Wednesday within the First Week after the Octave of Pentecost
Misericórdiæ Dómini, quia non sumus consúmpti. The mercies of the Lord, that we are not consumed. (Lam. 3:22)
Introduction
We have passed beyond the great solemnities. The fire of Pentecost has descended, the Octave is concluded, the splendour of the Most Holy Trinity has been adored, and now the Church sets her feet upon the long green road of the year per annum. This season after Pentecost is not a diminishment but a maturation: the mysteries celebrated in the Temporale must now bear fruit in the soul. Trinitytide is the season in which the Church, having received the Spirit, learns to live by the Spirit — and the first and surest sign of that life is charity.
It is fitting, then, that on this feria the lessons set before us treat of nothing else. The Epistle of the Apostle John presses upon us that God is charity, and that he who abides not in charity abides not in God. The Gospel of Luke commands the disciple to be merciful as the Father is merciful, and to cast first the beam from his own eye. The two readings are one teaching: divine charity is the source, and fraternal mercy is its necessary effluence. What the Trinity is in eternity — a communion of love — the Christian soul is called to become in time.
The Epistle — I John 4:8–21
Charitas Dei in nobis
Saint John does not say merely that God has charity, nor that God loves, but that Deus charitas est — God is charity. This is among the most vertiginous statements in all of Scripture, for it identifies the divine essence itself with love. Saint Augustine, contemplating this verse, draws out its Trinitarian depth: where there is love, he teaches, there are three — qui amat, et quod amatur, et amor — the one who loves, that which is loved, and the love itself (De Trinitate, Bk. VIII, c. 10; Bk. IX, c. 2). The Father loving the Son, the Son loved by the Father, and the Holy Ghost who is the bond and substance of their charity: thus the very sentence Deus charitas est opens onto the mystery we adored upon Trinity Sunday.
The Apostle proceeds from theology to economy. The charity of God was not hidden in the silence of eternity but was manifested among us: God sent His only-begotten Son into the world, that we may live by Him. And John insists upon the order of this love — non quasi nos dilexerimus Deum, sed quoniam ipse prior dilexit nos: not that we loved God, but that He first loved us. Here the Venerable Bede, in his exposition on the Epistles of John, observes that the whole foundation of our charity is laid not in our merit but in the prior gift of God, who loved us while we were yet unlovely, that He might make us worthy of love. We do not initiate; we respond. Grace precedes.
From this descends the Apostle’s stern logic, which admits no evasion: if any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. Saint Augustine, in his Tractatus in Epistolam Ioannis ad Parthos (Tractate VIII), confronts the man who claims to love the God he has not seen while despising the brother he sees daily. How can the invisible be loved by one who cannot love the visible image set before his eyes? The love of God and the love of neighbour are not two charities but one, descending from the same fountain and returning to the same sea. To sever them is to possess neither.
And John gives us the great exorcism against the soul’s most ancient enemy: perfect charity casteth out fear — perfecta charitas foras mittit timorem. Augustine distinguishes here, with his accustomed precision, between the servile fear that dreads punishment and the chaste fear that dreads only to offend the Beloved. The first fear charity expels as winter is expelled by spring; the second it perfects and retains. The soul advancing in love does not become fearless of God, but its fear is transfigured from the trembling of a slave into the reverence of a son.
The Gospel — Luke 6:36–42
Estote misericordes
The Lord’s first word in this pericope is itself a summons to the divine likeness: Estote misericordes, sicut et Pater vester misericors est — Be ye merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Saint Ambrose, expounding the Gospel of Luke, notes that the measure given to the disciple is no human measure but the very mercy of the Father. We are not bidden to be merciful as men are merciful, weighing and apportioning, but as God is merciful — without stint, without prior calculation, after the pattern of Him who maketh His sun to rise upon the good and the bad.
Then follow the Lord’s prohibitions, each a hinge upon which the soul’s own judgment swings back upon itself: Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you shall be forgiven. Saint Augustine cautions that this forbids not the just discernment of deeds — for we must indeed distinguish vice from virtue — but the rash arrogation of the inner judgment that belongs to God alone, who alone sees the heart. We judge the act that is manifest; we may not judge the secret of the soul, for there we are blind.
And the Lord promises a divine reciprocity, expressed in the imagery of the granary: good measure and pressed down and shaken together and running over shall they give into your bosom — mensuram bonam, confertam et coagitatam et supereffluentem. Saint Bede observes that the very measure by which we mete to our brethren shall be set against us by God; he who has dealt generously shall be measured generously, his bosom filled to overflowing. Mercy, then, is not loss but investment in the only treasury that does not fail.
Finally comes the searching parable of the mote and the beam: how canst thou say to thy brother: Brother, let me pull the mote out of thy eye, when thou thyself seest not the beam in thy own eye? Saint Augustine and Saint Cyril of Alexandria alike draw the same lesson. The beam is the greater fault that blinds; the mote is the lesser fault in another. He who would heal his brother must first cleanse his own vision, lest he correct from pride rather than charity. The Lord does not forbid the removal of the mote — He commands it, eiice primum trabem — but He commands first the casting out of the beam, that the correction may proceed from a clear eye and a humble heart. Fraternal correction is itself a work of mercy, but only when it is preceded by self-judgment.
Theological Synthesis
Set side by side, the two lessons disclose a single architecture, which we may trace according to the Scholastic pattern of exitus and reditus. The charity that is God (the Epistle) goes forth — exitus — in the mission of the Son, who is sent that we may live by Him; and this charity, poured into our hearts by the Holy Ghost, returns to God — reditus — by the path of fraternal mercy (the Gospel). The love of neighbour is not a second commandment merely appended to the first, but the temporal completion of the circuit of divine love. We cannot return love to the Father whom we have not seen except through the brother whom we see.
Saint Thomas establishes the order with his usual clarity: charity is one virtue with one formal object — God — under which the neighbour is loved propter Deum, for God’s sake (Summa Theologiæ, II-II, q. 25, a. 1). Thus the Apostle’s logic in the Epistle and the Lord’s command in the Gospel are not two ethics but one charity considered under two aspects: in its source, which is God, and in its exercise, which is mercy toward the brethren. The mote-and-beam parable then supplies the indispensable condition: that this mercy be humble, beginning always with the judgment of self, never with the judgment of another. The proud cannot be merciful, for mercy presupposes the knowledge of one’s own need of mercy.
Devotional Application
First, let us examine where we have feared God as slaves rather than loved Him as sons. Where dread of punishment, and not love of His goodness, governs our obedience, let us beg the increase of charity, that perfect love may cast out servile fear and leave only the chaste reverence of a child.
Second, let us guard the tongue and the inner tribunal of the heart against rash judgment. Before condemning the manifest fault of another, let us recall that the secret of his soul lies open to God alone, and that the measure we mete shall be meted to us again.
Third, let us practise the mercy that is divine in its pattern: forgiving freely, giving without calculation, and undertaking the correction of a brother only after the honest cleansing of our own vision. Let each act of fraternal charity be offered as our return of the love that the Father first gave us.
Collect
Deus, in te sperántium fortitúdo, adésto propítius invocatiónibus nostris: et, quia sine te nihil potest mortális infírmitas, præsta auxílium grátiæ tuæ; ut, in exsequéndis mandátis tuis, et voluntáte tibi et actióne placeámus. Per Dóminum nostrum Iesum Christum Fílium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.
O God, the strength of all them that hope in Thee, mercifully hear our prayers; and because the weakness of our mortal nature can do nothing without Thee, grant us the help of Thy grace, that in keeping Thy commandments we may please Thee both in will and deed. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
Suggestions for Further Study
- Sacred Liturgy — The character of the tempus per annum after Pentecost: how the green vestments and the Sundays “after Pentecost” form a season of growth in the life of grace. Dom Guéranger’s L’Année Liturgique treats this season at length.
- Theology and Doctrine — Saint Thomas on charity as the form of all the virtues (Summa Theologiæ, II-II, qq. 23–27), and the unity of the love of God and neighbour.
- Patristic reading — Saint Augustine’s ten Tractatus in Epistolam Ioannis ad Parthos, the single most sustained patristic meditation on this Epistle and its refrain Dilige, et quod vis fac.
A note on the citations: As ever, the patristic loci above — particularly the tractate and book numbers of Augustine’s De Trinitate and In Epistolam Ioannis, and the relevant passages of Ambrose’s and Bede’s commentaries on Luke — should be verified against the Patrologia Latina or a critical edition before publication, since enumeration varies across editions. The Catena Aurea on Luke 6 gathers the Ambrose, Bede, Augustine, and Cyril passages conveniently in one place and is a reliable checkpoint for the Gospel section.