The Jeus Prayer Part 12 - Mercy in the Orthodox Tradition

Kontakion From the Akathyst Hymn to Our Sweetest Lord Jesus Christ
To Thee, the Champion Leader and Lord, the Vanquisher of Hades, I, Thy creature and servant, offer a song of praise, for thou hast delivered me from eternal death. But as Thou hast ineffible loving-kindness, from all dangers that can be do Thou deliver me, that I may cry to Thee: Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me.

Having looked at how mercy is defined and expressed within the context of scripture in both the New Testament and the Old Testament, I am going to look at mercy within the context of Orthodox Tradition, primarily within our main worship service, the divine liturgy. My two main resources for this are the service book used in my church, and my personal prayer book. Mercy as it is expressed within Tradition should not be viewed as an addition to or seperate from scripture, but must be understood within the context of how I have discussed mercy in the scriptures in my last two posts.

Before vesting for the liturgy, the priest recites "Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us, for laying aside all excuse, we sinners offer to Thee, as to our Master, this supplication: have mercy on us.", calling on God's mercy to accept and guide the service of the priests as they minister to Christ's flock, and to accept the worship of all the people that will be gathered together. In the Trisagion (thrice holy) prayers, we cry out "Holy God! Holy Mighty! Holy Immortal! Have mercy on us." and ask the Trinity to have mercy on us by cleansing our sins, pardoning our transgressions, and healing our infirmities by God's presence as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the prayer before the first antiphon, God's mercy is described as "immeasurable" while we ask God to "impart the riches of Thy mercy and Thy compassion to us and to those who pray with us". In the prayer of fervent suplication, we ask God to "have mercy on us according to the multitude of Thy mercy. Send down Thy bounties upon us and upon all Thy people who await the rich mercy that comes from Thee.". We finally end with the dismissal of "May He who rose from the dead, Christ our true God, through the prayers of... all the saints: have mercy on us and save us, for He is good and loves mankind.", proclaiming Christ as the source of our mercy and trusting Him to answer the petitions of all that pray to Him with us and on our behalf.

The response to many of the petitions prayed for in the various litanies throughout the liturgy is "Lord, have mercy". This response has a twofold meaning. First, just as the Psalms describe the very act of answering prayer to be a mercy, we acknowledge that is a mercy of God just to be heard by Him and to have our prayers answered. In responding with "Lord, have mercy", the people unite their prayer with the priest or deacon chanting the petition so that the entire congregation may be of "one accord in prayer and supplication". Second, just as the entirety of scripture describes any act of compassion and kindness to be a mercy, we ask that our petitions be answered and acted on as mercies from God. In the various litanies we ask that His mercy be "according to Thy great goodness" and that all answers to our prayers are done "O God, by Thy grace". We also pray "having remembered all the saints" as we are mindful of our angels who behold the face of our Father in heaven, the great "cloud of witnesses" who have finished their race in faith, and all those who are gathered in the Church in this life "called to be saints" in Christ. In the great litany we pray for "the peace from above and for the salvation of our souls", for the welfare of our churches and all those that "enter with faith, reverence, and the fear of God", for our bishops, priests, deacons, and all the people, for our civil authorities entrusted with our care and our military entrusted with our defense, for "seasonable weather" and "abundance of the fruits of the earth", travelers, the sick and suffering, prisoners (whom Christ personally identified Himself with in Matthew 25), and our "deliverance from all affliction, wrath, danger, and necessity". We pray for those departed this life and that their sins are forgiven and they be established among the just. We pray for those about to be sacramentally received into the Church that God may "teach them the word of truth", "reveal to them the gospel of righteousness", and "unite them to His Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church".

Before beginning the prayers for the celebration of Communion, the celebration itself is referred to as "a mercy of peace, a sacrifice of praise". It is a "mercy of peace" because that just as Paul writes that we "shew the Lord's death till he come" as often as we "eat this bread, and drink this cup", and it is through Christ's sacarifice of Himself on the cross that "we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life" in His resurrection. And just as "we being many" are "one body" because "we are partakers of that one bread", we offer ourselves up to God in unity with Christ as a "sacrifice of praise".

There are a number of penitential canons in which we call on Christ to have mercy on us and forgive our sins including the Canon of St Andrew which we chant every year during lent and the Supplicatory Canon to Our Lord Jesus Christ in which we ask Christ to have mercy on us as was shown in the scriptures to the prodigal son, the base harlot, and king Manasses. On cheesefare saturday we sing "take not Thy mercy from us" and that sunday "Have mercy, O Merciful One, on me who have fallen.". But the greatest mercy we chant about in our hymns is the resurrection of Christ. Our hymns of the resurrection in the third, fourth, and seventh tones all say that Christ has granted the world "great mercy" by raising us from the dead by His resurrection from the dead. This is echoed in  ode six of the Paschal Matins where we sing "Jesus, having risen from the grave as He foretold, hath granted us life everlasting and great mercy." and in the troparia for St Thomas Sunday and the Myrrh-Bearing Women. And this is because it is in and through being crucified and raised from the dead with Christ that our repentence brings us life in Him.

Through the prayers of our holy fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us.

The Jesus Prayer Part 11 - Mercy in the New Testament

Luke 10:36-37
Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

Having discussed mercy in the Old Testament, I am now going to move forward into the New Testament. A number of people are mentioned in the New Testament as crying out for mercy and for receiving it. The blind men cried out "Thou son of David, have mercy on us" seeking to receive their sight. The woman of Canaan travelled from the coast to ask Jesus to have mercy on her by healing her demon possessed daughter. Jesus was aked by the man in Matthew 17 to have mercy on his son and heal him because he was a lunatick and often fell into fire and water. Mercy was what the ten lepers cried out for and all ten received from Jesus, even though only one would return to give Him thanks. It was a great mercy from the Lord that Elizabeth was able to conceive and bear John  the Baptist beyond the age of child bearing. It was a mercy to Epaphroditus that he should be healed from being sick close to death, and Paul called that a mercy on himself also because of the sorrow that he would have felt over the loss of such a good friend and brother in the Lord. And when Paul did lose his friend Onesiphorus to death, Paul prayed for mercy both to be shown towards the Onesiohorus's household in his abscence and for Onesiphorus himself to find mercy of the Lord "in that day".

But the greatest mercy shown by God in the New Testament is the sending of His own Son and our salvation in Him. Zacharias proclaimed "That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; The oath which he sware to our father Abraham," and "Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us," in prophesy of Christ, Whom John was going to prepare the way for. Mary sang that the Lord has helped His servant Israel in remembrance of His mercy upon hearing that she would become the mother of the Son of God and Savior. It was in Christ's mission to  heal our fallen humanity that He announced that He desired mercy because He had come to call sinners to repentence. Paul writes to Titus that it wasn't by works of righteousness that we have done but according to His mercy that He saved us "by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost" in reference to our baptism wherein we are united to Christ in His death and resurrection. This doesn't exempt us from doing good works, which Paul writes elsewhere that "we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works", but only that God has saved us from destruction purely out of His love for mankind and not out of some debt that is owed to us. Peter writes that we had obtained mercy by being called from darkness to light and becoming the people of God. Paul writes that he had received mercy because his previous blaspheming was done ignorantly in unbelief and so that "first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting".

In repsonse to the great mercy that we have been shown by God, we are required to show that same mercy to those around us. We are called to be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful and that "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy". In the parable in Matthew 18, the master tells the ungrateful servant that he should also have had compassion ("mercy" in greek) on his fellowservant as the master had shown to him. Christ also used the parable of the good samaritan as an illustration of how we are to be merciful towards each other, regardless of social status or how we may feel towards each other. James writes that the one who shows no mercy shall be judged with no mercy, but mercy rejoices against judgement. We are told by Paul that when we show mercy that we are to do it with cheerfulness. But once again, the requirement to show mercy doesn't negate or replace our need to seek the lord in regular prayer, fasting, alsmgiving, church attendance, and any other religious observances that we have. When Christ reprimanded the pharisees, it wasn't for their keeping of the law and their observances, but for neglecting "the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith" where He says "these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone".

Knowing that we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let me therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that I may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.