Isaac: accepting pain

Today we hear Jesus saying to us that he desires mercy, not temple sacrifice, not the blood of bulls and sheep but mercy.  What is mercy?  Mercy is the capacity to identify with the other person in the person’s needs.  It is the ability to feel how the other person feels, it is the capacity to be pained by the pain of others, to be touched and to be moved by what they yearn for, by what they desire, to be affected and to be deeply so by what they are undergoing.

When I ministered to Tay Isaac last June 22, a Sunday, when we were alone and when I told him that I was praying for him, he told me to please do especially so that God will take away the pain – to tell God to take away the pain.  It must have been painful.  And pain is always difficult to confront – the difficulty is not just in accepting pain but most especially in understanding it. 

I came upon a quotation from the book of Morris West, the Clowns of God.  In that story the little was suffering badly and he questioned God about it – why allows us to suffer.  But God said to him in reply - In the face of suffering and pain I know what you are thinking.  You want me to heal her to take away her pain.  I could do it but I will not.  Her pain is necessary to you.  She will evoke the kindness that will keep you human.  She will remind you everyday that I am God, that my ways are not yours and that everything is in the palm of my hands.

This is what is evoked in us when we come face to face with a person in pain - the kindness that will make us human, the compassion that will make us feel what others feel, the mercy that will make us more understanding, considerate and kind.

I am sure that your father has taught you a lot, now that you have reached what you are right now.  But in his final days he has taught you something equally important.  In his pain he has taught us compassion and mercy, not by saying it or speaking about it, but by evoking it from our hearts as you joined him in his pain.  This is what Jesus is telling us – to recover our capacity for mercy and compassion as human beings and as children of a Compassionate God.

This mass then is not just a prayer of petition for the repose of his soul, but above all a thanksgiving to God for the gift of his person for the past 83 years, and especially for being till the end a father to his children.