[from: God and the World: A Conversation of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger , Pope Benedict XVI, with Peter Seewald; Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2000]

1. Giving advice to those in despair
2. Teaching the ignorant
3. Rebuking sinners
4. Consoling those in mourning
5. Forgiving injustices we suffer
6. Being patient with those who are troublesome
7. Praying for the living and the dead

"What matters is that mercy cannot be concerned only with material things…Only if we help people’s spirit, if we help the whole person, are we really helping. For that reason it is all the more important to bring God to people. Setting moral standards is in fact the most prominent work of mercy." P. 316-317

"Giving advice . . .!" How often are we discouraged from "giving advice" because: 1. One is not a "professional counselor;" 2. It shows a "lack of tolerance;" 3. Who are you to know what’s right? 4. Aren’t you being a bit officious? 5. Keep out of my business; 6. Everyone has the right to make his own mistakes/decisions/way…etc. 7. And you haven’t even gotten to the problem of what "despair" is!

And: What is "…despair?" First of all: the modern world does not recognize "despair." It does acknowledge "depression," for which it has prescribed an array of drugs, a huge and increasingly profitable array of pharmaceuticals! The world today does acknowledge things like "anger" or "rage," emotions through which people sometimes "act out" or even become "abusers" or even "terrorists." But despair? Our world does not recognize despair because it does not recognize any other standard or realm of being against which despair could be compared. In a sense one can only be in despair if one totally recognizes the reality of Original Sin and sees no contrary signs pulling against it. Despair is to see all the "leading indicators" of the world being given over to indifference and deceit and no one seeing it for what it is because rationality, the ability to reason, no longer consciously encompasses moral reality. We have eyes, yet we do not see: and to see this is to recognize despair. To give counsel to one despairing is to move from passive to active seeing – to bring to another the focus of the Other.

Here is the mission of intellectual mercy, which recognizes that thinking does not arise spontaneously in the soul, but has to be patiently fostered. The activity of thinking is a free act but one that must be laboriously acquired. Freedom, then, sets itself in relation to labor, of earning something. But this old idea of freedom has been replaced by an attitude of entitlement, in which it is seen that people have their convictions, and it is almost impolite to ask them to account for how they acquired such convictions. Hey, you trying to teach me something? Thus one cannot really talk "ignorance" – for of course, no one is "ignorant"! Everyone has convictions. Thus Descartes’ "indubitable" act of thinking has, by degrees, slid into a morass of convictions, and one is as sure of oneself by merely feeling that something is true, as by thinking about it.

One almost wants to add the exclamation point: rebuking sinners! Why, the idea is so quaint that it might actually someday come back into fashion. Actually, it has. We are surrounded by disapproval if we smoke, and frowned upon if we give voice to thoughts that stray beyond the carefully delineated areas of political correctness. We have perfected mechanisms of disapproval so that we no longer have to rebuke sinners. It would take a lot of effort to figure out what sin is, and besides, it’s good for the economy. Somebody can always make a killing from it, but to be turned aside from it or engage in self-restraint is only a private matter. But in the matter of "rebuking sinners" even in the spiritual world there are curious turns: "Yet Michael the archangel when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee." [Jude:9] I believe that in Heaven St. Michael and Satan were disputing about the legacy of Moses. Surely this dispute went all the way to the deep interior of the Christian Mystery. But I love that about the "railing accusation" that Micha-el "durst " not bring against Satan, but resigned it to God.

Here there is much scope for empathy and the openness of a listening and attentive friend. "Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted." There is a level of seriousness here, similar to the reminders that there is despair, sin and ignorance in the world. Nowadays, as in so many other things, one has to be brought into a condition of the perception of mourning --- something along the lines of St. Paul’s "godly sorrow," instead of the "sorrow of this world." It is the ‘godly sorrow’ that opens up the treasures of consolation.

This item is so big, so pregnant with modern politics, so deep with events of the present day, it seems to go without saying. It is so obvious that we lose our souls . . . in politics. And yet it is for this that the Christian Church says its aim is to save souls, not politics, and would remind human beings of the limits of such politics. And when this is forgotten "all hell breaks loose," and the cycle of violence and revenge is once again unleashed. But now, because people lose their soul in politics in a complicated way, they lose the soul in a simple way too, and so have to go redefining it in all the byways and alleyways of the body, sexuality, procreation, tradition, custom, marriage. It is as if, having lost the soul, we have to upturn every other thing in existence to go looking for it. But still it slips away, like the primordial acceptance of being a creature, for accepting that I am not God – no, not even "like God."

I am sure that I need to improve on this score, as with all the others. Intellectual mercy is a kind of softening the light of the mind into a diffused warmth, and I hope that even if I rebuke sinners, give advice to the despairing, and instruct the ignorant, that somehow the recipients of these actions would feel the inward motivating love. After all, don’t these things show that "I care"? And aren’t we to become "caring people"? Is it better to do these things and fall down flat on my face, or not to do them because people would think I was being obnoxious? Truly it is difficult to know how to be with others today with respect to the spiritual mercies . . . or what could be called the intellectual virtues. For it is indeed the concept of "intellectual virtue" that needs to be rehabilitated. Modernity has claimed intellectuality and taken it to the extreme, all in the name of "intellectual freedom." But the primary insistence of intellectual virtue is that the virtues themselves not be deformed. It is the virtue of proportionality – about which Simone Weil with such heartfelt force: "… we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought…" e.g. in ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends. And: "… the whole intellectual climate of our age favors the growth and multiplication of vacuous entities." Yes. And the so-called Enlightenment made much of destroying religion to make room for the growth of rationality. But we who are positioned on the other side of the Enlightenment will have to humble ourselves to religion in order to save reason.

This is the only instance in which the word "praying" is mentioned. I do not know if I am ready to understand the nature of prayer. It is a word which, like "love," is obscured through over-use. Let me just say I understand it as an inclination of thought, a turning toward a certain axis of gratitude.