Mercy is the mark of a good man. Such has been said for thousands of years, and such is true. Man’s nature is to seek vengeance, to seek to be the one to deal out death and judgement. Yet our Lord is the one who says, “vengeance is mine.” It is the Lord’s right to judge. And why He? For it is Him whom we have sinned against. He is the holy maker of all things, and the one to whom all praise is due. He gave to us great things, and yet we squandered our gift, and spat in the face of the giver.

Yet even then the Lord brings mercy. Christ, the creator of all that is good and the one who is the giver of all good things, went even further. He gave Himself as a sacrifice that we might be shown mercy. Instead of seeking the vengeance that is rightfully His, He gave mercy even at great cost to Himself. So too, then, must we give mercy. Christ reminded us of this fact with the parable of two servants. One owed the king of the land the ten thousand talents (the rough equivalent of 3.4 billion dollars today). The king, however, forgave the debt, and let him go. The servant thanked the king and went on his way. He ran into a fellow servant who owed him one hundred denarii (the rough equivalent of 5,800 dollars today) and called in his debts immediately. The second servant didn’t have the money, so the first called law enforcement to throw the poor man into debtors’ prison. The king then, of course, let the second servant out of prison and arrested the man for whom he had forgiven the billions of dollars of debt. This story of the first servant, Christ said, is like us when we do not show mercy. “Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful,” Christ taught, and so we must be, for we have been forgiven far more than three billion dollars. And yet we would cast our brother into jail for a few thousand? Such it is when we do not heed the command to be merciful.