Let All That Is Within Me Cry Mercy

“Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’” (Mt 15:22)

A woman shouted at Jesus: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.”  Sometimes we feel like shouting too.  Wouldn’t we like to give voice to long buried frustrations and sorrows and needs unmet?  Wouldn’t we like to bellow and cry and make the universe resound?  Wouldn’t it be something if the pain and longing of all humanity could be cathartically released in a single all-encompassing groan?  This is what comes to mind for me when I hear these words from Isaiah each Lent: “Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast.” (Is 58:1)

And yet sometimes we need to be reminded to shout, to cry out, to ask.  I often notice in myself a certain reluctance to ask explicitly for help from God.  Why is this?  It is just mindless following of routine?  Am I afraid that there may be no-one listening to my cry, or that the response I would receive may resemble the neglect and disdain portrayed in today’s gospel?  Could it be that I think I can handle it, or should be able to handle it by myself?  Do I sometimes blame myself for a lack of omnipotence, as if it were a fault?  As my mother would sometimes quip, “She’s old enough and ugly enough to take care of herself.”  

Cassian, in his Conferences on prayer, advises that a single verse from Scripture should be used as a refrain throughout the whole of life as a plea for assistance and recognition of weakness by “the Lord’s true beggar” (Conf 10.11.2).  This verse is very familiar to us, as the one with which we open each hour of the Divine Office: “O God, incline unto my aid; O Lord, make haste to help me.”  Cassian says that this one verse, narrow as it may at first seem, contains all that could be needed for continual prayer: “Not without reason has this verse been selected from out of the whole body of Scripture.  For it takes up all the emotions that can be applied to human nature and with great correctness and accuracy it adjusts itself to every condition and every attack.” (Conf 10.9.3)
“This verse should be poured out in unceasing prayer so that we may be delivered in adversity and preserved and not puffed up in prosperity.  You should, I say, meditate constantly on this verse in your heart.  You should not stop repeating it when you are doing any kind of work or performing some service or are on a journey.  Meditate on it while sleeping and eating and attending to the least needs of nature.….You should write this on the threshold and doors of your mouth, you should place it on the walls of your house and the recesses of your heart, so that when you prostrate yourself in prayer this may be your chant as you bow down, and when you rise from there and go about all the necessary affairs of life it may be your upraised and constant prayer.” (Conf 10.10.14, 15)

In other words, we always need God’s help, whether in adversity or prosperity.  I think we need more of the Canaanite woman’s nerve.  After all, her prayer has become a classic.  “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David” is one of the gospel texts behind the ancient prayer known as the Jesus prayer.   With same motivation as Cassian’s verse, monks and lay people in East and West use this little prayer repetitively to keep them mindful of the merciful gaze under which we all dwell.  As the Catechism puts it:
“To pray ‘Jesus’ is to invoke him and to call him within us. His name is the only one that contains the presence it signifies. Jesus is the Risen One, and whoever invokes the name of Jesus is welcoming the Son of God who loved him and who gave himself up for him. This simple invocation of faith developed in the tradition of prayer under many forms in East and West. The most usual formulation, transmitted by the spiritual writers of the Sinai, Syria, and Mt. Athos, is the invocation, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners.’ It combines the Christological hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 with the cry of the publican and the blind men begging for light. By it the heart is opened to human wretchedness and the Savior's mercy. The invocation of the holy name of Jesus is the simplest way of praying always.” (CCC 2666-2668)

What I notice about the Canaanite’s woman’s prayer is that though it has the form of a personal request – have mercy on me – it is clearly and urgently focused on the need of another, her daughter who is tormented by a demon.  Thus this Jesus prayer is not only an expression one’s own sorrow or repentance, but naturally includes those of others as well.  Without needing to change the form, the most personal of prayers can at the same time be for others, if the heart recognizes solidarity with those others.

Augustine speaks of this in his commentary on the Psalms:  “Hear, O God, my petition, listen to my prayer. Who is speaking? An individual, it seems. See if it is an individual: I cried out to you from the ends of the earth while my heart was in anguish. Now it is no longer one person; rather, it is one in the sense that Christ is one, and we are all his members. What single individual can cry from the ends of the earth? The one who cries from the ends of the earth is none other than the Son’s inheritance. It was said to him: Ask of me, and I shall give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession. This possession of Christ, this inheritance of Christ, this body of Christ, this one Church of Christ, this unity that we are, cries from the ends of the earth. What does it cry? What I said before: Hear, O God, my petition, listen to my prayer; I cried out to you from the ends of the earth.  That is, I made this cry to you from the ends of the earth; that is, on all sides. Why did I make this cry? While my heart was in anguish. The speaker shows that he is present among all the nations of the earth in a condition, not of exalted glory but of severe trial.” (Commentary on Ps 60:2-3)

I never cry for myself alone.  I never pray for myself alone.  This is something that became clear to me when praying the Rosary.  Mary, whom we celebrated yesterday as having made her home in God irrevocably, body and soul, is always a mother.  Her heart is the bottle of tears that carries the sorrows of all God’s children.  Her presence in heaven makes universal her presence on earth, and her merciful gaze.  May the fact of this constant presence of Jesus and Mary in our lives give rise to a corresponding cry from our hearts.  The liturgical form Kyrie eleison can sound a bit formal to be a cry from the heart, but Have mercy, Lord, spoken (or shouted) in the person of all who cry out for mercy and salvation, is truly a universal prayer from the depths.