The Quality of Mercy …

Standing in line at the grocery store the other day, I noticed a Wounded Warrior in the line next to me. He was wearing a tee shirt with some sort of a military icon on it that I did not recognize because I was taken aback by the wording underneath it. It said in two lines:

“May the Good Lord have mercy on my enemies, because I sure as hell won’t.”

I took it, as I’m sure it was meant to be, an affront to the sensibilities of any Believer in Jesus Christ who taught us to love our enemies, and I felt sad for anybody who would proudly proclaim such a sentiment towards any other human being. This warrior seemed hale and hearty, with no outward sign of physical defect, but, Boy, was his soul a mess.

And I wondered if he had to be trained to hate like that before he could be sent on deployment to somewhere like Iraq or Afghanistan. How else could he deliberately shoot to kill or blow up another man just like himself ?

Whether he had to be trained to hate or whether it was a lesson he had learned for himself on the battle field watching his buddies get blown to smithereens, it didn’t matter; his soul was badly wounded. I’m sure he was not alone.

Now the Government spends millions, if not billions of dollars, treating the physical and psychological wounds and disabilities of warriors returning from battle, and rightly so. But what about  the warriors walking around the grocery store with hatred proudly displayed on their backs? It’s up to the rest of us to treat their souls..

There is another lesson we must learn to teach them:

“The Good Lord will, Sure as Heaven, bestow mercy equally on the warrior and his enemies.”

—    Denys Horgan
San Diego Catholic Worker.