This is the logo for the Holy Year of Mercy, which opens Dec. 8 and runs until Nov. 20, 2016. (CNS/courtesy of Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization) See JUBILEE-MERCY May 5, 2015.
During this Year of Mercy, understanding the love and gifts that God has given us, even if we are in pain or experiencing loss, is essential so we can “be merciful, like the Father”. Pope Francis explains how this Mercy is so important, especially during Lent:
God’s mercy transforms human hearts; it enables us, through the experience of a faithful love, to become merciful in turn. In an ever new miracle, divine mercy shines forth in our lives, inspiring each of us to love our neighbour and to devote ourselves to what the Church’s tradition calls the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. These works remind us that faith finds expression in concrete everyday actions meant to help our neighbours in body and spirit: by feeding, visiting, comforting and instructing them. On such things will we be judged. For this reason, I expressed my hope that “the Christian people may reflect on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy; this will be a way to reawaken our conscience, too often grown dull in the face of poverty, and to enter more deeply into the heart of the Gospel where the poor have a special experience of God’s mercy” (ibid., 15). For in the poor, the flesh of Christ “becomes visible in the flesh of the tortured, the crushed, the scourged, the malnourished, and the exiled… to be acknowledged, touched, and cared for by us” (ibid.). It is the unprecedented and scandalous mystery of the extension in time of the suffering of the Innocent Lamb, the burning bush of gratuitous love. Before this love, we can, like Moses, take off our sandals (cf. Ex 3:5), especially when the poor are our brothers or sisters in Christ who are suffering for their faith. – Pope Francis Lenten Message 2016
You can read the entire 2016 Lenten Message on the Vatican Website.
I hope you take advantage of this weekend’s opportunities to learn about how St. John will be supporting efforts to give back within our parish, like the Ladies of Charity and Knights of Columbus, to give locally, with Guadalupe Social Services at the Ash Wednesday’s Feeding Hunger Filling Hearts and A Simple Gesture next weekend, and internationally with Shelter Box outside of the Masses, and the Jamaica Outreach Program. All of these programs help us live out the works of mercy that bring us closer to each other and to God.