MERCY FOR CHILDREN

MERCY FOR CHILDREN……………………………Elusiyan Tolu'

WHAT IS MERCY?

Mercy is necessarily identified with compassion and forgiveness. Mercy arises from the confluence of two currents of thought: compassion with the pity that it entails and fidelity with love as a requirement. Mercy comprises of love, tenderness, pity, compassion, clemency, kindness, grace or gift of God, and that offers us a more intensive generic concept.

Mercy originated from the father, and this is everywhere in the scripture. God is presented as a compassionate God who does not get angry easily, slow to anger.

Give thanks to the lord for he is good, for his mercy endures for ever (Ps 107:1). Be merciful even as your father is merciful (Luke 6:36). This is an essential condition to enter the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy, which means, if we are not merciful, it would be very hard for us too to obtain the mercy of God. For God our father always manifests mercy (Mt18:32). Because even Gods love is only present in those who exercise mercy. It is out of this mercy that Jesus Christ accepted the mission of salvation so that we can all be saved.

“Francis was shopping at the mall for Halloween candy when he was hit by a shopping cart pushed from the second story by two young boys. Francis suffered a serious brain injury, and was briefly in coma and underwent weeks of physical therapy but through it all he held no ill against the boys....” I wish them well, I do”, he said. “I feel very sorry for them. My younger brother is 13 also, and he is a very good boy. Several years after recovery, Francis was also rubbed by these same boys, he was able to recognize them and he also forgave them”.

This is the kind of mercy the church is talking about, ability to be able to forgive again and again. Though the word mercy could be too complex for you children to understand but it is always part of your activities, perhaps in school or at home but it needs to be concretized so that you can come to appreciate God the merciful father. Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain anger for ever because he delights in mercy.

Working with children, I have picked up a few critical pieces of information about how children learn. For example, children require simple explanations in terms of how they can understand instinctively. Children also have little patience for information or activities that seem irrelevant to their concerns, they learn new concepts best when they can relate to the topic personally.

Pope Francis knows this well, which is why he hopes families, in this year of mercy, will provide children with an experience of mercy.

I have tried in so many ways of describing mercy to children. The definition that works best expresses mercy in terms of power.

*Mercy means having power, and choosing to use that power to help others, not hurt them.

Those of us who knows super hero stories can relate to this easily. For example, Jetli, Jackie Chan or Commando, the actors are very powerful men in movies, he can destroy anything, he can kill any bloody person, but they can also protect people around them from evil because of the kind of power they have. So as a child of God, we are also Super heroes if we chose to be merciful to others, our friends in classroom, on playgrounds, in catechism class, in the church, at choir practices, and where ever we find ourselves.

Sometimes we often think we don’t have any power. Because our lives are heavily scripted by outside forces such as parents, teachers, societal expectations, etc. But as a dear friend of mine always tells the children in the school she heads,” the remarkable thing is that you always have a choice”.

Truly as children we have a choice. We have all kinds of power to choose our behaviour, attitudes and words. If i may ask you, “do you have power over your parents? Do you have a choice when your mom tells you to set the table? I know many of you would say NO, but then we reflect on several options:

*I can refuse to set the table

*I can set the table, but only after mom asks four or five times

*I can make my younger brother set it for me

*I can start setting the table, but leave it half done

*I can set the table and complain about it

*I can set the table and be cheerful

*I can work hard, setting the table as best I can

*I can set the table, and then ask what else I can do to help.

As children we are very powerful, because we have that choice to do whatever we want to irrespective of the forces around us; but the choice we make in life has a long way in determining what we become. That is why we must not be selfish; we must learn how to share our milk candies, our sweet, our pencils, our pens with others. We must learn how to relate with everybody, we must be ready to share our knowledge.

Sometimes we might fall victim a bully. We must learn to be merciful and see everything in the light of mercy and we that have that kind of tendency to bully people as well we must learn to be super heroes for Jesus by showing mercy to others even though they have wrong us, we must learn to bear wrongs patiently.

HOW CAN WE SHOW MERCY?

As children we can show mercy, some of you might be thinking mercy is meant for our parents, it is meant for all of us, as children we have to be compassionate, we have to show love to others, we have to be kind and patient, we have to be humble, we have to learn how to speak politely to people, we have to learn from our parents, we have to live like a child of God, we have to be merciful, we have to be prayerful, we have to pray for our parents, we have to pray for our friends, most especially those who are sick who couldn’t come to church or school, we have to be of our best behaviour, that is our mandate. And by playing those roles, we are been merciful both to ourselves, our environment, and the people around us.

And parents you also have an important role to play because often, all these things are learnt from parents, when your child does something the next thing is to shout at him or her. No, sometimes you have to scold gently, sometimes you have to admonish and overlook it, and these are the ways in which we can teach our children to be merciful.

And we too children; that we are often been forgiven does not mean we should always misbehave; for whenever we are of our best behaviour, we are also replicating that act of mercy to our parent, to God and to our surroundings or people around us.

That pencil, no matter how beautiful it is, learn how to borrow others, that food, no matter how delicious it may be, learn how to share it with others.

We as children we should also love the word of God, we should always ask our parents to discuss with us about the word of God, we should learn from them what mercy looks like to Jesus.

*The call of Matthew (Mt9:9-13)

*The lost sheep

*The unforgiving servant

*The cleansing of a leper

*The Good Samaritan

*The lost sheep

*The lost coin

*The lost son

*Zacchaeus the tax collector

*The good thief

*The Samaritan etc.

We should learn more from our parent about those scriptural stories; if we do, we would continue to grow in the knowledge of mercy.

In school there might be some of your classmates who eat alone, do things alone, or sit away from the action at recess. Perhaps a child is unpopular, poorly dressed, awkward, or in need of deodorant. God’s mercy might be calling you to offer friendship.

As children we should be aware that we learn much more about God’s mercy when we show consistent tenderness for unlovable, ungrateful, or wilful people in our lives.

As children, let us also know that the year of mercy invites us to consider all the indirect ways God attracts us to himself (nature, music, art, literature, laughter, tears). Mercy never gives up. Mercy looks for back doors, cracked windows, or even broken roofs to bring spiritually crippled friends to Christ, remember the story of the paralytic man in Mark 2:1-12 and Luke 5:18-26

Conclusively, we as children of God, we must be aware that this year of mercy in the church now is a treasure of immeasurable value, a means of learning how to be more human and Christian, how to live like the saviour Jesus Christ, how to live more like a catholic, how to show love to others in a very much exhaustive ways, how to help our parents, how to be kind, tender in heart and be compassionate. If we have compassion on our friends by helping them out, if we have compassion on our parents by behaving and listening to instructions, if we have compassion on God by helping others in their little tasks, if we have compassion on our teachers by not making noise in class, if we have compassion on God by obeying his precepts and truisms, then God would grant us mercy as well.

May the mercy of God continue to abide with us and as we have gathered as one family, as a community of Gods people to learn more about this all important event in the life of the church, may his mercy never depart from us and may He give us the grace to have the spirit of compassion, forgiveness, kindness and love of others through Christ our lord. Amen.