God's Mercy/Our Mercy

During the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the plea for mercy is repeated umpteen times, it seems..."Lord, have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, O Lord have mercy."   The need for God's mercy is hammered into the congregation, and rightly so.  Without God's mercy, we would be lost. We know that God is kind and merciful and that there is no limit to his patience, forgiveness, compassion and mercy.  We rejoice in it, we hope in it, we rely on it as we admit our weakness and our sinfulness. However, Father Alfred Delp, a German Jesuit, condemned to death by the Nazis in 1945, reminds us: "God bids us place our hope of mercy in the mercy we are prepared to show." (Magnificat, March, p. 149).  As we acknowledge our need for mercy and repeatedly ask for it, so must we then be generous in our having mercy on others, as Jesus tells us:  "seventy times seven" (Mt 18: 22), that is limitlessly.  How does our scale of giving mercy balance with the mercy God gives us?  Lord, O Lord, as I stand in need of mercy, let me not hold back from giving mercy to others.
Bro. Rene