The light of mercy

Friday, Dec. 04, 2015

What are you doing for the Year of Mercy?

This isn’t an idle question; I’m genuinely curious. Have you given any thought to how you will take advantage of this extraordinary jubilee, which starts Tuesday? If not, this newspaper contains myriad suggestions for ways to take up Pope Francis’ call to spend the next 12 months immersed in mercy.

The Holy Father set aside this year because “[a]t times we are called to gaze even more attentively on mercy so that we may become a more effective sign of the Father’s action in our lives,” he writes in “Misericordiae Vultus,” the document calling for the Year of Mercy, which was given back in April.

Since then, I’ve been considering, on and off, the concept of mercy. My contemplation has grown more urgent as we draw near to Dec. 8, the opening of the extraordinary jubilee, because I want to make the most of this opportunity to know mercy, which Pope Francis calls “the bridge that connects God and Man, opening our hearts to the hope of being loved forever despite our sinfulness.”

While I’ve been focusing intently on mercy this past month, an odd thing has happened: I found four opportunities to be kind to strangers. None of these was dramatic – not once afterward did I go home and say, “Guess what I did today?” – but my reward for each was an inner warmth  that I interpret as the Holy Spirit’s hug.

I also have been the recipient of kindness. For example, just last night I stayed late here at the office, and as I shut off my computer I noticed a coworker had turned on the stairwell light.

Now, you may think that’s a small thing, but this two-story house in which we work gets DARK at night, and the stairs are steep. If my coworker hadn’t been so thoughtful, I would have had to turn on all the lights up here in order to make it safely down the stairs, where I would have turned on the overhead light so that I could come back up to turn off all the other lights, and then descend once more so I could leave.

For my coworker, turning on the light may in fact have been a small thing, although he did have to go out of himself to think of me as he left. For me, however, his act alleviated a bit of bother, and while I won’t give him a hug, I hope the Holy Spirit did.

When I left the office, I went across to the cathedral to read the Bible verses assigned for a class I’m taking. I don’t believe it was a coincidence that the first verse was “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” 

Then, as though God wanted to ensure I was getting the message, a maintenance crew came into the cathedral to change a light bulb. (And just now as I am typing this, the morning sunlight coming through the window is causing the red and green leaves of my Christmas cactus to glow; I cannot describe how lovely it is except to say that I wish you could see the beauty.)  

So this is my challenge to you and myself throughout this Year of Mercy: Let us be the light of Christ to one another and to strangers. We may not be wealthy enough to endow a hospital wing, or powerful enough individually to have legislators listen when we speak of aiding the homeless, the helpless and the hungry, but the very least every one of us can do is turn the light on for each other.