April 7, 2015 Tuesday: Week 9, Divine Mercy Novena, Putting Mercy into Action
April 7, 2015: Wk 9 Divine Mercy - Putting Mercy into Action
“Expand your horizon.” It’s a phrase we heard from our parents and mentors over the years. It means, if you expand your horizons, you broaden your outlook on life and its possibilities. Traveling to foreign countries, being part of a mission trip, or emerging from a particularly difficult challenge has a way of expanding our outlook. One winter I traveled to Juarez, Mexico to stay with missionary priests to explore whether I too would like to be a missionary priest. On one outing with a missionary priest, we visited an elderly lady living in a shanty town without running water or heat. She hadn’t bathed in quite a while. While the missionary priest gave her a heartwarming hug as we left, I just couldn’t bring myself to hug someone who stank so much. On my way back from Mexico, I reflected on my encounter with that elderly lady and how the missionary priest embraced her. I received an invitation from God to expand my horizon, to expand my “merciful outlook.”
The past eight Tuesdays, we reviewed Jesus’ call for us to see him in the disguise of ordinary men and women we encounter in our daily lives. Sometimes he comes disguised as someone who hungers for love, someone who is ill, someone who is imprisoned, or someone who is stripped of dignity. How will we treat someone who comes to us needing compassion? Pope Francis wisely advises us, “I think we too are the people who, on the one hand want to listen to Jesus, but on the other hand, at times, like to find a stick to beat others with, to condemn others. And Jesus has this message for us: mercy. I think--and I say it with humility--that this is the Lord’s most powerful message: mercy. It was he himself who said: ‘I did not come for the righteous...I came for sinners.’ He comes for us, when we recognize that we are sinners.”
Jesus desires to heal our hearts so that he can expand our merciful outlook. He is giving us a new lens to look at the world. We are used to seeing the world and people through categories of profit, loss, performance, and usefulness. Yet all of us, through the eyes of God, are “unprofitable servants.” (Luke 17:10) Are we merciful right now to our family, friends, and co-workers? If we are not, we need to ask Jesus to teach us to look at God’s prodigal children, with Jesus’ own love and compassion. A genuine merciful outlook is not patronizing, pitying, looking down, or proselytizing. Merciful outlook means proclaiming the good news of Christ’s love through an authentic love for the other as a person. It gives a cup of love to another and to ourselves as we make our pilgrimage through this desert of life to the Ocean of Love in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Are you ready to put your merciful outlook into action?
The past eight Tuesdays, we reviewed Jesus’ call for us to see him in the disguise of ordinary men and women we encounter in our daily lives. Sometimes he comes disguised as someone who hungers for love, someone who is ill, someone who is imprisoned, or someone who is stripped of dignity. How will we treat someone who comes to us needing compassion? Pope Francis wisely advises us, “I think we too are the people who, on the one hand want to listen to Jesus, but on the other hand, at times, like to find a stick to beat others with, to condemn others. And Jesus has this message for us: mercy. I think--and I say it with humility--that this is the Lord’s most powerful message: mercy. It was he himself who said: ‘I did not come for the righteous...I came for sinners.’ He comes for us, when we recognize that we are sinners.”
Jesus desires to heal our hearts so that he can expand our merciful outlook. He is giving us a new lens to look at the world. We are used to seeing the world and people through categories of profit, loss, performance, and usefulness. Yet all of us, through the eyes of God, are “unprofitable servants.” (Luke 17:10) Are we merciful right now to our family, friends, and co-workers? If we are not, we need to ask Jesus to teach us to look at God’s prodigal children, with Jesus’ own love and compassion. A genuine merciful outlook is not patronizing, pitying, looking down, or proselytizing. Merciful outlook means proclaiming the good news of Christ’s love through an authentic love for the other as a person. It gives a cup of love to another and to ourselves as we make our pilgrimage through this desert of life to the Ocean of Love in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Are you ready to put your merciful outlook into action?
