MEASURE, MEASURE

 Measure, Measure, Measure

This all began Thursday morning when I started preparing a homily on the day's readings  I decided toconcentrate on this verse, "The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you (Mk 4:24)". Then, looking for an angle for a homily I went to the passage in the Greek and was immediately captivated by Mark's way of putting the statement. The Greek metron means a unit of measurement of length or volume, often translated "a measure." So, if you pardon my Greek, here's how the sentence reads in the original Greek: "metro metreite metrethesetai..." An impressive rhetorical feat that really focusses you on the subject at hand: "measure measure measure." The word play worked on me right away, and I began asking myself questions.

Do I forgive others with the same generosity as I expect to receive from God? Do I overlook the mistakes and weaknesses of others with the same wideness of compassion that I hope to receive from God? I thought of the hymn by Father Frederick Faber, which is worth quoting in its entirety here:

1 There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,

like the wideness of the sea.

There’s a kindness in God’s justice,

which is more than liberty.

The Return of the Prodigal

2 There is welcome for the sinner,

and more graces for the good.

There is mercy with the Savior,

there is healing in his blood.

3 But we make God’s love too narrow

by false limits of our own,

and we magnify its strictness

with a zeal God will not own.

4 For the love of God is broader

than the measures of the mind,

and the heart of the Eternal

is most wonderfully kind.

5 If our love were but more simple,

we should rest upon God’s word,

and our lives would be illumined

by the presence of our Lord.

Does my mercy look like God's -- measureless, boundless as the sea? Or do I stingily dole out my forgiveness and mete out my compassion to my brothers and sisters. "Mete out" must come from Marks' "metron" = I  measure it out carefully, as if I have only a limited supply of compassion to give. Where did I ever get that idea from? Surely not from Jesus in the gospel!

THE BROKEN THIMBLE 

A metron, a unit of measure, could be a container such as a cup, a quart bottle or a fifty-gallon drum. Years ago, after reflecting on the passage above, I put a small plastic thimble in the left pocket of my habit. Being left-handed I kept encountering that thimble at some inconvenient times, i.e. when I was about to return a harsh word for some remark made to me, or when I was in the midst of unfairly  judging the motivation of a student or a brother. The little plastic thimble was an eloquent reminder of the words of Jesus about measuring out my mercy, my empathy and my compassion. Until the day I accidentally sat on it and it broke. 

 You might think that tis is the end of the thimble story. But no. It's the start of a new lesson: The broken thimble can no longer be a metron, it can't measure anything Aha! It's just like God! Go back and read verse 3 and 4 of Fr. Faber's hymn above and you'll see what I mean. 

The broken thimble that could no long mete out love by the thimbleful was a much more eloquent reminder of how God wants me to live. I hope I've internalized that thimble by now, and can spread a little better, the message of God's measureless mercy.