Lent, a special time for corporal and spiritual works of mercy
Abstinence is not only giving up something pleasurable, like chocolate or coffee. One can find how to deepen the meaning of the commandments in John Paul II’s catechesis. Pope Francis calls for the rediscovery of all forms of poverty. Mercy is not goodness, but has a strong political connotation.
Beirut (AsiaNews) – We enter Lent the way a boxer enters the ring. Too often however, we do it without the imagination of a child. Our thoughts go straight for the chocolate, as if in an affluent society like ours, we were unable to replace it with a number of other gratifications, whilst giving ourselves the illusion of austerity.
It is as if we reduced the art of boxing to direct jabs, when in fact to be a good boxer, we need to know when to wait, pull back, feign and hit. We are hit and we hit. We tire our adversary, and surprise him before a final jab to knock him out. The same goes for fasting.
Drinking a coffee is one of those morning rituals that keeps us in balance, that casts our mind on the day, which many choose to see as "sacrifice" or a meritorious denial for Lent. Indeed, it is so.
This is why it is also a joy to see people hasten to make coffee just minutes before noon so that at the strike of the midday, the steaming black liquid can start to pass their lips into their throat, providing a delicious feeling of warmth that makes its way to the stomach from where it will radiate throughout the body, with the clear conscience of an act performed for the Eternal One.
We see these people in the office, at the entrance of buildings, on the threshold or inside empty shops at midday, people quietly sitting with their colleagues around the coffee machine, savouring the cup with the first cigarette of the day.
These simple deeds should go further into the heart of the one who shaped us in mind and clay. For what? Chocolate, coffee, is that it? A small effort of the imagination can lead us further into the deep waters of Lent, where rumours of the world fall silent, and where the light breeze that caressed Adam’s face blows, like on the first morning of the world.
John Paul II provided a major cycle of catechism that can help those who want to deepen their understanding of this time. In a well-elaborated synthesis, it offers the list of corporal and spiritual works of mercy the Church recommends to the faithful who want to penetrate the profound meaning of the commandments. Few adults know them. Pope Francis rescued them from oblivion for this year, which he dedicated to mercy.
The seven traditional corporal works of mercy follow the Gospel of Matthew (Ch. 25): feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, welcoming strangers, helping the sick, visiting prisoners and burying the dead.
The seven spiritual works of mercy are very concrete actions that affect all domains of life: advising those who are in doubt, teaching the ignorant, warning the sinners, comforting the afflicted, forgiving those who offended, patiently bearing with ungrateful people, and finally praying for the living and the dead.
In his effort to reawaken our conscience, Francis especially this year has called on us to discover all forms of poverty: spiritual (inner emptiness, indifference, spiritual apathy); physical or economic; cultural (illiteracy, lack of education, exclusion); social and relational (loneliness, grief, isolation).
For us Christians in the Arab world, there is nothing easier than knowing what mercy is. In Arabic, mercy is rahmeh. Which is also a proper name. To grasp this better, imagine a man called John Mercy. In Arabic, rahmeh and the word "womb" have the same root. Mercy is to the men and women of this earth what the womb is to the unborn child: it envelops and protects them. It is the coffer of life, the inviolable sanctuary of primary integrity, the source of sources, far beyond anything that eroticism can imagine or guess. Mercy is the sparkling eyes of the boys and girls we lift and throw into the air to catch with a laughter, showing them off all around.
As already noted, the Church considers burying the dead as a work of mercy. One day, this pious work had to be done. Today however, it is hard to imagine someone going around the neighbourhood to see who has not been buried. Today, burying the dead means protecting their reputation; it means not tarnishing their memory; it means stopping the wars of succession that we are engaged in within the same family; it means the tricks we use to defraud others, or the traps that violent people set to catch ordinary people in their nets.
Burying the dead means burying grudges and safely closing the lid on the "drawer" in the morgue where the body lies. Mercy can be the patient word we tell someone who irritates us by reiterating the confidence we have given him or her a hundred times . . . It can be an anonymous donation to a charity whose beneficiaries we shall never know, but which we trust will be properly given. . . . It is the deed that we have dreamt of doing for a long time, but which we never dared to turn into action . . . It is the generosity which we know possible, and even reasonable, and which we postpone from one Lent to the next.
Yet, mercy is not goodness. It goes well with the indignation caused by injustice, and doing something merciful can also mean siding with the most vulnerable, restoring the truth when necessary, upholding the law, and speaking out against corruption. Mercy is a political expression. The works of mercy are works of compassion, inner works of mercy, like the bunch of keys hanging from our belt when one day we shall reach the Seven Gates of Paradise.
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