MSI Press Blog

  NO JUDGMENT “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” --I James 2: 13   “Love is a many-splendored thing,” the popular song celebrates. Romantic love arises from the heart and expresses its beauty. St. Paul echoed these sentiments when he described God-like love (agape): “Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not jealous, it does not put on airs, it is not snobbish. Love is never rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not prone to anger; neither does it brood over injuries. Love does not rejoice in what is wrong but rejoices with the truth. There is no limit to love’s forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure. Love never fails….There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.” (I Corinthians 13: 4-13) Love is such a profound, unspeakable mystery, that its definitions often include what it is not. Love is like a beautiful tapestry with many colorful threads. These threads, carefully woven together, are the man...

  Today's book excerpt comes from  Blest Atheist  by Elizabeth Mahlou. Mercy, part 2  I began fighting Ma at a young age. When I was small, Ma was like a god, a strong, mean, and angry one. She loomed large, powerful, and seemingly omni scient. As I grew older, however, I learned that I could fight this god and retain my dignity, and as I grew even older I found that I could fight this god and win. Perhaps my growing ability to vanquish the earthly god in my life colored my own disposition toward God the Almighty.  Small, with “dark eyes that could sparkle with delight or flash with fire,” according to relatives who remember those days, I apparently exhibited from birth a pro found orneriness. The pediatrician could not calm me at my six-week checkup and strapped me to a table, waiting for me to stop screaming. For two hours, my screams pierced the doctor’s closed window, causing passersby in the city square below to stop and wonder what was happening. Th...

Today's book excerpt comes from Blest Atheist by Elizabeth Mahlou. Mercy   The Samaritan stopped because he was filled with mercy. He also had clearly been blessed with the resources to help. I stopped by habit. Very early I internalized the concept that helping even one person toward a better life is a way to justify one’s own existence. That may well have given a positive balance to the daily abuse I experienced throughout my childhood. Knowing that someone was better off because of something I had done—whether it was teaching a kindergarten class when I was in first grade, working as the teachers’ helper in conducting an extra reading group for the struggling readers in my elementary school classroom, or serving as an evening telephone resource to the eighth-grade members of my advanced mathematics class whose teacher kept confusing us with high school juniors—established a sense of self-worth that logically should never have appeared, given all the abuse I experienced...