Have Mercy

While getting ready to rerturn to the pilgrim trail, I am listening to the St. Matthew Passion where I was brought up short by the aria, Erbarme dich, ‘Have Mercy.’

Rather than tell you why that aria is so powerful, read this article which I found, by Elizabeth Joyner on Earth & Altar.

What has this to do with my upcoming return to the Via Francigena?

Nothing directly at first.  But as I watched (a version ‘staged’ by Peter Sellars) it came to me that this two hour recitation of the Passion Story was every bit as much a journey as mine.  For most Christians for most centuries passion plays and mystery plays, labyrinths and stations of the cross were as close as they could get to going to Jerusalem.  These were their pilgrim paths.

Might be it that we all want to be pilgrims?

I think so.  Being April is it natural to quote Chaucer’s prologue, where he says,

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

Sure, there is wanderlust if only to ask, as did Peggy Lee, “Is that all there is?” She and Chaucer grasped that we all have a desire to step outside ourselves, from our day to day world, to see if there is something more.  But what makes a journey a pilgrimage is the plea for mercy.

Have Mercy

Though I am not conventional in my faith, there have been foxholes moments on some days.  Lost, hurt, wet, sore, confused, I have muttered, Have Mercy, more than once.  Haven’t we all, though.  An old joke tells of the catholic priest and rabbi riding together along a mountain road with precipitous cliffs nearby.  The priest notices the rabbi in the passenger seat crossing himself.  When they were on a straight road, the priest asks,

“Why did you cross yourself?”

To which the rabbi replied, “Ever try and make a Star of David?”

Penance or Hope?

In Chaucer’s time the act of pilgrimage was arduous and dangerous.  And it was believed that the strain and danger was part of the penance a pilgrim was doing for the sins they had done. But even now, when moderntiy removes most of the dangers they faced, it can still be arduous.

I think the modern pilgrim is one who seeks – needs – a reminder that we are all vanishingly small, quite fragile, and more than a little stupid.  We need mercy, wherever it comes from.  And so longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, wherever they are.