Perfect Mercy

"Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful"You see, then, that Christ has two natures in one Person, one which always was and another which began to be. And according to that nature which was eternally his, he always knew everything. But according to that which began in time, he experienced many things in time. In this way he began to know the miseries of the flesh, by that mode of cognition which the weakness of the flesh instructs. Our first parents were wiser and happier when they did not know that which they came to know only foolishly and in wretchedness. But God their Creator, seeking what was lost, came down in mercy in pursuit of his wretched creatures, to where they had miserably fallen. He wanted to experience for himself what they were suffering because they had gone against his will. He came not out of a curiosity like theirs, but out of a wonderful charity. He did not intend to remain wretched among them, but to free those who were wretched as one made merciful. Therefore Christ was made merciful, not with that mercy which he who remained happy had had from eternity, but with that mercy which he discovered in our fleshly garb as he himself went through our misery. -St. Bernard 

This morning, as I prayed through the gospel reading, I must admit, I found myself getting angry. Give and you'll be rewarded?! Oh really? Then why do I feel like I give and give and give, yet I still struggle under the weight of the same crosses day after day? I must have written the word "why" a thousand times in my journal. And then I read the quote above...

Slap.

Christ took on flesh, experienced the misery of human life (in the worst possible way), all for the sake of offering me the hope I lacked this morning. Christ doesn't just offer us perfect mercy from His seat in Heaven; no, he offers mercy that has carried every cross. He gives mercy that can relate to every struggle. He gives mercy that perfects the imperfect. 

So when I give and give and feel as if all my struggles aren't being received, I need only to remember one thing: Mercy.