Date: January 9, 2026
For the month of January the Dean’s commentary will feature text by VTS & GTS faculty members writing about what they are currently teaching, reading, or writing about.
My “Happy New Year” feels off. Instead, I’ve been saying “Mercy, mercy me.” When Marvin Gaye sang those words, it was more than a lyric. It became a lament shaped by love and moral urgency; naming grief, disorientation, and a quiet insistence that something more humane is required of us.
Later this month, VTS students will wrestle honestly with what faithfulness requires in public life in the Justice Praxis Seminar. What does mercy look like in legislation? As I’m writing a community ministry course, I’m wrestling with a pedagogy of mercy. How do I encourage students to slow down while learning their community contexts and challenge them to resist forms of ministry productivity that outpace dignity.
As Chaplain-in-Residence at George Washington University, mercy is practiced through pace, proximity, and care. It is presence without urgency. It is rest as resistance. Bee Gee, my blind/deaf service dog, is a skilled practitioner and a recipient of mercy who embodies these things.
I’d like to invite you to The Politics of Mercy on Tuesday, February 3, 2026, hosted by the Saint Nicholas Center for Faith and Justice. This year’s Mollegen Forum features The Rt. Rev. Dr. Mariann Edgar Budde (VTS ’89, ’09) as our keynote speaker and GA State Senator Rev. Kimberly Jackson (VTS ’10) as respondent. Together, they will explore Matthew 25 and the works of mercy as a Gospel-shaped framework for public witness. Register here: https://bit.ly/2026MollegenForum.
May mercy be more than our cry. May it become our practice, our pace, and our public witness.
The Rev. D’ana Downing
Program Coordinator, Saint Nicholas Center for Faith and Justice
Virginia Theological Seminary