A Terrible Mercy

Father Charbel Abernethy
7 days ago
3 min read

Psalm 94 - The Evergetinos and the Humiliation of Logic

There is a moment when the Word of God cuts straight through every illusion we have about righteousness and justice. Psalm 94 does not soften the blow. It names the violence of a world where those who carry the sword of judgment often wield it against the innocent, where injustice hides behind the veneer of legality, where condemnation is drafted on paper but written in blood.

Can judges who do evil be your friends? They do injustice under cover of law. They attack the life of the just and condemn innocent blood.

Everything in me wants to stand up at that point and scream. Everything in me wants to draw a line and say, “Here is the evil. Here is the wrongdoer. Here is the one who should be exposed, confronted, resisted.” But the Evergetinos takes that instinct and turns it inside out. It speaks of men who refuse to resist evil not because evil is acceptable, not because injustice should be ignored, but because they have allowed the Cross to break their instinct to judge.

Christ declared all things clean by entering into the filth of the world and bearing it in His own body. He did not stand over the guilty with a verdict. He stood under the guilty with a Cross. The Evergetinos tells stories that humiliate our logic. A monk who presents his cheek to be struck again. Another who loses everything and whispers, “Glory to God.” A brother who is slandered and refuses to speak a single word in his defense. These are not examples meant to soothe us. They are meant to wound us. They expose the abyss between our instincts and the mind of Christ.

Because here is the truth that I do not want to face:

If I become the judge of those who judge unjustly, I become what I condemn.

If I take up the role of arbiter of righteousness, even in the name of righteousness, the poison seeps in. I begin to savor the taste of indignation. I rehearse the wrongs done to me or to others. I clothe myself in a sense of moral superiority because I suffer unjustly. And slowly, imperceptibly, I start to believe that I have the right to cast the first stone.

But Psalm 94 does something different. It names injustice without giving me license to become its executioner. It lets me feel the sting of evil, the grief of watching the innocent bleed, the helplessness of seeing truth trampled by those who stand behind the mask of law. And yet it ends not with human vengeance but with divine judgment.

Judgment belongs to God alone because only God sees the heart without distortion. Only God can separate soul from spirit without killing the person. Only God can condemn evil without losing love.

And I cannot.

The Evergetinos knows this, and so it commands the impossible.

It asks me to stand before the one who harms me and see not a wolf but a brother.

To refuse the inner retaliation that feels like justice.

To allow myself to be wronged without hardening.

To live as if the Cross is not an ornament but a way of being.

This is the scandal:

To see every person (enemy, betrayer, abuser, hypocrite, liar, judge who makes a mockery of justice) as someone Christ has already died for, someone whose blood is mingled with His own.

And if Christ has declared all things clean, including all people, then who am I to declare anyone unclean?

I tremble at this.

I resist it.

Part of me hates it.

Because I know what it demands.

It demands the death of the ego.

It demands the crucifixion of the last safe place inside me that says, “I am in the right.”

It demands a heart stripped of every secret pleasure in seeing the wicked fall.

It demands Christ.

The psalmist cries out for justice, and Christ answers with a Cross.

The fathers speak of non-resistance, and Christ shows us how far that descent goes.

And I am left standing in the ashes of my own judgments, asking only for the grace to stop resisting the work God wants to do in me.