“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): 175.
“Material life, so much cherished by the nondevotees, is here compared to a dark hole filled with poisonous snakes. In material life there is certainly no clear understanding of one’s ultimate identity, of God or of the universe. Everything is vague and dark. In material life the poisonous snake of time is always threatening, and at any moment our near and dear ones will be killed by the mortal fangs of the serpent. Ultimately, we ourselves will also be bitten and killed by the poisonous effects of time.
“The word sampatitam indicates that the falldown of the living entity is complete. In other words, he cannot get up again. Sri Uddhava therefore appeals to the Lord to be kind to these poor fallen souls, humbly represented by his own self. If one receives the Lord’s mercy, then even without any further qualification one can go back home, back to Godhead; and without the mercy of Lord Krsna, the most learned, austere, powerful, wealthy or beautiful man will be pathetically crushed by the material world’s machinery of illusion.”
SB 11.19.10
