Show Mercy Even If They Don't Deserve It

About 4 months ago, I concluded a life-changing year serving the poorest of the poor as a missionary to the homeless in Denver. Upon hearing about my experience, almost everyone I meet wants to learn more about it, asking questions like: What did you do? What was it like? What did a normal day look like? Was it hard? I bet that was really rewarding, wasn't it?

Without fail,I get a chance to talk about the type of people I served. Many of them were alcoholic. Many abused drugs. A lot were just plain lazy. I knew that some of them had little to no control over their behaviors due to mental or physical disabilities, but there were still many who did. And I loved my experience going out and giving my best, rather pathetic attempt to model the love of Christ to everyone I met. There were days when it was really rewarding to show Christ's love to those who so rarely experienced it. There were days when I got to see real change in someone's life, whether they got permanent housing, told me they had been sober for a record number of days, or finally got accepted into a drug rehab program they desperately needed to be a part of.

But honestly, most days were really frustrating. Most days,I would come home believing that all of my friends on the street were only getting worse as time went on. Some were slipping back into old, destructive habits. Others failed to follow through with commitments I asked them to make. Some just didn't care, and were so content with life on the streets, that I wanted to yell in their faces, telling them to get their act together and pursue something better for themselves! "Pope Benedict XVI says 'The world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness!" Actually, maybe it's best that I didn't do that. I've been told that most normal people don't quote popes while walking around in densely populated areas.

When I get to that part of my story with friends, a lot of them ask why I kept trying. "Feeding the hungry" can seem a lot like "enabling the lazy" after you get to know them, which is why I had to keep reminding myself of how much God has continued to "enable" me. Even after I commit the same sins for the tenth, hundredth, or thousandth time, God keeps welcoming me back saying "You're forgiven. Go and sin no more." Did my homeless friends do anything to deserve the love I showed them? Probably not. But they did at least as much to deserve my love as I did to deserve God's.

Love and forgiveness aren't limited to my time on the streets with very broken people. They are also needed in my home life with my roommates who frequently forget to take out the trash, clean the bathroom, or do their dirty dishes, just like I frequently do. They are needed with my co-workers when they don't do a project as well as I would have hoped, or miss a deadline, just like I do from time to time. They are needed in all of my relationships.

Whenever we have a hard time showing mercy to someone else because we don't think they deserve it, it's important for us to think about how much we don't deserve the mercy that is extended to us from Christ. Remember that prayer that we pray every week at Mass, the "Our Father?" Some of the most challenging words in that prayer for me are "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." Whenever someone does something that really bothers me, I've been making an effort to think about if I'd want Christ to forgive me of the same thing. The answer, so far at least, has always been "yes", even when they haven't done anything to deserve my continued love and forgiveness.