We are not happy because we are unforgiving, and we are unforgiving because we feel superior to others. Mercy is the fruit of the highest degree of love, because love creates equals, and a greater love makes us inferior. First let us establish three premises: Those who do not love feel superior to everyone else. Those who love feel equal to everyone else. Those who love much gladly take the lower place. Each one of us can identify his position somewhere along this spectrum, which comprises the three degrees of the spiritual life here on earth: Death for those who do not love. Life for those who love. Holiness for those who love much. The beatitude of the merciful relates, like all the beatitudes, to the realm of holiness and we have to admit that Jesus set his sights high when he had the courage and confidence to place this lofty ideal before us. It is the beatitude that he himself lived to the full, stooping, out of love, to the lowest place, even to the extent of being rejected as a common criminal, fit only to be hung on a gibbet.

—In Search of the Beyond