Our need to be both receivers and givers of mercy is the purpose of Christ’s presence among us. “He, Himself, in a certain sense, is mercy,” says Pope John Paul II. “The truth, revealed in Christ, about God the ‘Father of mercies,’ enables us to ‘see’ Him as particularly close to man, especially when man is suffering.”
This is why, with a lively sense of faith, we are turning “almost spontaneously, to the mercy of God . . . being moved to do this by Christ Himself, who through his spirit works within human hearts.”
I will stop by church another day, I know. And God will be here waiting and will gather me in—as he gathers in each and every one of us—hot, tired, worried, fit, unfit, and in between.
—from St. Anthony Messenger‘s “Stopping by Church on a Summer Afternoon“
by Kristina Santos
