“Lord, have mercy”, cont.

4 Responses and Counting...

  • BJohnD 05.10.2006

    Thanks, Grace. This is great. I’ve always believed it meant more than “Please don’t strike us down,” but I’d never come across any­thing on point. Now if some­one could please tell this con­vert — with that last teensy bit of his Protes­tant past still lurk­ing some­where in his sub­con­sious — just what the Church means when it prays, “Most holy Theotokos, SAVE us.” ;-)

  • Mimi

    Wow. Thank you.

  • Grace

    BJohnD:
    Shoot. That’s worth its own blog entry.

  • Eric

    Grace:

    Your post on ‘Lord have mercy’ trig­gered a rec­ol­lec­tion that St. Nicholas Cabasi­las com­mented on the use of this phrase in his Com­men­tary on the Divine Liturgy. In look­ing up the ref­er­ence, it seemed to come full cir­cle to the Lord’s prayer about which you blogged else­where on this site, I believe.

    There is another ques­tion to be asked: why is it that, whereas the priest asks them to pray for so many dif­fer­ent things, the faith­ful in fact ask for one thing only — mercy? Why is this the sole cry they send forth to God?

    In the first place, as we have already said, it is because this prayer implies both grat­i­tude and con­fes­sion. Sec­ondly, to beg God’s mercy is to ask for his king­dom, that king­dom which Christ promised to give to those who seek it, assur­ing them that all things else of which they need will be added unto them. Because of this, this prayer is suf­fi­cient for the faith­ful, since its appli­ca­tion is general.

    How do we know that the king­dom of God is sig­ni­fied by his mercy? In this way: Christ, speak­ing of the reward of the mer­ci­ful, and of the rec­om­pense of kind­ness which they will receive from him, in one place says that they shall obtain mercy, and in another that they shall inherit the king­dom … [here refer­ring to Matt. 5:7; Matt. 25:34–36 (illus­trat­ing that the sheep are those who are merciful)]

    And he also men­tions in rela­tion to the post-doxology open­ing peti­tion “In peace let us pray to the Lord” that the response “Lord have mercy” is:

    So that he who prays in peace must first have a thank­ful and con­fessed soul. And fur­ther, the very peti­tion which they make shows them to be in a state of thank­ful­ness and con­fes­sion. For their peti­tion is for mercy. Indeed the sup­pli­ca­tion of the con­demned who have no pos­si­ble defence and no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to put for­ward; they make this one last appeal to the judge, count­ing on obtain­ing what they ask not because it is just, but because of his love for mankind. These peo­ple in fact bear wit­ness to the judge of his great good­ness and mercy and to them­selves of their own iniq­uity; the first is an act of grat­i­tude and the sec­ond one of con­fes­sion.

    This all seemed to dove­tail with what you were dis­cussing, and I had never really grasped that the Lord have mercy may be thought of as a lit­tle Lord’s Prayer (Thy king­dom come, thy will be done; for­give us our tres­passes [be mer­ci­ful] as we for­give those tres­pass against us [as we are mer­ci­ful — blessed are those who are mer­ci­ful for they will obtain mercy]).

    Any­way — just some thoughts …

    Pax

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