Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [200]
He takes no interest in the realization of something important in itself; he knows no genuine love for his neighbor. His only real concern is the ultimately proud one of acquitting himself of his obligations so as to be proof against any definite accusation and able to look upon himself as a being without blemish.
Should a stranger in distress cross his path, he will shrug his shoulder: “This is no concern of mine; I have not pledged myself to provide for him.” He may even quietly look on without interfering (though it were in his power) while a fellow creature rushes to his ruin: “Ah well,” he would say, “if his affairs had been confided to me, things would not have come to such a pass.” Nor will our “correct” man ever feel inclined to remit a debt. Why should he? Nobody can by rights ask him to renounce a rightful claim.
Mercy far exceeds a bureaucratic concern with obligations
Akin to this pharisaical type of man, though considerably less repellent, is the purely legalistic one, characterized by an infatuation for the idea of right, untarnished, in this case, with the motif of self-complacency. We might also call it the bureaucratic type. The morality of such a man is genuine and estimable, yet sorely defective. Though his mind is not warped by pride, he is entirely devoid of warmth of heart and therefore in an essential sense morally crippled. He simply lacks comprehension for any should and ought that is outside the range of legal obligations.
Whatever he is in justice bound or explicitly engaged to do he will do with eager readiness and conscientious thoroughness; but to perform any good work beyond that would never occur to him and indeed make no sense to him. “Am I formally obliged to do this?” is the one question he always asks himself without bothering about anything else. In possession of a claim upon someone who suffers from some misery, he, too, will be disinclined to renounce it: for so to act is not a precise and stringent duty.
Summum jus, summa injuria (“the strictest justice may mean the greatest iniquity”) is the well-known adage in which the essence of this attitude has been condensed.
The man of mercy, on the contrary, is loath to overemphasize the distinction between what is and what is not strictly obligatory. Not that he would, in ever so slight a measure, trifle with a duty or a commitment; but he in no way recognizes these as a limit to his endeavors for serving his fellows. Mercy thrives in the souls of those alone who visualize everything in conspectu Dei; who, in full awakeness, measure everything by supernatural standards.
Mercy presupposes true inner freedom
It also presupposes an inward suppleness and fluidity; a thoroughly melted, quickened, liberated heart. Every inward scar, as it were—every hardening, every incrustation brought about by an experience we have failed to rectify before God—dams up the flux of mercy. Nay, the path of mercy is thwarted by every kind of inner unfreedom: by our bondage, for example, to anxiety or to disgust; to the rancor evoked in us by an insult; and in general to every overemphatic preoccupation. For everything that stunts our freedom tends to make us self-conscious and to deprive us of the capacity, implied in mercy, of taking our stand above the situation.
He alone who has attained the supernatural sovereignty that results from true freedom and is reserved for those who seek only the kingdom of God and His justice, who expects nothing of his own forces but everything of God—he alone can participate in the specifically divine virtue of mercy.
None but those who have burst through the narrow limits of ego-life, and in full openness and awakeness centered their lives in Christ, can truly respond to the miseria of others and—beyond all mere compassion—perform the act of that redeeming loving kindness which conveys to the wretched a breath of the love of God and lifts them from their misery, “Lifting up the poor out of the dunghill, that he may place him with princes, with the princes of his people” (Ps. 112:7-8).
Mercy presupposes