Agnus Dei

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem...

John the Baptist's words, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me..." (John 1.29-30) seem to bring us to the centre of the Lenten fast:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of injustice,
    to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke? (Isaiah 58.6)

Dr Marijke Hoek writes:

Whether our daily walk and the good works that he has prepared for us lie in pastorate, law, enterprise, IT, education or elsewhere, mercy is meant to shape all our vocations. Daily expressions of mercy express the nature of his Kingdom. Mercy restores a broken person to a meaningful life in community. Mercy can define the character of our justice. Mercy needs to be the hallmark of our virtual and our actual presence. Whatever sphere we operate in, we need a spirited wisdom that is pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, impartial, sincere and full of mercy (James 3.17). Living faithfully, Christ's reign invades the world, not hindered by our own 'shady lives' but rather displayed in it.

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul says, "He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Colossians 1.15-17)

Christ is the mercy of God, the Lamb who wipes away every tear, and breathes into his people's hearts a peace beyond the understanding of mind and thought. In Cynthia Bourgeault's brilliant little book Mystical Hope, she writes:

So when we think of mercy, we should be thinking first and foremost of a bond, an infallible link of love that holds the created and uncreated realms together. The mercy of God does not come and go, granted to some and refused to others. Why? Because it is unconditional - always there, underlying everything. It is literally the force that holds everything in existence, the gravitational field in which we live and move and have our being. Just like that little fish swimming desperately in search of water, we too - in the words of Psalm 103 - 'swim in mercy as in an endless sea.' Mercy is God's innermost being turned outward to sustain the visible and created world in unbreakable love. 

When we pray the Jesus Prayer, perhaps what we are actually asking for is for Christ the mercy of God to take away the mist of sin that prevents us from being able to be aware of his unbroken being-with-us. There is an academic argument that the Aramaic expression "maranatha", so often translated as, "our Lord, come" could also read, "our Lord has come". (The NRSV gives this as an alternative reading.) In the quiet of the Prayer, what is so often understood as an eschatological aspiration gently turns, for we who are praying, into a statement of fact.