Justice or Mercy

One Sunday morning during the High Mass at St. James, a bat disturbed the congregation by swooping at us from the choir loft. Coats were pulled over heads and mothers covered their little Christians and chaos stopped the Homily in mid sentence. Calmly but quickly, Dad raced to the back of the church and using his coat as a net, he caught the bat. I expected him to throw the coat on the floor and stomp what was fluttering beneath it but he simply carried the bat outside and flung it to the sky. Church goers mumbled about the bat being rabid as it is abnormal for a bat to do this during the day, that the bat could have infected someone with all sorts of diseases they carry and some even said that bats were the devil's birds. On the way home I asked Dad why he didn't kill the bat. "The bat was more terrified than we were and it was suffering".
" Justice would have killed the bat but Mercy let it go".
Max, this one's for you. I am proud of you son.