E&W 5-12-13

Sacred Story

Encouragements & Wisdom: May 12, 2013
Seventh Sunday of Easter – Ascension Sunday

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Encouragements and Wisdom: May 12, 2013 (PDF).

E & W reflections are additional helps for your Sacred Story prayer journey. Reflect on them at the beginning of the week or outside of your fifteen-minute prayer windows.

Mercy

We begin a series of five reflections on the theme of Mercy; the fourth meditation in our Sacred Story prayer. In the last three meditations (Creation, Presence & Memory) we have been seeking God’s grace to pull together the life-experiences of our day or half-day. These experiences and/or events all lead to the Mercy of God.

Mercy is a quality of God’s love that encompasses compassion, tenderness and patience. Pope John Paul II’s first encyclical was titled: Dives et Misericordia; Rich in Mercy. The late Holy Father opens with this sentence: It is “God, who is rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4) whom Jesus Christ has revealed to us as Father: it is His very Son who, in Himself, has manifested Him and made Him known to us (Cf. Jn 1:18; Heb 1: 1f).

God’s Mercy is revealed throughout scripture. It is revealed as well in holy devotions like the Sacred Heart of Christ and Divine Mercy. It is a quality of God’s love that is intended to soften the fear and anxiety of those who have sinned and those in trouble: those who need, more than anything else, compassion, tenderness and patience.

As we begin our reflections on the meditation of Mercy, search your heart for what experiences, sufferings, failings and sins in your life draw you to desire—to need—the Mercy of God to be showered upon you. What are they? Name them and bring them to Jesus who is Divine Mercy, Sacred Heart and the Compassion of God the Father.
 
 

Oh God, you are merciful and compassionate. Help us to trust your merciful love. May we experience, more each day, why we need Your Mercy, as well as the experience of its graces in our hearts. In this we can be Your presence in the world and reveal Your Mercy to others so that all our thoughts, words and deeds are shaped by Your Creation, Presence, Memory, Mercy and Eternity.

For king of all the earth is God;
sing hymns of praise.
God reigns over the nations,
God sits upon his holy throne.

(Psalm 47: 8-9)

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