AREA ONE: PERSONAL CONVERSION
Only when I am aware I myself have been forgiven much, and need mercy, will I be truly merciful. As Pope Francis told a group of prisoners, “Standing before you is a man who has received much forgiveness.”
- Ask pardon from those you ill-treated or cheated or slandered. Follow with a good confession.
- Forgive those who hurt you. Pray extra for them, and seek the grace to forgive. (If you are a priest, be available for hearing confessions.)
- Keep your life simple, so that you will be more willing to share resources with the really needy, rather than surround yourself with comforts and luxuries.
- Avoid habits that cause pain and division: Gossip, bigotry, exclusion of those who differ from you. Pope to religious on February 2: “if, in this Year of Mercy, each one of you could avoid becoming a terrorist of gossip, it would be a success for the Church, a great success of holiness!”
- When people want to give you gifts (e.g., on birthdays, jubilees, etc.), ask for things for the poor or for the mission, rather than personal gifts for yourself.
Father Spadaro writes about his interview with Pope Francis: “I ask him point-blank: ‘Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?’ The pope stares at me in silence. I ask him if this is a question that I am allowed to ask…. He nods that it is, and he tells me: ‘I do not know what might be the most fitting description…. I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.’”
AREA TWO: COMMUNITY RECONCILIATION
We need to be a reconciled family, overcoming divisions, injustice, jealousies and destructive agendas. We need to heal the increasing violence and intolerance with an onslaught of mercy.
- Heal and overcome divisions, if any, in your family, religious house, parish or diocese, based on language, caste, tribe, etc. Never write or encourage anonymous letters denigrating anyone.
- Arrange at least one meaningful penitential rite and reconciliation service in every community and parish.
- Treat employees with love and respect. Check their working conditions, salary, health condition, etc. Condone the debts of your employees up to a certain amount. Or offer to pay off their outstanding debts.
- Mission, not money: Make sure that our schools and hospitals are not run like a profit-making business, but really doing it with a Gospel-based spirit of love and service.
- Study Pope Francis’ writings on mercy—at least Misericordiae Vultus, The Name of God is Mercy, his Talk to Major Superiors, Amoris Letitia and Fr Antonio Spadaro’s Interview with Pope Francis. Discuss them in community. Get copies for community members.
AREA THREE: CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY
Each person, family, religious community, parish and province can choose some and make plans. Areas: food, clothes, shelter, sickness, imprisonment and burial.
- Celebrate events like birthdays, profession, ordination, jubilees, etc—by helping the poor (e.g., scholarships, medical help, etc), rather than getting personal gifts.
- Make a personal sacrifice that costs, eg, skipping a meal or not buying an unnecessary personal article, and use the money to help the poor. Keep family functions (weddings, First Communion,…) simple, to help the poor.
- Become an Organ Donor. Pledge your organs—at least after death: Tremendous need and shortage in India! One dead person’s organs and tissues can give life or sight or health to eight others.
- Donate blood. Encourage your family members and religious community to do it. .
- Sponsor nets. Caritas India plans to provide 5 lakh mosquito nets in areas most affected by malaria. Cost per net: Rs 300.
- Move from “comfort zones” to the “peripheries” the Holy Father speaks about. Examples: A well-to-do school adopting a poor rural school; allotting more personnel to works for the poor; using our education and skills to help the deprived.
- Prison Ministry: Ready to visit prisoners or find advocates for poor prisoners?
- Mid-day Meal: For the poorest students in school or college. How many will we help?
- Day care for the aged: Whose sons/daughters are at work during the day. Can you look after one or two elderly persons?
- Anti-human traffic network: Human trafficking, especially of women and children, has become the second most profitable business worldwide. And a very cruel one. Willing to save and help victims?
- Anti-drug addiction: The problem is very huge in some areas, e.g., Punjab. Ready to help victims with counselling and treatment?
- Home-based palliative care for terminally ill patients: Many cannot afford hospitals or private hospices. Ready to visit and do services for such patients in their homes?
- Medical camps: Some schools arrange this, and are ready to arrange it for others, too. How about our institutions?
- Care of drop-outs and street children: India has more dropouts than those who complete high school. One centre in Andhra has saved and rehabilitated around 24,000 boys and girls. Ready to engage in this ministry? Ready to send your younger religious for this?
- Care for AIDS patients and their children, or support for those who care for them.
- Migrants and refugees: There are 223 million refugees in the world. India has many refugees, both internal and external.
- Share your vehicles with poorer neighbours who need to go to the hospital or on other urgent errands.
- Take a stand for justice and human rights, when the occasion presents itself.
- Enter government service to bring about a more just and compassionate society.
- Use mass media, especially social media, to highlight justice issues and to help those who suffer the most. Eg, during the floods in Chennai, many did this.
AREA FOUR: SPIRITUAL WORKS OF MERCY
There are many ways of doing them. Areas: teaching, counselling, correcting, consoling, patience, forgiving and praying. Practical plans need to be made, e.g., counselling services in schools.
Education: Admit poorer students into our schools. Several schools open their buildings and premises in the evening, and provide teachers, to coach poor children attending government schools. Every school can do this.
- Teach catechism in parishes or schools, and do it creatively, in an interesting way. Offer retreats for teachers and senior students.
- Pray with and for persons who are sick or troubled.
- Make the Pope’s teachings (e.g., on ecology, justice, care for the poor, putting people above profit, etc) known to our students, lay collaborators, parishioners, etc.
- Fraternal, loving and direct correction (not gossip) of people involved in bad habits, such as addictions, slander or cruelty.
AREA FIVE: BEING A COMPASSIONATE AND POOR CHURCH, FOR THE POOR:
Leaders need to be compassionate brothers and sisters. Otherwise, as the Pope says, we will train “little monsters” who will then be in charge of our people. It is a terrible counter witness when priests, religious or lay leaders are harsh or cruel, unforgiving or agents of division.
- Form religious, seminarians and lay leaders into loving healers. “We must form their hearts. Otherwise we are creating little monsters. And these little monsters mold the People of God.” (Pope Francis)
- Implement the church’s and the government’s rules for the protection of minors in all our institutions. Avoid every form of abuse (physical, verbal, emotional or sexual).
- Make sure that parents, superiors and seniors set an example of compassion and a simple life close to the poor. Be humble healers, not haughty bosses. The younger ones will follow.
- Laudato Si’: Study it. Be ecologically responsible. Do we care for the poor, for the earth, and for future generations? Is our life simple or wasteful? Avoid luxuries and keep our life simple. “The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume.” (Laudato Si).
- Start each new day deciding to do at least three acts of love that day. At night check what loving and compassionate deeds you did that day. That is the only lasting thing you carry with you for eternity.
– A summary of the CRI Brochure 2016. Text by Fr Joe Mannath SDB
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