Entering the Stream of Mercy
"I have always overshadowed Jonas with My mercy, and cruelty I know not at all. Have you had sight of Me, Jonas My child? Mercy within mercy within mercy." (Thomas Merton-The Sign of Jonas p.362)
"For God so loved the world, that He gave
His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have
eternal life." (John 3:16)
"If you knew the gift of God, and who it is
that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he
would have given you living water." (John 4:9)
Christ- the Stream of
Loving Mercy
My dear friends, there is a
stream of Mercy that flows through us and through the entire world. Mercy is
Divine Love extending into all of life, reaching and healing with its tender
touch, calling us Home unto Itself. God did so love the world that He gave the
gift of Himself, Divine Love, as total gift in the person of Jesus the Christ.
Many of us know that hidden Stream of Mercy as Person in Jesus, the risen and
universal Christ. He is, as he promised the Samaritan woman, the gift of God,
the Living Water that springs up within us, if we are willing. Our journey in
this life is to unite our life and the life of the world with this universal
Stream of Mercy who is Christ, and to offer the soul of the world to His
healing touch. Salvation is this journey of soul healing, our soul and the soul
of the world. We make our souls accessible to His healing touch not by a
passive credence in the historical Jesus alone but by giving ourselves in trust
to Him in relationship of communion, as He is, the Light and Life of the World,
present in our hearts. "For God so loved the world that He gave his only
begotten Son..." (John 3:16) And this Life of Christ is offered to all who
seek him in calling on his Holy name. "I have come that they might have
Life and have it fully." (Matt. 10:10)
The Human Condition of
Suffering
As Jesus wept over Jerusalem
so we also weep over the human state in our world. We weep over the wounded and
broken state of our souls and the soul of humankind. Greed, fear, violence, and
cruelty rule our world and too often rule our private lives as well. Yet the
institutions of religion have fallen short in this mission of bringing healing
to our world. Too often they have tried to substitute themselves for the Living
Christ or tried to make of themselves an intermediary. Too often Christians
struggle with who owns the power, the recognition, and how the institutional
structure will be funded in religion. The Good News is that Jesus offers
himself eternally in the fullnes of his love as total gift, without
intermediation. The Good News, my friends, is that Jesus is present to us in
the temple of the Heart and not the temple of bricks and mortar on the hill.
We have an intuition that in
our tears God weeps in us and with us. And deep within us, more clearly than
ever, there is a greater faith that only the loving mercy of God will suffice.
The promise of the Gospel to those on the Christian path is that we can unite
our soul with this loving Mercy from the Heart of God in the person, Jesus, and
therein find healing, peace, and communion. This Person is manifest in the
Jesus of history, and the triune Godhead is accessible to us as Person in the
Universal Risen Christ, our every-moment companion and Life of our life.
"All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came
into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the
Light of people." (John
1:3). Whether we are religious or
not, whether we belong to a denomination or not, whether we attend a church or
not, we can unite our soul with the Light of God, whom we know as Christ,
friend, companion, beloved spouse of the soul, our beginning and our end, our
Light and Salvation.
The Gift of God's Own Self
Jesus said to the woman at
the well that he is the "gift of God" and that whoever asks may
receive the "living water" gushing forth from within. This Stream of
Mercy is Christ and we may enter and find our life in this Living Water gushing
forth from God. To enter this stream Jesus says we need only ask, and we can
ask by simply calling on His name. In the Judeo-Christian tradition to call or
be called "by name" means intimate personal knowledge. This union
with Christ transcends all divisions of belief, doctrine, denomination and
history. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free,
there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
(Gal. 3:28)
The Person of Christ- Our
Sole Religion
Our mistake has been that we
substitute our religious institutions for the Living Christ, our true source of
Life. The person of Jesus, the universal Christ, should be our sole religion,
and communion with Christ our sole religious practice. Institutions may have
their place in preserving tradition. They are no substitute for the Eternal
Beloved who meets us as Person in the Risen Christ. Those persons who seek
healing from addiction have made Higher Power of God their sole refuge and the
12 steps their practice. They have no churches, denominations, or institutions.
Yet Recovery happens. When we come to abide in the Person of Christ at the
center, not the concept or the institution, then we enter the Stream of Mercy
who is Christ and are carried into the great Ocean of the Godhead whom Jesus
called "Abba" or Father. The soul healing of Salvation happens.
Regardless of the wide
differences in denominational affiliation, our beliefs, our loyalties, or lack
of them, all of us on the Christian path can make the person Jesus, our true
and only religion. We can let communion with his Heart of Mercy be our singular
practice. Our souls and that of humankind are in desperate need of the Stream
of Mercy emanating from His heart to find healing. The ancient spiritual
tradition of the Jesus Prayer comes to us from the deserts of the Middle East
in the earliest centuries of the Christian Way. This path offers us a doorway
into this Stream of Mercy, no matter who we are and where we find ourselves in
life. We can become the vessel of His Life of Mercy in the world. We can become
the lit flame and polished lamp of his Fire of Love. "Ask and it shall
be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you." (Matt. 7:7)
