Mercy with empty hands

Christian mercy. Photo: UOJ

A voice in a queue rises to a shout of impatience. You want to snap back, to defend your rights, but somehow manage to stay silent. On the bus, someone shoves you and does not apologize. At home, a loved one has spent three evenings in a row delivering hurtful words through clenched teeth, each one striking the soul like a needle. The tongue is ready to launch into a righteous argument, but the mind keeps pulling it back.

It is this inner labor of restraining ourselves – quiet, unseen, and difficult – that I want to speak about today. Because we are all living with exposed nerves now, and venting our accumulated stress through “righteous anger” at someone else has become one of the easiest temptations.

The oil poured into a wound

We are used to thinking that mercy belongs to people with money – or at least to those who still have enough emotional warmth left to help others. Yet in the Gospel, mercy is described not as a feeling but as an action. The Good Samaritan did not stand beside the wounded man and weep for him. He poured oil and wine into his wounds (Luke 10:34) and carried him to an inn.

In Greek, the words for “mercy” and “oil” sound remarkably similar.

In the ancient world, oil was not merely a cooking ingredient. It was medicine. It soothed pain and helped prevent infection in an open wound.

Once we understand this, the question changes. Instead of asking, “Do I feel compassion for this person?” we ask something far more concrete: “Has someone else’s pain been eased because of what I did?”

Stones in the mouth and a staircase leading downward

In the deserts of ancient Egypt, mercy toward one’s neighbor was often acquired through sheer effort of will.

The Paterikon tells us that Abba Agathon carried stones in his mouth for three years until he learned to keep silence. The rough pebbles prevented his tongue from speaking words of condemnation when life in the monastery became unbearable and one brother drove another to exasperation. The elder did not trust his own self-control, so he helped himself with practical means.

The same Agathon once received brothers who deliberately came to test his humility. They hurled serious accusations at him – pride, slander, and other sins. To every charge he replied, “Yes, that is true.” Only when they called him a heretic did he object. He accepted every accusation as a deserved blow, except falsehood against the faith.

St. John Chrysostom, knowing that not everyone possesses money for almsgiving, built an entire ladder of mercy for the Christian soul. Give bread, he says. If you have no bread, give a small coin. If you have no coin, offer a cup of cold water. If there is no water, offer a word of comfort.

Usually, people stop quoting Chrysostom at that point. But there is one more rung beneath all the others – the lowest rung, where bare earth is already visible underneath.

When a person has no strength left even for a kind word, the saint passionately insists on one thing: do not strike the fallen with reproaches. Do not attack the one who asks for help. Do not tell him that his suffering is entirely his own fault.

If you cannot give a coin, at least do not kick him with your boot. It turns out that even this is enough to remain merciful.

The leaking basket of sand

There is another story worth remembering.

Once in the desert of Scetis, the monks gathered to judge a brother who had fallen into sin. They invited Abba Moses – the former leader of a band of robbers, a man whom people once crossed the road to avoid.

He arrived late, carrying on his back a basket full of sand. The basket was riddled with holes, and a steady stream of sand spilled onto the path behind him.

“What does this mean, Father?” the monks asked.

“These are my sins,” he replied. “They are pouring out behind me, and I do not see them. Yet here I am, on my way to judge another man.”

The trial ended immediately. The brother was not condemned. He was sent away in peace.

No eloquent defense attorney was needed. The elder settled the matter simply by pointing to his own life – a life full of holes and failures.

Abba Moses had every right to speak about justice. Yet he surrendered that right, because at that moment a perfectly just judgment would have crushed the soul of the man who had stumbled.

Later, when murderers came to attack the monastery and the brethren began preparing to defend themselves, the same Moses refused to resist. He died together with his disciples, repeating the words of Christ that those who take up the sword will perish by the sword.

Mercy carried to its ultimate limit is this: refusing to strike back even at the one who has come to kill you.

Reading such stories, it is difficult to believe that ordinary people are capable of such greatness.

Yet every act of mercy begins with something small.

If we have no feelings left, no energy left, not even a kind word left, mercy is still not beyond our reach. Its smallest measure remains in our hands.

Our task is simple: not to add more evil to a world already overflowing with it.

No one will praise us for swallowing an angry outburst. No one will applaud the message we typed, then erased before sending. No one will even know these things happened.

But somewhere, before God, there are scales of mercy.

And perhaps that small, unseen act will tip them.

Then, when the decisive meeting with Him finally comes, our empty hands may prove not to be empty after all.

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