May
05
2016
0
By Anonymous (not verified)
The following is a talk given by Fr. Patrice Chocholski on the second day of the two-day 12th Annual Medicine, Bioethics, and Spirituality Conference held in Worcester, Massachusetts on May 4-5. Father Patrice is rector of the Shrine of the Curé of Ars, in France.
I will first talk about two contemporary experiences. To what are the people especially sensitive today? First, here the experiences of Albert Cohen and Faustina Kowalska.
I will talk about a person who never became a Christian. It's a humanist, Albert Cohen. He worked at the U.N. in Geneva, ethnically Jewish, great humanist.
It is a profound experience that challenges even atheists and agnostics. In his diary in 1978, he made the discovery of his life, he wants to announce as a testament to his fellow human beings. It is the discovery of what he called the experience of "pity tenderness" (in the sense of our mercy, the Hebrew word rahamim):
O you, human beings, believe this law that I propose, law of the pity tenderness, frail Will I leave to the living ones, humble act which I know as the only possible and only serious and only true love of neighbor."
Two or three years before his death, he said: "I lived my life, I looked, I was very liberal and libertine, I asked myself the question of God in today's world. I never managed to respond positively. I searched his Presence. I never could decide. Nothing has convinced me of the existence of God or of his presence in the world. But I made an amazing experience ...
I resented my father. He was a drunkard. He used to beat my mother. I do not manage to forgive him. And it was a burden, a weight in my whole life. Mom invited me to show him compassion, invited me to forgive him. But I refused categorically. And mom had this argument. She said: You know Albert. Imagine that you go through the same trials of life, injuries, childhood, all he lived. Ask yourself the question: what would you have become in place of him. If I had gone through the same trials? Maybe I would have become worse than him. These arguments Mom did not breach, neither the presence of God. And he lived his life. Read his diary. It's not that the Diary of saint Faustina. It's very very raw. And we ask the question: where does he lead us to? Anyway he expresses the reflections of most of the people today.
He learned after World War II that General Pierre Laval was sentenced to death by capital punishment (50 years of his death yesterday), for his collaboration with Hitler. He was glad of this decisión of the Supreme Court. He is ethnically a Jew. But the night before the execution, several hundred kilometers away, the words of his mother returned to her memory: "Albert, if you had gone through the same trials as your dad ...? "A night without sleep! Albert wrote the next day: I experienced in the depths of my being something that arose in me, I do not know from where - the pity tenderness.
This is the famous "rahamim" Hebrew. We can translate "mercy"? He knows Hebrew, he feels the meaning of this lively mercy, pity tenderness, maternal tenderness, a visceral affection. "I felt mercy, love for this man who was to be sentenced. I felt pity, mercy, tenderness, compassion - and at the same time, I was led to forgive my dad that night. "
The next day he wrote in his diary, in his autobiography, two years before his death: "I prostrate before the Presence, with capital letter. The Lord is here. I experienced his presence. I have no words, no philosophical argument. Nothing. God was there. He was in my life. He had spoken to me. It had crossed my being. He was here ... Now I live in his presence, in adoration. " That's wonderful. That's wonderful! This is really the only great experience worth living! He shouts from the rooftops, in his autobiography. He leaves this testament to his fellow human beings. Dixit a great humanist of the twentieth century.
This shows that Mercy, that the experience of Mercy tenderness is present. This experience is really can be an experience of God through the being. And this experience speaks to the contemporary world. It speaks to the atheist, the agnostic, but also to members of other religions. Crossed by the Mercy of God. The trinitarian Mercy flows through our beings, through our relations ...
One day conference, I was driving, with significant Muslim France. He said, you know, we are talking about the things of God the Merciful, in this car. I'm in adoration ...
This is to say that the contemporary world, which seems to berefractory to traditional religious forms, is not at all close to the experience of Mercy. And it is the experience par excellence that puts us in the presence of Presence. The contemporary world is sensitive to this.
Here the second experience, that of St. Faustina, which always fascinates me.
We talki t perhaps too often of her visions or locutions, by objectifying them in the third person. It can also be attempted to fossilize her words, while they are located first in a Trinitarian theological experience.
At the beginning of her Diary, while Faustina had her first locutions and visions of Christ, like the Apostles in the Upper Room, it raises the question of their authenticity, or rather the truth of Jesus' presence in what she sees or hears. She asks:
"Jesus, are you not an illusion?" What honesty, what modernity? She asks questions. It is an excellent nun. She asks questions until the end. She receives only one response: "Faustina, love never fails." In other words, you experience the merciful love today. You perceive good and love in your life, in your being. This love is received. You cannot produce it by yourself, if not its source. Everything will disappoint you in this world. Never love that comes from God. The Love of God will never disappoint you, nor will confuse you. You're not the victim of an illusion. I am here. In fact, the love of God which is given toall creation is what really exists. For the rest, there are many illusions, fantasies, mismatches ... Love alone is what makes really exist.
God exists and Faustina is meeting him. It is found in Mercy. Divine Mercy is not fixed. It is relational. It's still there, in the relationships that we experience.
It's really the experience of Therese and Faustina, saints and friends of God, who believe and trust in the merciful love, in this darkness, where they feel nothing. As for Jesus, in the abandonment on the Cross, the Father has never been so close to him. Never Mercy reflects better than when one does not feel, but gives up. We become almost transparent containers of Presence, we become flames of Mercy. In this experiment, too, we are thirsty. Thirst "all men should do the experience of divine mercy. "(John Paul II)
And this love propels us towards others in mercy, to forgive (2 Corinthians 5:14) to preach and testify. It will propel us to forgiveness. It is this love that burns us.
Jesus, I trust in you!
Pope Francis and popular devotions, in Evangelization Gaudium
69. It is imperative to evangelize cultures in order to inculturate the Gospel. In countries of Catholic tradition, this means encouraging, fostering and reinforcing a richness which already exists. In countries of other religious traditions, or profoundly secularized countries, it will mean sparking new processes for evangelizing culture, even though these will demand long-term planning. We must keep in mind, however, that we are constantly being called to grow. Each culture and social group needs purification and growth. In the case of the popular cultures of Catholic peoples, we can see deficiencies which need to be healed by the Gospel: machismo, alcoholism, domestic violence, low Mass attendance, fatalistic or superstitious notions which lead to sorcery, and the like. Popular piety itself can be the starting point for healing and liberation from these deficiencies.
70. It is also true that at times greater emphasis is placed on the outward expressions and traditions of some groups, or on alleged private revelations which would replace all else, than on the impulse of Christian piety. There is a kind of Christianity made up of devotions reflecting an individual and sentimental faith life which does not in fact correspond to authentic "popular piety". Some people promote these expressions while not being in the least concerned with the advancement of society or the formation of the laity, and in certain cases they do so in order to obtain economic benefits or some power over others. Nor can we overlook the fact that in recent decades there has been a breakdown in the way Catholics pass down the Christian faith to the young. It is undeniable that many people feel disillusioned and no longer identify with the Catholic tradition. Growing numbers of parents do not bring their children for baptism or teach them how to pray. There is also a certain exodus towards other faith communities. The causes of this breakdown include: a lack of opportunity for dialogue in families, the influence of the communications media, a relativistic subjectivism, unbridled consumerism which feeds the market, lack of pastoral care among the poor, the failure of our institutions to be welcoming, and our difficulty in restoring a mystical adherence to the faith in a pluralistic religious landscape.
The evangelizing power of popular piety
122. In the same way, we can see that the different peoples among whom the Gospel has been inculturated are active collective subjects or agents of evangelization. This is because each people is the creator of their own culture and the protagonist of their own history. Culture is a dynamic reality which a people constantly recreates; each generation passes on a whole series of ways of approaching different existential situations to the next generation, which must in turn reformulate it as it confronts its own challenges. Being human means "being at the same time son and father of the culture to which one belongs".[97] Once the Gospel has been inculturated in a people, in their process of transmitting their culture they also transmit the faith in ever new forms; hence the importance of understanding evangelization as inculturation. Each portion of the people of God, by translating the gift of God into its own life and in accordance with its own genius, bears witness to the faith it has received and enriches it with new and eloquent expressions. One can say that "a people continuously evangelizes itself".[98] Herein lies the importance of popular piety, a true expression of the spontaneous missionary activity of the people of God. This is an ongoing and developing process, of which the Holy Spirit is the principal agent.[99]
123. Popular piety enables us to see how the faith, once received, becomes embodied in a culture and is constantly passed on. Once looked down upon, popular piety came to be appreciated once more in the decades following the Council. In the ExhortationEvangelii Nuntiandi, Pope Paul VI gave a decisive impulse in this area. There he stated that popular piety "manifests a thirst for God which only the poor and the simple can know"[100] and that "it makes people capable of generosity and sacrifice even to the point of heroism, when it is a question of bearing witness to belief".[101] Closer to our own time, Benedict XVI, speaking about Latin America, pointed out that popular piety is "a precious treasure of the Catholic Church", in which "we see the soul of the Latin American peoples".[102]
124. The Aparecida Document describes the riches which the Holy Spirit pours forth in popular piety by his gratuitous initiative. On that beloved continent, where many Christians express their faith through popular piety, the bishops also refer to it as "popular spirituality" or "the people's mysticism".[103] It is truly "a spirituality incarnated in the culture of the lowly".[104] Nor is it devoid of content; rather it discovers and expresses that content more by way of symbols than by discursive reasoning, and in the act of faith greater accent is placed on credere in Deum than on credere Deum.[105] It is "a legitimate way of living the faith, a way of feeling part of the Church and a manner of being missionaries";[106] it brings with itself the grace of being a missionary, of coming out of oneself and setting out on pilgrimage: "Journeying together to shrines and taking part in other manifestations of popular piety, also by taking one's children or inviting others, is in itself an evangelizing gesture".[107] Let us not stifle or presume to control this missionary power!
125. To understand this reality we need to approach it with the gaze of the Good Shepherd, who seeks not to judge but to love. Only from the affective connaturality born of love can we appreciate the theological life present in the piety of Christian peoples, especially among their poor. I think of the steadfast faith of those mothers tending their sick children who, though perhaps barely familiar with the articles of the creed, cling to a rosary; or of all the hope poured into a candle lighted in a humble home with a prayer for help from Mary, or in the gaze of tender love directed to Christ crucified. No one who loves God's holy people will view these actions as the expression of a purely human search for the divine. They are the manifestation of a theological life nourished by the working of the Holy Spirit who has been poured into our hearts (cf. Rom 5:5).
126. Underlying popular piety, as a fruit of the inculturated Gospel, is an active evangelizing power which we must not underestimate: to do so would be to fail to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit. Instead, we are called to promote and strengthen it, in order to deepen the never-ending process of inculturation. Expressions of popular piety have much to teach us; for those who are capable of reading them, they are a locus theologicus which demands our attention, especially at a time when we are looking to the new evangelization.
69 Church to be healed
70. Individualism
122. Evangelizing strength
123. Expresses a thirst that only the simple and the poor people can experience
124 incarnated in the culture of the simmle
126 it is a theological place. We have aot to learn of it.
In the Bulla (24), Faustina:
Our prayer also extends to the saints and blessed ones who made divine mercy their mission in life. I think especially of the great apostle of mercy, Saint Faustina Kowalska. May she, who was called to enter the depths of divine mercy, intercede for us and obtain for us the grace of living and walking always according to the mercy of God and with an unwavering trust in his love.
Devotion globally popular with lay people
Christ image: yes but also: Jesus, I trust in you. how to contemplate him through the Scriptures. How to realize the lectio divina Bulle 13
In order to be capable of mercy, therefore, we must first of all dispose ourselves to listen to the Word of God. This means rediscovering the value of silence in order to meditate on the Word that comes to us. In this way, it will be possible to contemplate God's mercy and adopt it as our lifestyle.
Chaplet : yes but also, how to participate to Christ intercession in the Eucharist
Near the sick and the dying. Proximity presence.
Prayer to be Merciful to Others
O Most Holy Trinity! As many times as I breathe, as many times as my heart beats, as many times as my blood pulsates through my body, so many thousand times do I want to glorify Your mercy.
I want to be completely transformed into Your mercy and to be Your living reflection, O Lord. May the greatest of all divine attributes, that of Your unfathomable mercy, pass through my heart and soul to my neighbor.
Help me, O Lord, that my eyes may be merciful, so that I may never suspect or judge from appearances, but look for what is beautiful in my neighbors' souls and come to their rescue.
Help me, that my ears may be merciful, so that I may give heed to my neighbors' needs and not be indifferent to their pains and moanings.
Help me, O Lord, that my tongue may be merciful, so that I should never speak negatively of my neighbor, but have a word of comfort and forgiveness for all.
Help me, O Lord, that my hands may be merciful and filled with good deeds, so that I may do only good to my neighbors and take upon myself the more difficult and toilsome tasks.
Help me, that my feet may be merciful, so that I may hurry to assist my neighbor, overcoming my own fatigue and weariness. My true rest is in the service of my neighbor.
Help me, O Lord, that my heart may be merciful so that I myself may feel all the sufferings of my neighbor. I will refuse my heart to no one. I will be sincere even with those who, I know, will abuse my kindness. And I will lock myself up in the most merciful Heart of Jesus. I will bear my own suffering in silence. May Your mercy, O Lord, rest upon me.
You Yourself command me to exercise the three degrees of mercy. The first: the act of mercy, of whatever kind. The second: the word of mercy - if I cannot carry out a work of mercy, I will assist by my words. The third: prayer - if I cannot show mercy by deeds or words, I can always do so by prayer. My prayer reaches out even there where I cannot reach out physically.
I will first talk about two contemporary experiences. To what are the people especially sensitive today? First, here the experiences of Albert Cohen and Faustina Kowalska.
I will talk about a person who never became a Christian. It's a humanist, Albert Cohen. He worked at the U.N. in Geneva, ethnically Jewish, great humanist.
It is a profound experience that challenges even atheists and agnostics. In his diary in 1978, he made the discovery of his life, he wants to announce as a testament to his fellow human beings. It is the discovery of what he called the experience of "pity tenderness" (in the sense of our mercy, the Hebrew word rahamim):
O you, human beings, believe this law that I propose, law of the pity tenderness, frail Will I leave to the living ones, humble act which I know as the only possible and only serious and only true love of neighbor."
Two or three years before his death, he said: "I lived my life, I looked, I was very liberal and libertine, I asked myself the question of God in today's world. I never managed to respond positively. I searched his Presence. I never could decide. Nothing has convinced me of the existence of God or of his presence in the world. But I made an amazing experience ...
I resented my father. He was a drunkard. He used to beat my mother. I do not manage to forgive him. And it was a burden, a weight in my whole life. Mom invited me to show him compassion, invited me to forgive him. But I refused categorically. And mom had this argument. She said: You know Albert. Imagine that you go through the same trials of life, injuries, childhood, all he lived. Ask yourself the question: what would you have become in place of him. If I had gone through the same trials? Maybe I would have become worse than him. These arguments Mom did not breach, neither the presence of God. And he lived his life. Read his diary. It's not that the Diary of saint Faustina. It's very very raw. And we ask the question: where does he lead us to? Anyway he expresses the reflections of most of the people today.
He learned after World War II that General Pierre Laval was sentenced to death by capital punishment (50 years of his death yesterday), for his collaboration with Hitler. He was glad of this decisión of the Supreme Court. He is ethnically a Jew. But the night before the execution, several hundred kilometers away, the words of his mother returned to her memory: "Albert, if you had gone through the same trials as your dad ...? "A night without sleep! Albert wrote the next day: I experienced in the depths of my being something that arose in me, I do not know from where - the pity tenderness.
This is the famous "rahamim" Hebrew. We can translate "mercy"? He knows Hebrew, he feels the meaning of this lively mercy, pity tenderness, maternal tenderness, a visceral affection. "I felt mercy, love for this man who was to be sentenced. I felt pity, mercy, tenderness, compassion - and at the same time, I was led to forgive my dad that night. "
The next day he wrote in his diary, in his autobiography, two years before his death: "I prostrate before the Presence, with capital letter. The Lord is here. I experienced his presence. I have no words, no philosophical argument. Nothing. God was there. He was in my life. He had spoken to me. It had crossed my being. He was here ... Now I live in his presence, in adoration. " That's wonderful. That's wonderful! This is really the only great experience worth living! He shouts from the rooftops, in his autobiography. He leaves this testament to his fellow human beings. Dixit a great humanist of the twentieth century.
This shows that Mercy, that the experience of Mercy tenderness is present. This experience is really can be an experience of God through the being. And this experience speaks to the contemporary world. It speaks to the atheist, the agnostic, but also to members of other religions. Crossed by the Mercy of God. The trinitarian Mercy flows through our beings, through our relations ...
One day conference, I was driving, with significant Muslim France. He said, you know, we are talking about the things of God the Merciful, in this car. I'm in adoration ...
This is to say that the contemporary world, which seems to berefractory to traditional religious forms, is not at all close to the experience of Mercy. And it is the experience par excellence that puts us in the presence of Presence. The contemporary world is sensitive to this.
Here the second experience, that of St. Faustina, which always fascinates me.
We talki t perhaps too often of her visions or locutions, by objectifying them in the third person. It can also be attempted to fossilize her words, while they are located first in a Trinitarian theological experience.
At the beginning of her Diary, while Faustina had her first locutions and visions of Christ, like the Apostles in the Upper Room, it raises the question of their authenticity, or rather the truth of Jesus' presence in what she sees or hears. She asks:
"Jesus, are you not an illusion?" What honesty, what modernity? She asks questions. It is an excellent nun. She asks questions until the end. She receives only one response: "Faustina, love never fails." In other words, you experience the merciful love today. You perceive good and love in your life, in your being. This love is received. You cannot produce it by yourself, if not its source. Everything will disappoint you in this world. Never love that comes from God. The Love of God will never disappoint you, nor will confuse you. You're not the victim of an illusion. I am here. In fact, the love of God which is given toall creation is what really exists. For the rest, there are many illusions, fantasies, mismatches ... Love alone is what makes really exist.
God exists and Faustina is meeting him. It is found in Mercy. Divine Mercy is not fixed. It is relational. It's still there, in the relationships that we experience.
It's really the experience of Therese and Faustina, saints and friends of God, who believe and trust in the merciful love, in this darkness, where they feel nothing. As for Jesus, in the abandonment on the Cross, the Father has never been so close to him. Never Mercy reflects better than when one does not feel, but gives up. We become almost transparent containers of Presence, we become flames of Mercy. In this experiment, too, we are thirsty. Thirst "all men should do the experience of divine mercy. "(John Paul II)
And this love propels us towards others in mercy, to forgive (2 Corinthians 5:14) to preach and testify. It will propel us to forgiveness. It is this love that burns us.
Jesus, I trust in you!
Pope Francis and popular devotions, in Evangelization Gaudium
69. It is imperative to evangelize cultures in order to inculturate the Gospel. In countries of Catholic tradition, this means encouraging, fostering and reinforcing a richness which already exists. In countries of other religious traditions, or profoundly secularized countries, it will mean sparking new processes for evangelizing culture, even though these will demand long-term planning. We must keep in mind, however, that we are constantly being called to grow. Each culture and social group needs purification and growth. In the case of the popular cultures of Catholic peoples, we can see deficiencies which need to be healed by the Gospel: machismo, alcoholism, domestic violence, low Mass attendance, fatalistic or superstitious notions which lead to sorcery, and the like. Popular piety itself can be the starting point for healing and liberation from these deficiencies.
70. It is also true that at times greater emphasis is placed on the outward expressions and traditions of some groups, or on alleged private revelations which would replace all else, than on the impulse of Christian piety. There is a kind of Christianity made up of devotions reflecting an individual and sentimental faith life which does not in fact correspond to authentic "popular piety". Some people promote these expressions while not being in the least concerned with the advancement of society or the formation of the laity, and in certain cases they do so in order to obtain economic benefits or some power over others. Nor can we overlook the fact that in recent decades there has been a breakdown in the way Catholics pass down the Christian faith to the young. It is undeniable that many people feel disillusioned and no longer identify with the Catholic tradition. Growing numbers of parents do not bring their children for baptism or teach them how to pray. There is also a certain exodus towards other faith communities. The causes of this breakdown include: a lack of opportunity for dialogue in families, the influence of the communications media, a relativistic subjectivism, unbridled consumerism which feeds the market, lack of pastoral care among the poor, the failure of our institutions to be welcoming, and our difficulty in restoring a mystical adherence to the faith in a pluralistic religious landscape.
The evangelizing power of popular piety
122. In the same way, we can see that the different peoples among whom the Gospel has been inculturated are active collective subjects or agents of evangelization. This is because each people is the creator of their own culture and the protagonist of their own history. Culture is a dynamic reality which a people constantly recreates; each generation passes on a whole series of ways of approaching different existential situations to the next generation, which must in turn reformulate it as it confronts its own challenges. Being human means "being at the same time son and father of the culture to which one belongs".[97] Once the Gospel has been inculturated in a people, in their process of transmitting their culture they also transmit the faith in ever new forms; hence the importance of understanding evangelization as inculturation. Each portion of the people of God, by translating the gift of God into its own life and in accordance with its own genius, bears witness to the faith it has received and enriches it with new and eloquent expressions. One can say that "a people continuously evangelizes itself".[98] Herein lies the importance of popular piety, a true expression of the spontaneous missionary activity of the people of God. This is an ongoing and developing process, of which the Holy Spirit is the principal agent.[99]
123. Popular piety enables us to see how the faith, once received, becomes embodied in a culture and is constantly passed on. Once looked down upon, popular piety came to be appreciated once more in the decades following the Council. In the ExhortationEvangelii Nuntiandi, Pope Paul VI gave a decisive impulse in this area. There he stated that popular piety "manifests a thirst for God which only the poor and the simple can know"[100] and that "it makes people capable of generosity and sacrifice even to the point of heroism, when it is a question of bearing witness to belief".[101] Closer to our own time, Benedict XVI, speaking about Latin America, pointed out that popular piety is "a precious treasure of the Catholic Church", in which "we see the soul of the Latin American peoples".[102]
124. The Aparecida Document describes the riches which the Holy Spirit pours forth in popular piety by his gratuitous initiative. On that beloved continent, where many Christians express their faith through popular piety, the bishops also refer to it as "popular spirituality" or "the people's mysticism".[103] It is truly "a spirituality incarnated in the culture of the lowly".[104] Nor is it devoid of content; rather it discovers and expresses that content more by way of symbols than by discursive reasoning, and in the act of faith greater accent is placed on credere in Deum than on credere Deum.[105] It is "a legitimate way of living the faith, a way of feeling part of the Church and a manner of being missionaries";[106] it brings with itself the grace of being a missionary, of coming out of oneself and setting out on pilgrimage: "Journeying together to shrines and taking part in other manifestations of popular piety, also by taking one's children or inviting others, is in itself an evangelizing gesture".[107] Let us not stifle or presume to control this missionary power!
125. To understand this reality we need to approach it with the gaze of the Good Shepherd, who seeks not to judge but to love. Only from the affective connaturality born of love can we appreciate the theological life present in the piety of Christian peoples, especially among their poor. I think of the steadfast faith of those mothers tending their sick children who, though perhaps barely familiar with the articles of the creed, cling to a rosary; or of all the hope poured into a candle lighted in a humble home with a prayer for help from Mary, or in the gaze of tender love directed to Christ crucified. No one who loves God's holy people will view these actions as the expression of a purely human search for the divine. They are the manifestation of a theological life nourished by the working of the Holy Spirit who has been poured into our hearts (cf. Rom 5:5).
126. Underlying popular piety, as a fruit of the inculturated Gospel, is an active evangelizing power which we must not underestimate: to do so would be to fail to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit. Instead, we are called to promote and strengthen it, in order to deepen the never-ending process of inculturation. Expressions of popular piety have much to teach us; for those who are capable of reading them, they are a locus theologicus which demands our attention, especially at a time when we are looking to the new evangelization.
69 Church to be healed
70. Individualism
122. Evangelizing strength
123. Expresses a thirst that only the simple and the poor people can experience
124 incarnated in the culture of the simmle
126 it is a theological place. We have aot to learn of it.
In the Bulla (24), Faustina:
Our prayer also extends to the saints and blessed ones who made divine mercy their mission in life. I think especially of the great apostle of mercy, Saint Faustina Kowalska. May she, who was called to enter the depths of divine mercy, intercede for us and obtain for us the grace of living and walking always according to the mercy of God and with an unwavering trust in his love.
Devotion globally popular with lay people
Christ image: yes but also: Jesus, I trust in you. how to contemplate him through the Scriptures. How to realize the lectio divina Bulle 13
In order to be capable of mercy, therefore, we must first of all dispose ourselves to listen to the Word of God. This means rediscovering the value of silence in order to meditate on the Word that comes to us. In this way, it will be possible to contemplate God's mercy and adopt it as our lifestyle.
Chaplet : yes but also, how to participate to Christ intercession in the Eucharist
Near the sick and the dying. Proximity presence.
Prayer to be Merciful to Others
O Most Holy Trinity! As many times as I breathe, as many times as my heart beats, as many times as my blood pulsates through my body, so many thousand times do I want to glorify Your mercy.
I want to be completely transformed into Your mercy and to be Your living reflection, O Lord. May the greatest of all divine attributes, that of Your unfathomable mercy, pass through my heart and soul to my neighbor.
Help me, O Lord, that my eyes may be merciful, so that I may never suspect or judge from appearances, but look for what is beautiful in my neighbors' souls and come to their rescue.
Help me, that my ears may be merciful, so that I may give heed to my neighbors' needs and not be indifferent to their pains and moanings.
Help me, O Lord, that my tongue may be merciful, so that I should never speak negatively of my neighbor, but have a word of comfort and forgiveness for all.
Help me, O Lord, that my hands may be merciful and filled with good deeds, so that I may do only good to my neighbors and take upon myself the more difficult and toilsome tasks.
Help me, that my feet may be merciful, so that I may hurry to assist my neighbor, overcoming my own fatigue and weariness. My true rest is in the service of my neighbor.
Help me, O Lord, that my heart may be merciful so that I myself may feel all the sufferings of my neighbor. I will refuse my heart to no one. I will be sincere even with those who, I know, will abuse my kindness. And I will lock myself up in the most merciful Heart of Jesus. I will bear my own suffering in silence. May Your mercy, O Lord, rest upon me.
You Yourself command me to exercise the three degrees of mercy. The first: the act of mercy, of whatever kind. The second: the word of mercy - if I cannot carry out a work of mercy, I will assist by my words. The third: prayer - if I cannot show mercy by deeds or words, I can always do so by prayer. My prayer reaches out even there where I cannot reach out physically.
