“Lord, have mercy”, cont.
May 10th, 2006 ~ Orthodox perspectiveWhen I wrote back here that Fr. Thomas Hopko was saying that the liturgical response “Lord, have mercy” wasn’t a penitential request, I said that I would try to transcribe the exact words sometime later. Well, Father Elias needs his CDs back (hey!), so ’sometime later’ just became now.
Here’s the section I was talking about.
And by the way “Lord, have mercy” doesn’t mean “Lord, let us off.” It means “Lord, be good to us” — y’know, “Show all Your bountiful love toward us.” It’s not just connected with forgiveness of sins or penitence or anything like that. We say it all the time — Pascha night after Holy Communion, we say “Lord, have mercy.” I once read in a book (which proves that paper suffers anything) that the Eastern Orthodox prayer has been so capitivated by the monastic ascetic tradition that all they keep doing all the time is saying “Lord, have mercy, Lord have mercy” — 3 times, 12 times, 40 times, 100 times and so on, and that shows the fixation with sin and how bad we are before God and how we need to grovel for His mercy like before a judge.
It has nothing to do with that. Nothing. “Lord, have mercy” is not that at all. The Scriptures say that the Lord is slow to anger and abundant in mercy. …
When you say “Lord, have mercy,” what you’re really saying is “God, be to us what You are. Be to us as You have revealed to us that You actually are.” This is the prayer.
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May 11th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
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.” ;-)
May 11th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Wow. Thank you.
May 11th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
BJohnD:
Shoot. That’s worth its own blog entry.
May 12th, 2006 at 11:41 am
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