Misericordia...

The parable of the Good Samaritan is a revelation of God in a word that has great importance through all the Scriptures from beginning to the end. It is a revelation of what the prophet Hosea says, speaking for the invisible God, "I will have mercy and not sacrifices." What is this mercy which we find spoken everywhere in the Scriptures, and especially in the Psalms? The Vulgate rings with misericordia as though with a deep church bell. Mercy is the "burden" or the "bourdon," it is the brass bell and under-song of the whole Bible. But the Hebrew word - chesed - which we render as mercy, misericordia, says more still than mercy.

Chesed (mercy) is also fidelity, it is also strength. It is the faithful, the indefectible mercy of God. It is ultimate and unfailing because it is the power that binds one person to another, in a covenant of wills. It is the power that binds us to God because He has promised us mercy and will never fail in His promise. For He cannot fail. It is the power and the mercy which are most characteristic of Him, which come nearer to the mystery into which we enter when all concepts darken and evade us.

Thomas Merton. Seasons of Celebration. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950): p. 175.

This passage seems to me to say everything I so long for; to describe what I am actually asking for when I pray the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." It's a strange thing, but the word "mercy" has always had for me the iridescence, the oil-on-water shift and play of meaning that Merton gives it. Mercy is not in English a simple word. It's related to grace, but it isn't the same thing. It's related to compassion, but it's not just compassion. It's akin to faithfulness, kindness, and it carries the sense of a great overarching possibility.

Mercy. Misericordia. Eleos. There are few words more beautiful, to me at any rate.

Kyrie eleison;
Christe eleison;
Kyrie eleison.