Mercy Quotes

“In the heart of Jesus, we recognize that God himself has a heart (cor) for us, who are poor (miseri), in the broadest sense of the word, and that he is, therefore, merciful (misericors).”
― Cardinal Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“For I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath” (Hos 11:9). That is an astounding statement. It says: God’s holiness, his Being Wholly Other, in contradistinction to everything human, is disclosed not in his righteous anger, not even in his inscrutable and inaccessible transcendence. God’s being God is revealed in his mercy. Mercy is the expression of his divine essence.”
― Cardinal Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“Only one passage needs to be quoted to support this point. After the people have been subjected to the just punishment of the exile on account of their infidelity, God, in his mercy, gives them another chance. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing wrath for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you.… For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the LORD, who has compassion on you. (Isa 54:7–8, 10)25 Mercy is God’s creative and fertile justice.”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“. Because of his holiness, God can offer only resistance to evil. The Bible calls this the wrath of God.23 Many people may at first stumble over this statement and regard it as inappropriate. But God’s wrath does not mean an emotionally surging rage or an angry intervention, but rather God’s resistance to sin and injustice. Wrath is, so to speak, the active and dynamic expression of his holy essence.”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“In the Old Testament, God’s mercy stands in an indissoluble connection with the other ways in which God is revealed. His mercy may not be extracted from this context and be treated independently. Already the revelation of God’s name to Moses shows that divine mercy is, so to speak, encircled by graciousness and fidelity. God’s self-revelation in the prophet Hosea shows that mercy is insolubly bound up with God’s holiness and gives expression to it.”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“Theology, no matter how clever, falls short in dealing with God, who doesn’t fit into any box.”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“In and through history, God reveals his essence, which has been hidden from human beings. We can speak of it only by way of a narrative, and not in a speculative way. In this sense, this formula is the summary of God’s self-definition in the Old Testament.”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“Finally, on another morning, there is a third revelation of God’s name. God descends to Moses in a cloud, as a sign of his mysterious presence, and calls out to him: The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful [rachum] and gracious [henun], slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love [hesed] and faithfulness [emet]. (Exod 34:6) In this third revelation of his name, mercy is not only an expression of God’s sovereignty”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament that came into being around 200 BCE, interpreted the revelation of God’s name according to Hellenistic philosophical thought and translated it as “I am the one who is” (Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν). This translation made history and shaped theological thought for many centuries. On the basis of this translation, one was convinced that what is the highest in thought—Being—and what is highest in faith—God, correlate to each other. In this conviction one saw confirmation that believing and thinking are not opposed to each other, but rather correspond to each other. This interpretation is already found in the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo († 40 CE). However, Tertullian soon asked: “What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?”14 Most notably, Blaise Pascal, after having a mystical experience, highlighted the difference between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in his famous Memorial of 1654.15”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“In point of fact, talk of the graciousness and fidelity of God is found already scattered throughout the story of Abraham (Gen 24:12, 14, 27; 32:11).”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“God made everything good, in fact, very good (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 20, 25, 31). God created people in his image; as man and woman he created them. He blessed them. They should be fruitful with descendants and should”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“further and speaks theologically of God’s heart. The Bible says that God chooses people according to his heart (1 Sam 13:14; Jer 3:15; Acts 13:22). It speaks of God’s heart being deeply troubled by people and their sins (Gen 6:6);”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“complaint at the death of his son Absalom (2 Sam 19). Jesus is full of anger and sadness at the obduracy of his opponents (Mark 3:5), and full of compassion for the people (Mark 6:34) and for the widow of Naim at the loss of her only son (Luke 7:13). At the death of his friend Lazarus, Jesus is deeply moved by sadness (John 11:38). So, in the Bible, compassion is not regarded as weakness and unmanly softness that is unworthy of a true hero.”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“In the Bible, “heart” does not simply describe a human organ that is important for life; it describes, anthropologically, the core of the human person, the”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“We will still have to ask how mercy is related to justice and will have to show in the process that, for the Old Testament, both concepts do not stand simply beside each other or in opposition to each other, but rather that God’s mercy serves his justice and brings it to realization.”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“There is a widely held opinion that the God of the Old Testament is a vengeful and angry God, while the God of the New Testament is a gracious and merciful God. Now there are, in fact, texts in the Old Testament that can support this position. Those passages speak of the killing and expulsion of the pagan population of entire cities and peoples at the behest of God (Deut 7:21–24; 9:3; Josh 6:21; 8:1–29; 1 Sam 15). One can also think of the imprecatory Psalms (above all Ps 58; 83; 109).2 Nevertheless, this view does not do justice to the gradual process by which the Old Testament’s idea of God is critically transformed, nor does it do justice to the internal development of the Old Testament in the direction of the New Testament. Ultimately, both Testaments give witness to the same God.”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“The most important expression for understanding mercy is hesed, which means unmerited loving kindness, friendliness, favor, and also divine grace and mercy.7 Hesed, therefore, goes beyond mere emotion and grief at human deprivation; it means God’s free and gracious turning toward the human person with care. It concerns a concept of relationship, which characterizes not only a single action, but rather an ongoing attitude and posture.8 Applied to God, the concept expresses an unexpected and unmerited gift of God’s grace—transcending every relationship of reciprocal fidelity—that exceeds all human expectations and bursts”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“The biblical message concerning mercy can draw on an extensive tradition of humankind. But it would be wrong to think that the Bible and, with it, Christianity simply repeats in a popular way what philosophers have discovered in their analysis of human compassion and what scholars of religion have distilled from the different religions as a common human tradition. Christianity is not what Nietzsche thought it was: “Platonism for the people.”1 Christianity adopts many things from human tradition, but it also criticizes that tradition, makes many things more precise, and deepens them.”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“This fact emerges already from some initial observations and reflections about language use in the Old as well as in the New Testament. It is characteristic of the Old Testament that it uses the expression rachamim for “compassion” and, for that matter, also for “mercy.” This word is derived from rechem, which means “womb”; the term can also refer to human”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“Yves Congar has extensively reconstructed Thomas’ train of thought.12 He”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“In contrast to him, Aristotle came to a positive view of compassion. He was indeed the first who gave a kind of definition of compassion. He explained that the experience of the undeserved suffering of others affects us because we know such evil could also befall us. Sympathy, in the original sense of the word (literally, suffering with), and solidarity are involved in the experience of compassion with someone’s suffering.5 Thus, the undeserved suffering of the other affects us existentially. Because their suffering could also befall us, we identify to a certain extent with them in compassion. In his Poetics, Aristotle shows how the presentation of the hero’s fate in a tragedy effects compassion (ἔλεος) and fear (φόβος) in us and leads to an inner catharsis (ϰάθαρσις) of the observer.”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“In the twentieth century, Kant’s subject-oriented intellectual approach encountered firm opposition. The breakthrough came from the new phenomenological direction given philosophy by Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler. They wanted to overcome the subject as the neo-Kantian starting point.”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“Consequently, for Kant grace practically becomes a postulate of practical reason. For this reason, according to Kant, the Christian religion is the only moral religion. It offers a higher assistance to everyone who does what he or she can and must do, supplementing that which is not in his or her power.30 From a theological point of view, we have to judge such a statement as unsatisfactory because it is a Pelagian interpretation of the Christian doctrine of grace. But we have to add that we cannot at all expect from philosophy”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“obligation “to cultivate in ourselves” such feelings because, without such impulses, “the thought of duty alone would not be sufficient” for inspiring our active sharing in the fate of others.25”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“Act according to that maxim whose universality, as law, thou canst at the same time will.”23”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“Immanuel Kant, who clearly is the most important and most influential modern philosopher. He was critical of universal ethical systems that are based on feelings such as compassion. He wanted to promote a rational ethics of obligation. Not emotional motivation, but rather only comprehensible rational reasons can”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“Just like the ancient views, the modern theories about compassion and mercy are also contradictory, depending on whether they take their bearings from natural, human feelings or from an ethics of reason.”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“In a completely different way, and not without stimulus from Buddhism, compassion becomes the focal point of ethics for Arthur Schopenhauer. According to Schopenhauer, compassion is a “common phenomenon.” It is direct”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“Friedrich Schiller took up this thought in his theory of tragedy and developed it further. Already the title of his text, The Theater as a Moral Institution, makes clear that for him tragedy becomes an educational institution.20”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“On the basis of the Bible, the church fathers did not speak out in favor of this Stoic ideal. Augustine8 and later Thomas Aquinas9 interpreted the word misericordia in its linguistic sense: to have one’s heart (cor) with the unfortunate (miseri), with those who, in the widest sense of the word, are poor and in distress. They”
― Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life