S. Albert le Grand: Docteur de la médiation mariale

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cited copiously in De Koninck's Ego Sapientia: The Wisdom that Is Mary

cited in Sel de la terre n°131, "Marie dans la genèse" by Fr. Hugues-Marie O.P.

It pierces ours hearts, evokes pity (misericordia) when we see people not understanding reality/truths; seeing people living seemingly blissfully in their ignorance certainly tugs at our hearts more than seeing their bodies degenerating. Catholics are holistic; if we do corporal works of mercy only, we're Communist. Prayer, directing our works with the intention to glorify God, is essential.

I've noticed that the superiority of celibacy/virginity to matrimony enables priests/virgins to have mercy on marrieds, and this is a very good thing. St. Thomas writes that mercy is the greatest virtue with respect to our neighbor (inter omnes virtutes quae ad proximum pertinent potissima est misericordia), and "its act surpasses all others, since it belongs to one who is higher and better to supply the defect of another, insofar as the latter is deficient" (est potioris actus, nam supplere defectum alterius, inquantum huiusmodi, est superioris et melioris). Amoris Lætitia §159's Jovinian/Lutheran egalitarianism thus destroys mercy!

The English Dominicans add this parenthetically (Merchant of Venice , Act IV, Scene i, one of my favorite of his plays, esp. re: Shylock, the Jewish question):

[Portia, to Shylock's question of why be merciful:] The quality of mercy is not strained. / 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes / The throned monarch better than his crown.

St. Albert:

According to the universal usage of the Church, the Blessed Virgin is called, and is in fact, mother of mercy , something that can be said of no other creature. Sometimes men are called men of mercy, that is, men made humble by mercy, through which they have some relation to mercy, whether in a principal or accidental manner, but the relation she has to mercy is one of essential origin, in the manner of generation (per modum matris). This essential conformity surpasses immeasurably the modes of inherence and accident. The Blessed Virgin thus disproportionately surpasses all created persons in mercy.

Mariale , q. 75, p. 131a: “Beata Virgo, secundum universalem usum Ecclesiae appellatur est mater misericordiae , quod non convenit proprie alicui alteri creaturae. Dicuntur autem et aliquando viri misericordiae, id est viri humiles misericordia, et sic habent omnes alii comparationem ad misericordiam per modum principalem et per modum accidentalem, ipsa vero habet comparationem ad misericordiam per modum originis essentialis, quia per modum matris: convenientia autem essentialis improportionabiliter excellit modum inhaerentia et modum accidentalem: ergo beatissima Virgo improportionabiliter excedit in misericordia universos.”

Mater Misericordiæ, o.p.n.