Advent Day 7/December 13

Mercy Is One and Diverse

Today’s Reading

God indeed is my savior;
I am confident and unafraid.
My strength and my courage is the LORD,
and he has been my savior…

Give thanks to the LORD, acclaim his name;

among the nations make known his deeds,
proclaim how exalted is his name….
Sing praise to the LORD for his glorious achievement;
let this be known throughout all the earth.
Shout with exultation, O city of Zion,
for great in your midst
is the Holy One of Israel!

(cf. Isaiah 12.2-6)

Today’s Reflection

   I call three men the “holy trinity” of Guatemala: Jorge, a chicken farmer noted for just wages and concern for his employees; Alvaro, a bishop who risks his life defending the poor from industrial exploitation and pollution; and Jose, a doctor serving the poor, who began his practice among native Mayans, living in a dirt-floor house.  To me (using language the church uses to speak of the Holy Trinity) these three are all “equal in majesty and undivided in splendor” because of the witness of their Christian lives, but distinct in “what is proper to each person”—that is, in the way each shows mercy to the poor.

   It is as if these three had asked John the Baptist in the gospel, “What should we do?”  To the doctor he said: “If you have more education than others, use it for those who have none; if you have skills, use them for the poor.”  To the businessman: “Don’t take more money than is right.”  To the bishop: “Do not abuse power or suppress the truth for favors.”

   One and the same divinity shines through their humanity in the diversity of their personal acts of mercy.  Knowing these three makes me “shout with exultation…for great in [our] midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

--Fr. David M. Knight

Response

• Ponder the ways in which you are equal to others but distinct in what gifts and talents are unique to you…
• Think of a way in which someone has used their unique gifts and talents to show mercy to you…

• Remember a time when you used your unique gifts and talents to show mercy to someone else…

• Imagine who might be waiting for you now to use your unique gifts and talents to show mercy to them…

Advent Prayer
Lord, I have let myself be deceived.  In a thousand ways I have shunned your love.  Yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord; take me once more into your redeeming embrace.  You are the Lord, Emmanuel--God-with-Us.

Today’s reflection is excerpted from “A Season of Mercy—Daily Reflections, Practices and Prayers” by Fr. David M. Knight.  Copyright by Twenty-Third Publications.  Used with permission.

Advent Day 6/December 12

Mercy Is Inclusive

Today’s Reading

Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion!
See, I am coming to dwell among you, says the LORD.
Many nations shall join themselves to the LORD on that day,
and they shall be his people,
and he will dwell among you,
and you shall know that the LORD of hosts has sent me to you.
The LORD will possess Judah as his portion in the holy land,
and he will again choose Jerusalem.
Silence, all mankind, in the presence of the LORD!
For he stirs forth from his holy dwelling.

(cf. Zechariah 2.14-17)

Today’s Reflection

   I was an American in a French seminary where Father—later Cardinal—Henri de Lubac lived.  He became one of the most influential theologians of the Second Vatican Council, chosen by Pope John XXIII to prepare and contribute to it.  But I knew him as a model of mercy.

   He used to struggle up the stairs (he had been gassed in World War I) to my room to ask an insignificant foreign student to translate letters from English.  If I ever hesitated on a word, he supplied it.  I knew what he was doing: making a “nobody” feel accepted.

   A man with whom I could claim no national identity or intellectual equality reached out to me as a fellow human and brother in Christ.  That taught me more than all his awesome scholarship.  For me, “Henri de Lubac” means “man of mercy.”  He “came down” to me by climbing up stairs in an affirmation of relationship—just as Mary “came down” at Tepeyac in the form and dress of an Aztec to show that she is the one mother of the one family of God.

   The word for this is “mercy”—to reach out to another in recognition of a relationship that is real but perhaps not yet realized.

--Fr. David M. Knight

Response

• Ponder what Fr. Knight means by saying mercy recognizes “a relationship that is real but…not yet realized”…
• Think of a time when someone “came down” in an act of mercy to you…

• Remember a time when you might have “come down” in an act of mercy toward another…

• Resolve to “come down” to someone who is separated from you…

Advent Prayer
Lord, I have let myself be deceived.  In a thousand ways I have shunned your love.  Yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord; take me once more into your redeeming embrace.  You are the Lord, Emmanuel--God-with-Us.

Today’s reflection is excerpted from “A Season of Mercy—Daily Reflections, Practices and Prayers” by Fr. David M. Knight.  Copyright by Twenty-Third Publications.  Used with permission.

Advent Day 5/December 11

Mercy Is Sensitive

Today’s Reading

Thus says the LORD, your redeemer,
the Holy One of Israel:
I, the LORD, your God,
teach you what is for your good,
and lead you on the way you should go.
If you would hearken to my commandments,
your prosperity would be like a river,
and your vindication like the waves of the sea;
Your descendants would be like the sand,
and those born of your stock like its grains,
Their name never cut off
or blotted out from my presence.

(cf. Isaiah 48.17-19)

Today’s  Reflection

   Prophets raise eyebrows—John the Baptist ate bugs and wore animal skins.  But mercy rides on empathy (from the German einfuhlung, to “feel inside” of another).  Only those who can relate to people by sharing their feelings can have mercy.

   Jesus responded unpredictably and according to people’s needs.  He fasted forty days in the desert; then he lived so normally around others he was called “a glutton and a drunkard.”  He spoke with God on the mountaintops; but on ground level he was jostled by crowds and mixed so freely that he was labeled the “friend of sinners.”  He raged against the Pharisees, but showed tenderness to a woman caught in adultery and tolerance to an unmarried Samaritan with a live-in mate.  Like Paul later, he “became all things to all,” keeping the law to be credible to law observers, but breaking the law to minister to those “outside the law” (see 1 Corinthians 9.19; Matthew 12.1; John 4.9).

   At Vatican II, Cardinal Leger of Montreal called for “mercy” based on sensitivity.  He said: “The splendor of the ornaments and titles we bishops use, often against our wills, are harmful to our pastoral ministry, especially to the poor.”

   Bottom line: we can’t help people if we don’t try to understand how they feel.

--Fr. David M. Knight

Response

• Ponder why Fr. Knight points out that Jesus acted “unpredictably and according to people’s needs”…
• Think of a time when you acted beyond what was expected or predictable because of someone’s need…

• Identify an existing need or concern which you could only address by acting beyond what is expected or predictable…

• Resolve to help someone you might normally overlook by first trying to understand how they feel…

Advent Prayer
Lord, I have let myself be deceived.  In a thousand ways I have shunned your love.  Yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord; take me once more into your redeeming embrace.  You are the Lord, Emmanuel--God-with-Us.

Today’s reflection is excerpted from “A Season of Mercy—Daily Reflections, Practices and Prayers” by Fr. David M. Knight.  Copyright by Twenty-Third Publications.  Used with permission.

Advent Day 4/December 10

Mercy Works Miracles

Today’s Reading

I am the LORD, your God,
who grasp your right hand;
It is I who say to you, “Fear not,
I will help you.”
The afflicted and the needy seek water in vain….
I, the LORD, will answer them….
I will open up rivers on the bare heights,
and fountains in the broad valleys;
I will turn the desert into a marshland,
and the dry ground into springs of water.

(cf. Isaiah 41.13-20)

Today’s  Reflection

   In Serabu, a village of Sierra Leone, people bathed, washed their clothes, and drank water all from the same sluggish creek, enduring without hope the sickness and death that often followed.  Gerry learned about it while a patient of the Southern Eye Institute, a Catholic charitable foundation in Memphis that for twenty-five yearshas done eye surgeries in Serabu.  Gerry formed members of her Presbyterian church into a 24/7 prayer team, raised $75,000, and dig nine clean water wells in Serabu; and Southern Eye hired a local nurse to give ongoing sanitation instruction.  Shortly afterward, water-borne cholera ravaged Sierra Leone.  There was not one case in Serabu.  Another example of the never-ending miracle of mercy.

   The afflicted and needy seek water.  “I, the Lord…will not forsake them.  I will turn…the dry ground into springs of water.”

   Which is a greater work of God: to produce miraculous wells, or to move human hearts to such mercy that they raise money and send members to Africa to dig them? Every act of mercy is a miracle because it is an act of divine love.  We can all work miracles.  All we have to do is open our eyes to those in need, open our hearts in love, and open—yes—our purses or calendars when God moves us to action.

--Fr. David M. Knight.

Response

• Ponder what Fr. Knight means when he says ”every act of mercy is a miracle”…
• Think of a time when someone did something miraculous for you through an act of mercy…

• Think of a time when you did some miraculous for someone else through an act of mercy…

• Resolve to find a situation in your life where you can do something miraculous through an act of mercy…

Advent Prayer
Lord, I have let myself be deceived.  In a thousand ways I have shunned your love.  Yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord; take me once more into your redeeming embrace.  You are the Lord, Emmanuel--God-with-Us.

Today’s reflection is excerpted from “A Season of Mercy—Daily Reflections, Practices and Prayers” by Fr. David M. Knight.  Copyright by Twenty-Third Publications.  Used with permission.

Advent Day 3/December 9

Mercy is Harmony

Today’s Reading

Jesus said to the crowds:
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

(Matthew 11.28-30)

Today’s  Reflection

   Everyone knows the story of the young boy carrying his injured brother piggyback.  When asked, “Isn’t he heavy?” the boy replied, “He isn’t heavy, he’s my brother.”

   We keep retelling the story because it is true.  Love gives strength.  And awareness activates love.  When we carry our brother or sister, it is never a dead weight.

   Nor is it a weight we ever carry alone.  God keeps his own command, “Do for others what you would like them to do for you” (Matthew 7.12).  If God let a human, Simon of Cyrene, help Jesus carry his cross, we can believe Jesus will never let any human carry a cross alone.

   Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened…. Take my yoke upon you….”  A yoke links two together.  When things are hard, remember Jesus is working with you, in you, and through you.  When we are having mercy on others, Jesus is having mercy on us.  No one having mercy sings solo; the sound of mercy is humans singing harmony with God.

   When Jesus prayed that we might “all be one” as the Father, Son and Spirit are one (see John 17.21), did he have the “harmony of mercy” in mind?

--Fr. David M. Knight

Response

• Ponder what Fr. Knight means by ”the harmony of mercy”…
• Think of someone(s) with whom you find it easy to sing with in the “harmony of mercy”…

• Remember someone(s) with whom you find it difficult to sing with in the “harmony of mercy”…

• Resolve to “sing in harmony with God” the next time your load seems too heavy.

Advent Prayer
Lord, I have let myself be deceived.  In a thousand ways I have shunned your love.  Yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord; take me once more into your redeeming embrace.  You are the Lord, Emmanuel--God-with-Us.

Today’s reflection is excerpted from “A Season of Mercy—Daily Reflections, Practices and Prayers” by Fr. David M. Knight.  Copyright by Twenty-Third Publications.  Used with permission.

Advent Day 2/December 8

Mercy Is Surrender

Today’s Reading

The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee…
to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph…

and the virgin’s name was Mary.
And coming to her, he said,
“Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you….  Do not be afraid….
Behold, you will conceive…and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus….
Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.
May it be done to me according to your word.”.

(cf. Luke 1.26-38)

Today’s Reflection

   The greatest mercy story of all time begins, “The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee….”  Catholic devotion recites this story three times a day in the prayer known as the Angelus: “The angel of the Lord announced to Mary…and she conceived by the Holy Spirit.”  God used a human being to show his mercy to the lost human race.

   The Angelus continues: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; Be it done unto me according to they word.”  Mary’s act of mercy was surrender.  We have mercy on others by surrendering to let Jesus, present in our bodies, express himself to others with us, in us, and through us.  All day long.

   “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” the Angelus says.  The fruit of God’s mercy and Mary’s is the human presence of God on earth for all time--first in the flesh Jesus took from Mary; now in all who give their bodies in baptism to be his “flesh for the life of the world” (John 6.51). By letting Jesus speak and act physically through us, we “bear fruit,” the fruit of mercy that endures.

--Fr. David M. Knight.

Response

• Ponder what Fr. Knight means by being “flesh for the life of the world”…
• Think of a situation in which you allowed God to use you as Mary allowed him to use her…

• Remember a situation in your home or workplace where God may be asking you to make his presence known.

• Find the Angelus Prayer online here and pray it regularly:

  https://www.ewtn.com/Devotionals/prayers/Angelus.htm

Advent Prayer
Lord, I have let myself be deceived.  In a thousand ways I have shunned your love.  Yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord; take me once more into your redeeming embrace.  You are the Lord, Emmanuel--God-with-Us.

Today’s reflection is excerpted from “A Season of Mercy—Daily Reflections, Practices and Prayers” by Fr. David M. Knight.  Copyright by Twenty-Third Publications.  Used with permission.

Advent Day 1/December 7

Mercy Is All-Embracing

Today’s Reading

The desert and the parched land will exult;
the steppe will rejoice and bloom.
They will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song….

Streams will burst forth in the desert,
and rivers in the steppe.
The burning sands will become pools,
and the thirsty ground, springs of water….
Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return
and enter Zion singing….

(cf. Isaiah 35.1-10)

Today’s Reflection

    I was walking down the street in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, with Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini.  A man asked him for alms.  The bishops asked his name, gave his own, and then asked where the man had slept last night, what family he had, and how he was managing to live.  By the time he gave him money, he had given him dignity, friendship, and a sense of equal relationship with another human being who saw him as a brother in Christ.  And he had given me a lesson in what it means to have mercy.

   Because the bishop (who insists on being called “Alvaro”) saw the man not as a beggar but as another complete person, he entered into a personal relationship with him that made him aware of the man’s deeper need.  First he gave him what he had not asked for; then he gave him cash.

   This is what Jesus did.  Some men brought on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed.  Jesus said to the man, “Your sins are forgiven.”  Not what the man came for, but what he needed more.  Then Jesus healed him.

   Christian mercy responds to physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs—even those unasked. When we relate to each other as whole-persons-to-whole-persons we help each other be whole.

--Fr. David M. Knight.

Response

• Ponder what Fr. Knight means by treating people as “whole persons”…
• Think of someone who treats you as a whole person…

• Remember someone who is waiting for you to treat them as a whole person…

• Resolve to treat the people you meet today as whole persons…

Advent Prayer
Lord, I have let myself be deceived.  In a thousand ways I have shunned your love.  Yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord; take me once more into your redeeming embrace.  You are the Lord, Emmanuel--God-with-Us.

Today’s reflection is excerpted from “A Season of Mercy—Daily Reflections, Practices and Prayers” by Fr. David M. Knight.  Copyright by Twenty-Third Publications.  Used with permission.