Mercy

"'Justice!' This word, it radiates horror and joy. It intensifies the sufferings from the past, but at the same time points out their meaning. In my imagination I go back years and years to the days of my early youth and childhood. I view the whole way, overlook no stage, allow myself no turning away, no comforting veil, and above it all as though written with flaming letters, there glows the one word: 'Justice!' There is no suffering which, if I trace it back to its roots, is not self-inflicted. There is no misfortune which is not basically my own undoing. There is no collapse which was not grown from guilt. Justice everywhere, terrible, incorruptible, eternally wakeful justice! I repent, repent - and there is no hostile power that I could blame...How can I dare look at the messenger of justice? What else can he announce but that the sentence has been passed? Just then a faint trembling light seems to pass over the angel's darkened features and a smile to hover around his lips. A promise lies in this smile and a warning: 'Pay homage to justice, but do not forget that other word either...' I ask myself: what other word? Already it rings in my exulting heart: 'Mercy! Mercy!' Never has its light shone brighter than in those darkest hours of my life. Its hand gave me support, when my path led close along the precipice. I see how again and again when the need was the greatest I have been given time and chance to begin anew. I see how again and again love offered itself when right to love seemed to have been forfeited. Our knowledge extends to the thought on which justice is based. But no wisdom can fathom the secret of mercy. On ethereal wings it comes down as it pleases. There is no more weighing, there are no more claims, only submission and thankfulness. And both fill me so deeply in this hour, that I am now able to think of the future almost without anxiety."

Excerpt from Journey Into Chaos by Charles Wollf (Dr Karl Wollf). Karl Wollf here recounts a dream he had while being in custody in the south of France as a hostile alien during WW2. In fact he had been persecuted by the Nazis. Shortly afterwards he would work out a daring plan, which took him from Marseille to Spain, from Spain to Portugal and then to London.