Holy Wednesday Address at St Mary Abbots

Psalm 123
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Supplication for Mercy
A Song of Ascents.1To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens! 2As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master,as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy upon us.
3Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt. 4Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.

Psalms of Ascent

Jerusalem

Jesus

121 Protection

122 Peace

123 - this is a Psalm about God's mercy.

Lift up!
Eyes!
God shows us mercy
We appeal to it

Mercy in the Bible

Old Testament - hesed: legal/covenant/behavioural/retribution
New Testament - eleos: pity/compassion = relational

HH Esser
"Here we see the breaking in of the divine mercy into the reality of human misery which took place in the person of Jesus of Nazareth in his work of freeing and healing which marks his authority."

Pilgrimage this Holy Week

To go again to Jerusalem

Ask God to be with us

Ask God for his peace

Ask also for his mercy

When we say "Lord in Your Mercy"
- a confession of faith in the divine authority of Jesus

-brought near to the living hope

St Ambrose
"Mercy is a good thing for it makes us perfect; in that it imitates the perfect Father. Nothing graces the Christian soul so much as mercy."