Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ to the Bridegroom Monastery, and this is Pines with Aquinas.

Several years ago I was at a funeral and it was the funeral of a teenage boy who had died just extremely tragically and up to that point I had never before experienced such grief and you know in

seeing the the reactions of his family members and I don't think I've actually seen such

grief since then either. So as we're at the funeral it it comes time for the homily, and I remember sitting there thinking,

what do you say? What can you possibly say in this situation to bring any sort of comfort to this family.

And I had never been so grateful to not be a priest because I was like, I just, I don't even

know what I would say in this moment.

And my only comfort excuse me my only comfort was that this priest is one of the best

homeless I know. So I was like whatever he's going to say, this is it. This is perfect.

So he starts his homily and he says,

God is not compassionate and God is not merciful and I think he's lost it. He

cracked under the pressure and because whatever you're supposed to say in that situation,

that is not it. And then he pauses and he says, God is mercy and God is compassion.

God can't not be merciful. He can't not be compassionate.

And I think we have this problem of,

we think that things like mercy and compassion

are just attributes of God.

But they're not just attributes, they're not just characteristics,

they're who he is, he can't be otherwise.

You know, we can say God is loving,

but that's not the fullness,

because God is love.

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