Celebrating The Year Of Mercy

This month, beginning on Dec. 8 we joyfully enter the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy called by Pope Francis. With a heart full of enthusiasm, I join my voice with that of the Holy Father and the bishops of the world in proclaiming that a tremendous moment of grace is upon us! During this Holy Year, the Church calls us to enter deeply into the mercy of God and to express this mercy to others in sincere and profound ways.

​As Pope Francis has said, this Jubilee Year of Mercy is a time to “gaze even more attentively on mercy so that we may become more effective signs of the Father’s action in our lives.” Thus, we see that the call to mercy especially during this Holy Year is a two-fold call, first to encounter the mercy of God poured out for us through Jesus Christ and second, to bring that mercy to our brothers and sisters around us. During this year, the Church lovingly invites us to embrace the tremendous opportunity to open up our hearts to encounter God’s merciful love so that we can be true witnesses of it to all.

To understand, embrace and practice God’s mercy, we must first begin by centering ourselves on Jesus Christ for, as our Holy Father reminds us, Jesus is the face of the Father’s mercy.

When we look to the New Testament, we see that Jesus is not a mere idea nor is he just someone giving us a moral code of living. In the Gospels, we come to know clearly that Jesus Christ, while remaining fully God, is a real human being like us in all things but sin. We see that Christ is not just God loving us from afar, he truly understands and experiences our human condition. He gazes upon us with a human face; he loves us with a human heart; he redeems us from our fallen state by dying and rising in the flesh.

Looking particularly to the Gospels, we see the human touch of Jesus, a touch that heals the man afflicted with leprosy (Mt 8:2-3), restores sight to the blind (Mt 9:29-30; Mk 8:22-25; Jn 9:1ff), and even raises from the dead the son of the widow (Lk 7:14-15) and the girl in Capernaum (Lk 8:54-55). We see the loving gaze of Jesus offered to the rich young man (Mk 10:21), calling him to a deeper discipleship, and to St. Peter, calling him to deeper conversion (Lk 22:61). We see the tender heart of Jesus listening to the woman at the well (Jn 4:7-42), staying at the house of Zacchaeus (Lk 19:1-10), comforting the sorrowful women of Jerusalem (Lk 23:28) and weeping for and then raising his friend Lazarus (Jn 11:35).

This touch, this gaze, this listening of Christ reveal to us the mercy of God himself, for as Christ said, “he who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). We are called to enter deeply into this profound mystery of mercy—a mercy that bends down, embraces us and lifts us out of our fallen condition, forgives our wrongs and replaces the dignity that is lost through our sinful choices. It is the mercy of the Father of the Prodigal Son who not only welcomes back his beloved child but restores to him his lost dignity by clothing him with the robe, the ring and the sandals of a son. It is the mercy of God that not only sometimes heals physical illnesses but more importantly at all times heals spiritual infirmities caused by sin (cf. Mk 2:1-12).

In this Holy Year of Mercy, like those who encountered Christ in the Gospels, we too are invited to experience this same touch, look and listening heart of Jesus, a heart filled with mercy for each person. Having experienced it, we cannot help but become witnesses to it, expressing to others that same mercy of God that we have received. Perhaps it is a loving touch that we can give to an elderly person in a difficult moment of life. Perhaps it is lending an ear to a person who is lonely and in need of talking. Perhaps it is a simple gaze of love that we can extend to a son or daughter in need of affirmation.

When I became a bishop, I took as my episcopal motto the beautiful words of St. Paul in his Letter to the Philippians (Phil 2:5) that we are to “put on the attitude of Christ.” In exercising acts of mercy, such as the Corporal or Spiritual Works of Mercy, or in simply extending the touch, gaze or heart of Jesus to others, we indeed adopt this “attitude of Christ” which itself displays and effects the mercy of God to all.

Christ’s attitude was one of love and mercy. This Year of Mercy called by our Holy Father is a special, grace-filled time in which we as members of the Body of Christ accept, acknowledge and pour forth God’s mercy, so that we can become more and more grafted into this “attitude of Christ.”

Throughout this Jubilee Year of Mercy, here in the Diocese of Corpus Christi and in union with the universal Catholic Church, we will have many opportunities to celebrate, participate in and exercise the mercy of God given to us. As a diocese we will have many events both at the diocesan and local levels that will be opportunities to experience, celebrate and practice God’s mercy. I encourage you to pay attention to your local bulletins and the diocesan website (www.diocesecc.org) as these various opportunities are announced. I draw your attention in particular to one of these events that will begin our Year of Mercy here in the Diocese of Corpus Christi:

On Sunday, Dec. 13, the Holy Father has called for “Holy Doors” to be designated and opened in all the cathedrals of the world. I invite all who are able to make a pilgrimage to the Corpus Christi Cathedral on this day for the 9:30 a.m. Mass where I will celebrate the opening of the Holy Doors of Mercy at the Cathedral to mark officially the beginning of the Year of Mercy in our diocese, in union with the bishops and cathedrals throughout the world.

In addition, under the permission of the Holy Father, I as diocesan bishop will designate various parishes and chapels as “holy sites” in the Diocese of Corpus Christi for the faithful to visit as pilgrims and to be able to gain, under the usual conditions, the plenary indulgences of the Year of Mercy in visiting these for a spiritual purpose. These sites will be publicized in various ways, especially on our diocesan website.

In this Year of Mercy, may our attitude always grow in the attitude of Christ so that we do not find ourselves in lives that are inconsistent with that of Christ in us but rather one where our hearts experience the love of God and expresses that very love to our brothers and sisters.