February 16, 2025
6th Sunday after Epiphany, Year C
Donald Seekins
the Quality of Mercy
“The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the world of Politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal immigrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!” (From @realDonaldTrump)
Unless you have been hibernating like a bear this winter, you know I am quoting Donald Trump. He is reacting to comments made in a sermon by Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C., at a service held at the National Cathedral on the occasion of Trump’s inauguration as 47th president. But what, exactly, did Bishop Budde say that aroused Trump’s deep disapproval?
Looking directly at the president, she said: “I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now . . . There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives . . . The vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and help here.”
As Bishop Budde spoke, Trump, his family members and his vice-president JD Vance reacted visibly, frowning and shaking their heads. Mr. Big, as I like to call Trump, and his vice-president “stubble-face” Vance had expected to hear praise from the pulpit, not a scolding. They were shocked, disgusted. Wasn’t Trump now the most powerful man in America? In the world? Didn’t he deserve the bishop’s homage? Like the homage offered to him a few days ago in the White House by Prime Minister Ishiba?
I am no fan of Japanese nationalism, but even I cringed when I saw poor Ishiba bowing before the MAGA God-Emperor. What humiliation!
Trump has repeatedly told his followers that “I am your retribution.” Recently, he decreed that USAID, the most important agency in the US government for the distribution of humanitarian aid around the world, be scrapped. This is despite the fact that millions of starving people in countries like Ethiopia and Sudan depend upon USAID for food and medical care. On the Myanmar-Thailand border, American aid to Myanmar refugees has been suddenly shut down, depriving thousands of people of USAID-supplied medical care.
Trump has – as Bishop Budde said – repeatedly targeted certain groups as dangerous “Others”: immigrants, sexual minorities, poor people (especially if they are non-white), and anyone associated with something Mr. Big calls “the left.” Also, he plans to fire tens of thousands of US government workers without concern for how their lives and those of their families will be ruined.
And on top of that, he wants to punish South Africa for persecuting its white citizens; his real motivation is to get payback for South Africa’s bringing the case of Israel’s killing of Palestinians to the International Court of Justice. Remember, Miriam Adelson gave Trump US$100 million to buy Mr. Big’s loyalty to Israel.
Trump is definitely not a merciful person. He approaches his opponents, both domestic and international, in the spirit of the old Roman saying: vae victis! Or “woe to the vanquished.”
As a person, I have to admit that I find Trump less contemptible than Biden, who polished his image of being a “decent and compassionate guy” while enabling the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. I like to think that God reserves an especially uncomfortable corner of Hell for hypocrites. But my remarks today are about neither Trump nor Biden, but about the Quality of Mercy, which both Trump and Biden so evidently lack.
In Latin, mercy is misericordia. Its antonym is crudelitas, cruelty. If you visit Macau, which was a Portuguese colony established in 1557 and only absorbed by China in 1999, you can see a large building in the center of town, the Casa da Misericordia. The House of Mercy. As C.R, Boxer wrote in his excellent Fidalgos in the Far East, it was founded soon after Macau became a Portuguese settlement and was one of 20 such Casas established throughout the Portuguese Empire.
The funds which supported this great endowment were entirely derived
from private charity and from legacies in mortmain . . . When the
Advocatus Diaboli has had his say, it remains true that whatever was
done in the way of mitigation of the inevitable ills of humanity, was
done wisely, sympathetically and reasonably honestly by the
Misericordia (p. 217).
Its tasks included: “teaching the ignorant; consoling the sorrowful, praying to God for the living and the dead; giving food to the hungry; giving drink to the thirsty; clothing the naked; visiting the sick and prisoners; giving shelter to the weary; ransoming captives; and burying the dead” (ibid., p. 218). The directors of the Misericordia did not limit their aid-giving to Christians; even Chinese non-Christians were included.
We should remember than in past centuries, life was often nasty, brutish and short. But the powers-that-be, including the Catholic Church, did not consider being poor or suffering misfortune to be a sin, or the rich to be blessed by God.
A dictionary definition of mercy runs as follows: “compassion or forbearance shown especially to an offender or to one subject to one’s power . . . a blessing that is an act of divine favour or compassion.” It is the opposite of the old Roman maxim of vae victis, “woe to the vanquished.” It is also central to the Christian religion. In our services, we always repeat the Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison: “Lord have Mercy, Christ have Mercy.” In Matthew 5:7, it is written that “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” And in Ephesians (2: 4-5), Paul writes that “God, who is rich in mercy … even when we were dead through our trespasses made us alive through Christ.”
Mercy is a universal religious principle. In Buddhism, karuna, compassion, is one of the ideal states of mind, along with metta, loving kindness. The difference between the two is interesting: karuna is the wish to relieve the suffering of others, while metta is the desire to make others happy. Karuna is an important principle not only in Buddhism but in other Indian religions, Hinduism and Jainism. In Islam, Al-Raheem, the “most merciful,” is one of the basic attributes of Allah.
Even despots recognize the importance of mercy. The author of Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky, had been condemned to death by a Tsarist court but was spared at the last moment, just before he was to be put before a firing squad. If the Tsar had not shown mercy, the world would have lost one of its greatest writers. The Myanmar military junta customarily offers amnesty to hundreds of prisoners as an act of mercy, though this rarely includes political opponents of the regime. Governors of U.S. states have the power of amnesty, which includes taking convicted criminals off death row.
Trump and his followers are all about vengeance, retribution. Vengeance looks toward the past, at acts of injustice or violence done to oneself or those people one loves. It is the ethic of drug cartels, the mafia, the Russian bratva or the yakuza. For criminals, mercy is weakness and to act mercifully is to set oneself up as a target for one’s enemies, who are always merciless. In the vengeance department, Netanyahu is genuinely Trump’s soul-mate, since he uses the Holocaust to justify the genocide of the Palestinians. Secretly, I think, zealous Zionists fantasize that they are murderous SS officers. That the perpetrators of the Holocaust were Europeans, not Arabs, is irrelevant. Vengeance obeys no law but the desire to inflict pain on those either guilty or innocent.
Mercy looks toward the future. Those who are merciful realize that while the law sanctions punishment of the guilty, the promiscuous use of violence to settle scores will create a brutal world, a world like that of the late 1930s and early 1940s when Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan invaded neighboring countries and slaughtered millions. Moreover, vengeance, getting even, an eye for an eye, has a way of contaminating the entire human world. Allowing powerful states to act in a lawless, retributive way will universalize cruelty.
Human history has been violent, bloody. Yet mercy, like seams of light shining out from the surrounding darkness, has also been a part of our past as well as our present. One of the lessons of World War I that was learned by the victorious Allies of World War II was that holding entire peoples responsible for the crimes of their leaders will only perpetuate the cycle of vengeance. Hitler was a child of the Treaty of Versailles and the Allies’ determination to punish the entire German people for the war, burdening them with heavy war indemnities and annexing much German territory. In 1945, there was a conscious appreciation that it was bad leaders who should be punished, not entire peoples. Sadly, both Trump and Netanyahu have forgotten this lesson as they work together to erase the Palestinians from the face of the earth.
Despite the Cold War, the spirit of mercy in 1945 gave us a rare peace that only seems to be falling apart now. We do indeed live in dark times. And we must keep the light of mercy alive, even as powerful leaders seek to snuff it out.
