Jesus loves to teach me through our family downtown. One recent lesson was in the school of mercy. Besides being a bit of a buzzword in the Church these days, mercy is one of our community’s charisms and is the focal point of our community formation this year… I hear about it a lot! But so far, my most poignant lesson in mercy has come from observing mercy at work downtown.
Once a week, I usually grab lunch at the Unity Kitchen – the Urban Mission’s “soup kitchen.” Due to COVID, it’s being served as a take-out these days, but there’s usually a group of people who sit and eat their lunch on the stoop or the ramp of the church building. One week, there was a pretty disturbed man who was intermittently shouting and cursing into his phone as we ate. After the first outburst, one diner popped around the corner just to see what was going on and if he knew the other man. He came back with a profoundly sorrowful and compassionate expression on his face – “Oh, yeah, I know him. Feel bad for the guy – he’s had a lot of problems, had a hard family and all…”
Mercy was my companion’s instinctual response to another man’s suffering – even when the other’s suffering was causing annoyance, disturbance, and even a little fear (at first) to himself. He did not go around the corner to shut this other man up or tell him he was a nuisance. He didn’t find someone to complain to or call the police. Rather, he saw him and had mercy.
I left the group for a moment to greet someone who was passing by and when I returned, there was another woman there, someone I know pretty well. Though her life is clearly one long crucifixion and she is obviously marked by suffering, I must admit, I often find myself growing impatient with her, weary of her litany of problems and the aggressive way she lists them off. As I rejoined the group, one of the gentlemen there said, “Sister – you gotta pray for her. She needs it bad.” So I asked if I could (she has refused me in the past!), and when she acquiesced, every hat in the circle came off as the four or five raggedy men eating their lunch on the ramp of the Urban Mission stood at attention and joined me in prayer for our sister. One man extended his hands in blessing, and another added his own prayer at the end. Certainly, they have heard this woman and her woes more often than I – and still their immediate response to her was mercy, compassion, and even tenderness.
Who are the disturbing, annoying, frightening, and tedious people in your lives? Who is there in your circle who seems to be an endless abyss of need? To whom are you most likely to harden your heart in fear or disgust? I invite you to join me in imitating the Unity Kitchen “lunch club” and together learn mercy.
Watch a beautiful 3-min. video about our ministry in downtown Steubenville here.
-Sr. Agnes Therese Davis, T.O.R.
