S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 8 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 2 2 5 3 Miloš Lichner, Ladislav Proks 3 God’s Mercy The term misericordia has been documented in classic Latin with semantic enrichment under the influence of the Sacred Scripture (Pétré 1938, 384). God is presented as merciful, and we find many expressions related to mercy in the Psalms. Christ declared that mercy is one of the main attributes of God (Luke 6:36 and Matthew 5:7). Augustine generally understands mercy as an expression of God’s mercy towards people. It is the initiative of God to protect humans from poverty and enable them to participate in God’s life, in the resurrection of Christ. He explains that mercy (Lat. misericordia) actually consists of two terms: misery (Lat. miseria) and heart (Lat. cor): “Who would not know that the word mercy means one’s feeling of misery as a result of compassion with someone else’s misery.” (Augustinus 1992 in CSEL 90, 56). The life of Christ, his redeeming death on the cross and his resurrection are thus seen as the greatest sign of God’s mercy for man (Augustinus 1956 in CCSL 38, 280). Augustine uses several images for introducing God’s mercy in Christ (Enarratio in Psalmum 90): rock, lion, lamb, bull, good Samaritan, physician, and hen. Naturally, each of these images has a certain interpretational value, but without any special emphasis that would lower the value of any other image: “If Christ was a true rock, he would not be a lion, and if he was a lion, he would not be a lamb: but he is the lion [Revelation 5:5] and the lamb [John 1:29] and the rock [Acts 4:10–11] at once; he is also the bull and any other similar identity, because he is not rock, lion, lamb nor bull in the literal sense. He is Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of all people. The above denominations represent only metaphorical, not real images of Christ.” (Augustinus 1956 in CCSL 39, 1285). The CAG database of Augustine’s texts confirmed that good Samaritan, physician, hen and its wings, Eucharist as an extension of the Incarnation of God’s Son and as a milk for children are among the most frequent images. They will be analyzed to understand Augustine’s way of communication of fundamental content of Christian spirituality regarding God’s mercy for sinful man. 4 Good Samaritan Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke (10:30–37) is probably the best-known image. This parable became even more actual after Pope Francis used it in his last encyclical Fratelli tutti, which is practically based on the exegesis of St. Augustine, influenced by St. Ambrose or Origen (Kulisz et al. 2021, 180–190). Let us recall that in the second Enarratio to Psalm 30, Augustine offers Christological-soteriological explanation of events, clearly identifying Christ with Samaritan who demonstrated his mercy on mankind (Augustinus 1956 in CCSL 38, 197). In Origenean line he interconnects Hebrew name for Samaritan Šômrôn with other Hebrew term šômer –“guardian” from Psalm 121:4 (Roukema 2004, 63–64). Hence, Augustine identifies Samaritan with guardian and in Enarratio 68 he clearly states: “Samaritan means guardian in Latin, but who is the guardian if not our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ? He was raised from the dead and dies no more [Romans 6:9], the guardian of Israel never slumbers nor sleeps [Psalm 120:4 LXX; nowadays Psalm 121:4].” (Augustinus 1956 in CCSL 39, 925). Augustine, as well as tradition on which he based his teaching, were convinced that Christ rightfully saw himself as Samaritan. Augustine, just like Origen before him, always sought the relation between the verses from the Gospel of John 8:48–49 and the Gospel of Luke 10:30–37 (Augustinus 1954 in CCSL 36, 373). In the Gospel of John, Christ is accused of being Samaritan and being possessed. Augustine recalls that Christ denied the latter (being possessed), but he did not deny that he was Samaritan. Augustine believes that this way he might have hinted that he considered himself to be Samaritan or guardian (Augustinus 1956 in CCSL 38, 197). In the commentary to the longest Psalm 118 (nowadays Psalm 119) Augustine introduces a new aspect of the perception of Samaritan. In Enarratio 15 he comments on the verse 54 of the Psalm and retells the story of Samaritan in anti-Pelagian spirit (Augustinus 1956 in CCSL 40, 1713) to emphasize that Christ not only took care of a wounded man but installed him in a new situation where he can perform God’s deeds of justice, clearly underlining God’s redeeming work. Commentary to just regulations (Lat. iustificationes) can be found in earlier Enarratio 6, where Augustine writes that it’s not the words but the deeds of justice, i.e. , deeds of the righteous commanded by God. They are described as divine although we are the ones who perform them, because we perform them only thanks to the gift of mercy granted to us by God (Augustinus 1956 in CCSL 38, 1679).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzgxMzI=