The Coach’s Corner Newsletter #100
On Easter Monday – the world learned that Pope Francis had died. And according to the Vatican News,
If there is a message that has most characterized Pope Francis’ pontificate and is destined to remain, it is that of mercy.
Here’s how Compassion International defines mercy:
The compassionate treatment of those in need, especially when it’s within one’s power to punish or harm them.
I don’t have to be Catholic to understand what Pope Francis called everyone in his reach to grasp:
God’s mercy is our liberation and our happiness. We live for mercy, and we cannot afford to be without mercy. It is the air that we breathe. We are too poor to set any conditions. We need to forgive, because we need to be forgiven.
THIS WEEK’S INSIGHT
A call for mercy
Somewhere between 1596 – 1598, William Shakespeare wrote the comedy, The Merchant of Venice. Centered around love, money, prejudice and social injustice, he offers the brilliant poem, “Mercy.”
The quality of mercy is not strain’d;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.’
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.
My takeaway
My Judeo-Christian faith, along with Judaism, Hinduism and Islam, insists on a merciful God.
If mercy is the air we breathe – how might I bring more mercy into my life and work? For that I turn to the tradition of works of mercy as a place to begin:
1. To feed the hungry
2. To give water to the thirsty
3. To clothe the naked
4. To bury the dead
5. To shelter the homeless
6. To comfort the sick
7. To ransom the captive
You will achieve more in this world through acts of mercy than you will through acts of retribution.
Nelson Mandela
