The Mercy Driven Life

Choosing to be courageous unto death to self in public or on a Cross for someone else is the way of the Mercy-Driven Life.

That which motivates a life is more powerful than any obstacle. It is the reason behind every thought and act. It is what we dream about and what fulfills us more than all else together. A motivation which comes from God can be more powerful even than the desire to procreate, belong to a group and survive. No one or nothing can buy or bribe away or calm the fervor of a God given motivation. And the strongest of all motivations is Mercy.

We believe Mercy is what motivates Jesus and Mary and the Church. Mercy demands total commitment and holds no regrets. Understanding Mercy we understand Jesus, Mary and the Church which includes all the Saints. Let the greatest of Saints, Saint Joseph teach you the Mercy-Driven Life. (Mary is the Mother of God and therefore in a category all her own when it comes to being a Saint.)

A Mercy motivated life is synonymous with being the bleeding Heart of Jesus for the world. If your life is motivated by Mercy than you can no more stop the flow of Mercy from the pierced Heart in you than you could have stopped Jesus from dying on the Cross for us.

Every other motivation except Mercy falls short of what the Heart knows is the best. Every other motivation no matter how much it drives us to accomplish the objectives of that motivation is finite and therefore unfulfilling. Success in business is only a means to better live out a life of Mercy. Activities and sports and vacations and every hour of every day are lived out joyfully, knowing that all things work together in order to help us receive and reflect Mercy.

Mercy motivation makes life at once
extremely easy and extremely difficult.

When what motivates us is reduced to pure Mercy, life becomes at once extremely easy and extremely complex. Firstly, it becomes easy because Mercy is both the motivating force and objective of life. Whatever does not fit into Mercy’s plan becomes superfluous and falls away without effort. Secondly, it becomes difficult because being the Heart of Jesus makes you responsible to change the world around you through Mercy. Nothing will be able to stop you, not age nor sickness nor fear of humiliation nor death. Nothing! Isn’t this pretty much a simple explanation of why the Saints went on loving and forgiving while they were being thrown to lions or wicked governments.

Mercy does not negotiate a truce. Mercy can not be reasoned with. There is nothing to offer as better than a Mercy-Driven Life. What pray tell could be offered to renounce a Mercy-Driven Life? What? In a Mercy-Driven Life we have the keys to Paradise. The angel stops swinging his sword and the gates swing open to the Tree of Life. Anything offered in comparison would be like offering sand in the place of food or silence in the place of hearing the voice of the one we love the most. Mercy laughs even at judgment and Hell. Mercy wins, always. Even when it seems that Mercy has lost She has won by submitting to a temporary loss.

The everyday Mercy-Driven life is lived by continually facing down those obstacles to the Heart’s motivating instincts. As we respond to the Heart’s impulses those who are constantly watching us are inspired themselves to become reflectors of the Divine Mercy. They take courage and believe they can do something with their lives no matter what their present situation.

An example which has inspired me is exhibited by a creative program called Tengo Una Ilusion (I Have a Dream). I am not sure what the motivating force or end objective of the show is but since we try to see everything through the eyes of Mercy, we got Mercy out of it. And since it is in Spanish I may have missed the point, so please have Mercy on me if you know the show and see it differently. Here’s how it came across.

There are several famous people asked to participate. Each one has chosen a sick or poor or otherwise needy person as their godchild. The godparents are actors and singers and journalists and even a priest. The famous person is asked to face what he may fear the most in his own life to reveal to the godchild and to all of us who are watching that you can achieve something in life even though you have an extreme handicap. He or she is asked to face what he or she fears the most for someone else. This is done in real time. In parenthesis, I would say that I have never seen a better presentation on Television.

What do you fear the most? That is what you are asked to do. How about standing in front of a huge crowd and singing in public. The catch here is that the two people I heard could not sing well. They didn’t seem to think they could either. But they were trying with all their Hearts to do it for those they love. One woman was asked to repel off a forty story building and had not been a rock climber or window washer. Another man after only a brief training went into a bull ring and risked his life facing a vicious charging bull over and over.

My prize would have to go to a man named Manuel who was a humble middle aged journalist. He was the sponsor or godfather of a woman older than himself. He was asked to go into a cage of six four hundred pound white tigers and crack the whip and put the tigers through their paces. The trainer was there also, but Manuel faced the tigers himself. And he was terrified. His hands were shaking and the sweat and fear was obvious on his face.

The tigers were on stands higher than Manuel and they were crouched and growling. Now remember this is a journalist and not a tiger trainer. He had never been in a tiger’s cage before. Have You? As he apprehensively cracked the whip and tried to appear calm and in control the tigers just stared at him as though they were trying to decide which limb to tear off first. The man had no gun. He could not have run if they had attacked. There was nowhere to go but to face his fear. He was not doing it for money or personal glory, he was doing it for those of us who were cheering for him from our safe seat on the bed. No amount of money or personal glory or prior coaching could have gotten me in that cage. I was scared to death.

As he tried again and again finally the tigers started jumping through their hoops. The finale was when he had to get on a swing right behind an immense toothy tiger. The tiger sat on his feet while the swing was hauled into the air and swung back and forth. He was holding on for dear life with a terrified look on his face.

The strange thing was that the crowd including me were crying. I don’t know about the others but I was crying because my Heart was so touched by the courage of this normal man. I was crying because he was reflecting Mercy by facing a cringing fawning fear for someone else.

When it was over and he stood with the woman he was sponsoring there was no doubt about the message conveyed. You may have physical or mental disabilities. You may be fighting addictions or culturally imposed poverty. You may have lost most of both legs as one man had. But if you will take courage and dream and face the overwhelming obstacles before you, then you will win. No tiger can stop you no matter how vicious.

Mercy is choosing to face that which we fear the most
so others find courage to become
what they were created to be.

Mercy is choosing to face what we fear the most in order to help others become what they were created to be in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Forget for a moment why the man should not have gotten into the cage with the tigers and please ask yourself this question. What do I fear that if I face it, the courage will not only help me but those around me? What dream can I pull from the Heart of hurting humanity through a courageous act?

I can not answer for you but I can answer for me. There are three tigers that I have had to face continually for many years. The first is the fear of living old age in poverty and having to beg for me and my family to survive. The second is the fear of a prolonged physical suffering before dying. Third is the fear of testifying to the love of Jesus Christ with people I have never met on the streets and door-to-door. I have faced these tigers many times. I sometimes feel like they are growling at me or sitting on my spirit. Pray for me that I will take courage to the last and face my fears until someone else begins to dream that they can also face their fears.

For in fact our tigers are within us. They take many forms but can all be reduced to one word - fear. Fear of death, fear of life, fear that what we have done can not be forgiven, fear that we will be alone for the rest of our lives, fear of cancer or Alzheimer’s. The list is endless but the root tiger is “fear of.” Fear causes war within us and between us. Fear leads to prejudice and oppression. I believe that fear is easily on a level with pride as our worst enemies. Neither will go with us to Heaven.

Can we be free from all fear? I don’t know. I am not there yet; but as love manifested through Mercy is growing in me, fear is decreasing. The Apostle of the Sacred Heart, John, tells us in the first epistle of John that perfect love casts out all fear.

The Mercy-Driven life is the same whether you are a student or a banker or a plumber or a single mom or a missionary like us. Any act of Mercy flowing out of our Hearts will not be in vain. Individually and together we can be free from fear, change our hurting selves and heal our wounded world. It can only be done by becoming “Misericordia.”

Formulating an honest daily self interrogation is one way to keep the priority of a Mercy-Driven Life. Here is an example. “Is what I am doing, praying, suffering, meditating on part of a conscious choice to help others along the way to a Mercy-Driven Life? If not than I will change those activities, prayers, sufferings, and meditations to conform to the Heart of God in me. Is my mind totally permeated by the Heart’s dictates thus willfully and joyfully and calmly submitting to Jesus, Mary and the Church, being free from the fears and angers and irritations and bitterness that result in unmerciful reactions? Is my body responding to the dictates of my Heart of Mercy receiving and reflecting Mercy like the shepherd and the sheep in the Mercy icon?

Formulating a prayer like the following can be helpful. We try to meditate on it a minimum of twenty times a day. It is so easy to stray from the Mercy-Driven path.
“Oh, my Jesus, flood all of my being with Your life giving Words (spoken from the Cross). My Heart says “yes” to the crucified life. With Mary I let myself be taken by You as a Kind Consecrated Host for the service of my family, the love of my Church, the unity of Your Body and the salvation of the World. Amen.”

Our Lord’s willing sacrifice of Himself in the humiliation and agony of the Cross calls us to dare not only to overcome our own weakness but then to willingly choose to face tigers for our neighbor. Jesus said, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow Me.” He reflected Mercy the most when He was dying voluntarily on the Cross. From There He is inviting us to become Mercy.