Suffrages A.1
V. Show us your mercy, O Lord;
R. And grant us your salvation.
The Prayer of Humble Access in our Rite 1 Eucharist addresses a God “whose property is always to have mercy.” Mercy is one of many ways Power might manifest itself. Power that is insecure often shows up as domination, constraint, oppression, and/or cruelty, revealing that powers which depend on domination and coercion do so out of weakness.
God is anything but weak, anything but insecure; so, God’s property is “always to have mercy” – to show compassion toward what is weaker, more vulnerable – which is everything.
But we finite, distracted humans often miss seeing the mercy that is “new every morning.” We are grief-stricken by loss, confused and overwhelmed by circumstance beyond our control, rightfully angry about injustice all around us.
Versicle 1 asks God to help us to see and feel the mercy of God in the midst of all this mess.
Response 1 asks our merciful God to grant us… a thing that means different things to different people. The crowds who originally followed Jesus cried out “Hosanna!” which literally means “Release us!” The word from which ‘salvation’ derives [salvus] means ‘health’. The Greek word for Savior is Soter – which the original audience heard as Healer or Rescuer. What I am asking God All-Merciful to grant us all is healing, and deliverance from the oppression of insecure Powers.
Peach McDouall
