By Sister Anne Curtis
Incarnation is the profound revelation of the sacredness of everything. Mercy is incarnational, a visceral response to the seeing, feeling or hearing of suffering, need or pain. Mercy love is relational, responding to those with broken hearts. This call has found a reply among those drawn to Mercy for 193 years now. We not only celebrate that this Mercy Day, but we also tune our hearts and consciousnesses to what that means given the realities of this time.
Evolutionary consciousness may not have been in Catherine McAuley’s understanding, but she was responsive to the needs of her time; she allowed her consciousness to be stretched to meet new demands. With a listening Mercy heart, we hear another call to a new consciousness of the unfolding Universe. It is a call we are being invited to from scientists, biblical scholars, theologians, ethicists, religious and spiritual seekers and Earth herself.
The Mercy covenant to serve those who are poor, sick and ignorant has been mostly understood in response to persons. Mercy is often identified with who one’s neighbor is in the story of the Good Samaritan. Cosmic thinking invites us to focus not just on the human characters in this story but also on our neighbors: the animals, the trees, air, water, stars. We are invited to engage all with compassionate, neighborly love. Caring for one another means caring for the home we share with all of creation. The circle of Mercy must be widened to include earth and all life in ‘our common home.’
Today, that consciousness, theology and spirituality call us to expand our notion of who is poor, sick and ignorant. Earth herself is suffering and sick; her creatures, soil, air and water are suffering and exploited. This is the cry of a new ‘poor,’ the other-than-human poor. It is also a cry that is intimately connected to those in the human community whose plight Jesus brought to our attention: those who hunger and thirst, lack adequate food and shelter, who are marginalized and imprisoned. The urgent call to mercy and justice comes now with not only a social but also an ecological ring. They cannot be separated. What does that mean for Mercy? As we teeter on the brink of extinction or transformation, mercy has never been more needed!
Pope Francis proposes an integral theology embodied and lived out as a global spirituality centered on the reality and effective power of mercy. Economic poverty coincides with ecological poverty. Those impoverished suffer disproportionately from environmental destruction. Reflection about the natural world under threat becomes more complex when we take into consideration the links that exist between exploitation of earth and injustice among human beings themselves.
In hindsight, we see that we have walked on the earth as if it were an object or thing to use and dispose of as we will. “We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she ‘groans in travail’” (Rom 8:22). Laudato Si #2
We are called by our deep story and the world’s needs to new and expanded understandings. Beatrice Bruteau expresses it this way: “We need a new theology of the cosmos, one that is grounded in the best science of our day…so that all the world turns sacred again…” (“God’s Ecstasy: The Creation of Self-Creating World”)
Perhaps our own ‘Journey of Oneness’ mirrors the interconnected, ever-evolving reality in which we are embedded and helps us understand the urgent call before our world. Our Mercy charism must be grounded in an evolving consciousness with a widened circle of who and what is included. “A sense of deep communion with the rest of nature cannot be real if our hearts lack tenderness, compassion and concern for our fellow human beings” (Laudato Si #91).
We will need to learn anew for our time “the true spirit of Mercy flowing on us,” the way of being merciful so that our planet might be ‘mercied’. Serving includes all created life; my neighbor includes all of creation.
The charism of Mercy resounds with not only a social but also an ecological ring because every creature and all of nature is a word that reflects the wisdom of God, an icon of the divine.