Power of Mercy: WEEKLY MESSAGE FOR 04-05-16

Dear Friends in Christ,

Even as spring arrives, the signs of winter remain in New England. There are the tree branches broken by heavy snow, the lawns carved up by erratic snowplows. And memories of power outages, when one or two felled electric lines left the whole neighborhood in darkness.

It’s in those first minutes of an outage, amid the scramble for flashlights and candles, that you realize how dependent you are on electricity. Everything from the heating system to the water pump to the Internet suddenly goes quiet. Life peters out. You pray for the return of the power, knowing how much you need it.

We could say the same about God’s mercy. Like electricity, it is a force that keeps life humming along, sometimes without our noticing it. For without mercy, we would languish in the swamp of our sins. There would be no cause for hope, no joy.

But with God’s mercy all things are possible. With his mercy we have a chance to start afresh — each time we walk out of a confessional, for instance.

This mercy isn’t meant to be a one-way street, however. God wants us to imitate his mercy in our dealings with others. And one of the great acts of mercy is to look beyond the pain a person has caused us and bring him closer to an encounter with Jesus’ mercy.

This is part of the motivation behind RC Spirituality as we strive to provide quality, life-changing Catholic formation materials in multiple formats that encourage people to Pray, Learn, Grow and Go! Using these tools we try to help people discover (or rediscover) the reality of God’s mercy, and lead them to make room for Christ in their lives.

Anything you can do to introduce friends to RC Spirituality could be a work of mercy. So help us — and be merciful.

God bless,

Father Edward McIlmail, L.C.
Ask a Priest contributor