To receive mercy, to be receptive to the mercy Jesus longs to lavish upon us, we must know our need; we have to be satisfied to be somehow inefficient, to do all we can to be attentive but most of all to depend totally on Christ’s kind favor; simply depend on and trust in his gracious mercy and loving-kindness. Christ only wants our weakness, frail flesh where he can dwell. Christ Jesus longs to take our flesh to himself as he did in Mary's womb. There He embraced our reality, our story, took it to himself - the utter inefficiency of our ordinariness. We can be receptive to his compassion if we dare embrace our incompleteness.
God’s compassion for us, will lead him straight to the cross. He submits because he trusts that he is the Beloved of the Father. Like us, with us, for us, it is he himself who will be “harassed and torn apart.” There suspended on the cross, bullied and hounded, his heart will finally be torn open so that an unending torrent of compassion may gush upon us, heal and anoint us.