Charity and mercy

Saint Ignatius, bishop of Antioch lived from ~35 to ~100 AD. Ignatius died a martyr’s death in the lion’s den in Rome. During his long journey from Antioch to Rome, a journey whose certain destination was a horrible death, Ignatius maintained a lively correspondence with some of the most important churches of his time. Seven of his letters survive, one of them to the Romans.

The main topic of his letter to the church of Rome seems off-putting, to say the least, because he asks them not to try and save him from his impending, gruesome death. He reminds them time and time again that they mustn’t attempt to ransom him, to lighten the verdict or sweeten the bitter chalice that awaits him. Instead, they are “only” to accompany him in his suffering, to pray for him, to beg that the Father receive him to everlasting glory. Why would he do that? Ignatius knew – as well as modern researchers know – that the church of Rome couldn’t prevent his execution by any means whatsoever. If so, why does the mere attempt to save him bother him so much? What leads him to write to the Romans that he is “afraid of their love”, to warn them lest they “become an inopportune favor” to him, and to command them “do not profess Jesus Christ and desire the world”?

A possible way to understand Ignatius’ request is through the biblical concept of “charity” (tzedaka), especially as it is understood in the thought of the contemporary Jewish thinker Yishai Mevorach. For, when the book of Deuteronomy commands Israel to give alms to the poor, the commandment has nothing to do with a so-called “war on poverty”, on the contrary – it is exactly the futility of such a war that prompts it: “For the poor will never cease out of the land; therefore I command you, You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor in the land” (Deut. 15:11). You’ll surely fail to eliminate poverty and suffering, and that is exactly why you must open wide your hand.

Thus, biblical charity (as well as the Ignatian charity demanded from the body of Christ in Rome) is demarcated from two other possible reactions to human suffering. On the one end, there are the disregard or fake sympathy in the face of the other’s pain. Ignatius is quite clear here: “No (mere) appearance is good”. We’ll do well to read here the terrible words of Maimonides, who writes in his halachic magnum opus “Mishne Torah” that “Anyone who averts his eyes from [the need of] tzedakah is called Belial ["Wickedness"], just as the idolaters worship Belial”. Yes, averting one’s eyes from the occasion of charity is akin to idolatry. But Ignatius is not afraid of this idolatry. He writes to a devout church, one that withstood countless persecutions bravely; a church he himself considers “worthy of holiness”. The church of Rome faces another temptation: to think of charity in a “down to earth” and instrumental way, as a “wise investment” in some elaborate humanitarian project. That is, Ignatius is afraid that the Romans help and support him for the sole purpose of saving him from his looming death. He is alarmed by what he perceives as a tendency to treat charity as an instrumental act, whose sole purpose is to “solve” – by our own hands – the problems of the recipient; a tendency to think that the only criterion for corporal and spiritual works of mercy is their ability to address the problem effectively. Ignatius insists that this is not the reason nor the purpose of Christian charity. For, if that is the case, there are simply no reasons whatsoever to help the one whose problem is incurable. If the sole reason to help Ignatius is his hoped-for deliverance from death, then, as that hope shatters, so disappears the only Rome’s reason to open wide her hands.

We and the Church of Rome stand before the same temptation: to search the practical, efficient and pragmatic. Ignatius and the book of Deuteronomy ask us to be impractical, to help even when we know that the cause is helpless, even when there aren’t any “good reasons” to help. We are commanded to “waste” resources on a problem we know we can’t solve. All the money and resources that the Roman church sacrifices for Ignatius’ sake will be “gone with the wind” when he dies; all the almsgiving of the people of Israel wont eradicate poverty among them; all the money, heart, efforts and time we invest will be for naught when we’ll eventually fail to turn our neighbor into a more successful, obedient, moral, faithful, devout and christlike person; when out of 20 children, only 3 will abide. Nonetheless, in the depth of Ignatius’ request from the Roman church lies the warning not to react to pain and suffering from a utilitarian, instrumental and pragmatic paradigm, one that sees in suffering a pestilence to be eradicated by means of our works of mercy, of our charity. On the contrary, they are to acknowledge suffering as a concrete and perennial reality, to “look it in the eyes” and to boldly accompany Ignatius in his own via dolorosa. They are to give, sacrifice and waist “irrationally”.

Why? Because that’s what God does: “He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mat. 5:45). The sun doesn’t rise only on those who use her light most prudently; the rain doesn’t fall only on the farmer whose situation is not too dire. Not only sun and rain – God “wastes” in a similar manner his own life on the cross. As put well by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov: “[God acts] entirely by means of His lovingkindness, without any arousal from below whatsoever […] for we do not have to do anything when He bestows His lovingkindness”. As God wastes his lovingkindness (that is, mercy and grace) on us daily, so are we to “waste” what we have on others, with no necessary attempt to fix them, even when there are “no reasons” and although they might seem “unworthy”. In that context, indeed – if we shall open our hands only when there are rational reasons, only when our cost-benefit calculations approve, we shall prove that although we profess Jesus Christ, we – just as Ignatius warned the Romans – nonetheless desire this world and surrender to his paradigms and ways of thinking.

Saint Ignatius of Antioch, pray for us.