good "story teller" and it is a pleasure to provide links to other recent articles written by Dr Kania which, quite apart from their individual themes, collectively throw a useful light on the methodology we might better utilise in breaking open our Christian story.

   THE CHAOS OF MERCY...

DWARD BULWER LYTTON (1844) writes of an event which occurred on a cold winter's evening in the German city of Leipzig in the 1780's. On that night, Fredrich Schiller, the famous author of The Robbers was walking home. As Schiller passed the city bridge in the chill of evening, he caught glimpse of a young man, tears streaming down his face running headlong into the icy river. Immediately Schiller hurled off his overcoat and dived in after the man, eventually dragging him to shore. Placing his coat on the sobbing man, Schiller led him to a fireplace within the warm confines of a local tavern. It was here, in conversation, that the cause of the man's despair became known. A theology student at the University, the man had run out of funds to complete his studies, his dreams of being a priest fading, he had decided to take his own life. On hearing the story, Schiller called those in the tavern to attention. Taking off his hat, he declared that in their midst was a student in dire need, who without their assistance, would not achieve his goal to become a fine priest. Schiller thus passed his hat around the tavern, and within a short time, the funds were raised for the theologian to continue studying at Leipzig. Seeing the joy in the face of the student he had rescued, Schiller, sat down by the fireside and penned a poem, which expressed how little ways of helping one another can cement the brotherhood of mankind:

Strong custom rends us from each other -
Thy magic all together brings;
And man in man but hails a brother,
Wherever rest thy gentle wings.
Embrace ye millions - let this kiss,
Brothers, embrace the earth below!
You starry worlds that shine on this,
One common Father know!
…Let all the world be peace and love -
Cancel thy debt-book with thy brother;
For God shall judge of us above,
As we shall judge each other! [Schiller, J.C.F., von (1844): 197-199]

Later that night Schiller and his friends rejoiced, by singing the poem to the tune of a tavern ditty.

A number of years later, another German, Ludwig Van Beethoven, a pianist and composer, a man familiar to depression, battling the loss of his hearing, read the account of that evening in Leipzig, and copied on to a slip of paper the words that had been written by Schiller. Beethoven, many years Schiller's junior, kept the poem in his pocket for decades, waiting for the right source of inspiration, to give honour to that event. On a number of occasions in 1792, 1808 and 1811, Beethoven attempted to set the poem to music, but each time he sensed failure. Then in 1824, some 19 years after Schiller's death, Beethoven now a man completely deaf, conducted the premiere of his Symphony Number Nine, which included in its finale, Schiller's 'Ode to Joy'. Schiller's bravery and mercy had inspired Beethoven, and Beethoven's subsequent inspiration has since affected billions of people. What began as the rescue of a student priest who has sunk into anonymity; led to the creation of music which has touched all corners of the globe, all peoples, irrespective of language barriers and political divides. Schiller's words penned from a single act of mercy, reverberate to the present day, long after his bones and thus of Beethoven have disintegrated over time. The act is timeless, even though the actor succumbs to mortality, or as Thomas Carlyle wrote in his biography of Schiller, what is spoken in beauty "speak(s) to the immortal part of man". (Carlyle, 1825, pp. 200-201)

Zoologists teach us that the only species of animal which is able to show altruism, mercy to those outside their kinship group, is the human being. Since the dissemination of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, there has been enormous conjecture and debate on the nature of humanity. Yet more than the position of the mandible, upright posture, opposable thumbs, or any suggestion of 'missing links', what separates us from every other living creature is not something physical, but something spiritual, an exact indication from which separate template we were first struck, and Whose Image we bear.

When in the 1990's the Chaos Theory was postulated in which scientists now described how the energy expended by a butterfly's wings flying through the air echoes throughout the far reaches of the universe; what was being said, was in no way novel. Ireneus of Lyon had said the same 1800 years earlier in his discussion of the effect good and evil works have on humanity. According to Ireneus a flow-on effect occurs each time one person does good or evil. We pass the effect from generation to generation, from age to age, until, someone who is knowing, deliberately decides to put an end to the evil (or good) being perpetrated. Acts of mercy are the single atypical forces of energy which human beings produce; they are our gift, and without us, the world will eventually force its way into despair and Darwinism. Each time we fail to act mercifully, we betray our natures and our Creator, and associate with the beasts of the jungle. Any injustice, any crime, any missed opportunity to serve, flows on, like the butterfly's wings to eternity, but in yet a more powerful fashion. Any goodness that we carry out, has the complete opposite effect, and participates in the salvation of humanity.

This being said, that one act of mercy which took place seemingly so long ago on Golgotha, enacted by a man who was guiltless, but who took on to himself the sin, the ills, and frustrations of humanity, still echoes as powerfully as it did when it was caught in time in Roman occupied Palestine. It is this act of mercy which underpinned the lives of Schiller and of Beethoven, and has provided a rationale for billions of people, who have either heard of Christ, or felt him in their hearts or met him through the words and lives of a third, fourth, or fifth party. He echoes through humanity.

By looking at humanity in such a light, the imperative to be merciful, to live altruistically, we come to realise the poignancy of words offered to humanity by John Donne (1572 -1631). The Irish poet tells us in his Meditation XVII to always consider the other: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee".

Dr Andrew Thomas Kania is Director of Spirituality of Aquinas College, Western Australia. He belongs to the Ukrainian Church and is interested in ecumenical issues, mystical and practical theology, as well as contemporary problems facing religious educators. For a more extended biography and a listing of articles available on line see HERE.