Last week, after having dinner with two priests at a local restaurant, I suggested we walk around Daffin Park in Savannah before going our separate ways. The mild temperature and gentle breeze made selling the walk very easy. Middle school students played football, joggers ran past us in both directions, and many lay on the grass enjoying the perfect fall day.
After going around the park once, we cut through a neighborhood on the way back to our cars. The road was desolate and night was beginning to fall. Suddenly we heard the voice of an older woman cry out, “please, gentlemen, could you help me?” Though the park had been buzzing with activity, this road had no pedestrians, it was quiet, and not so well kept. The houses off the road were old, and each had a typical southern front porch where folks drink a beer and smoke a cigarette on evenings such as these.
I turned towards the voice and saw an anxious African American woman. As she approached us I glanced behind her and saw an elderly woman sitting on the top step of the short stairway that led up to the porch of the green house. “I can’t get my ninety-four year old mother in the house!” She further explained that her mother had just been released from the hospital and ran into trouble when she got out of her wheelchair to go up the wooden steps.
The three of us quickly considered ways to help these two women. The elderly woman sitting on the ground could hardly speak and she seemed to be in great pain. We managed to get her on her feet, down the steps and onto her wheelchair. Once in the chair, we carried the chair up the steps to the porch.
As we said goodbye, the now relieved daughter did not have enough words to express her gratitude. One of the priests said, “what you don’t know ma’am, is that all three of us are Catholic priests.” The woman was filled with even more gratitude. She asked us where we worked as priests and asked for prayers, especially for her ailing mother.
Earlier that day, a group of priests were discussing ways to commemorate the upcoming Year of Mercy which Pope Francis has called starting December 8th of this year. In my encounter with these two women I found a personal answer – to show mercy in concrete ways to concrete individuals. To allow myself to be inconvenienced for the sake of the other. To express a glimmer of God’s unfathomable love and mercy to others, especially those who do not have the ability or desire to express it back to me. To be merciful is to live the proverbial Golden Rule – to treat others as you would like to be treated.
Saint Thomas Aquinas defined mercy as “the compassion in our hearts for another person’s misery, a compassion which drives us to do what we can to help him or her.”
In a world that praises efficiency and timeliness, stopping to help a needy woman is inconvenient. The world prefers to ignore the need or blame someone else for being irresponsible, yet Jesus calls us to be merciful. Expressions of mercy not only help their recipients, but enlarge the hearts of those who show mercy.
So if you are looking for ways to live out the Year of Mercy, consider the time-tested traditional Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy. We do not have to go very far to find concrete ways to enter fully into the year of mercy.
The Corporal Works of Mercy
Feed the hungry
Give drink to the thirsty
Clothe the naked
Shelter the homeless
Visit the sick
Visit the imprisoned
Bury the dead
The Spiritual Works of Mercy
Admonish the sinner
Instruct the ignorant
Counsel the doubtful
Comfort the sorrowful
Bear wrongs patiently
Forgive all injuries
Pray for the living and the dead
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