I spend many hard days sick and in pain, staring at the walls in this empty house. Even God seems absent and I feel abandoned and alone. In this solitude I can only cry out to God and long for Him in the firm conviction that He hears me, He wants me, and that the darkness and emptiness are the vast spaces of the mystery of His inexhaustible Heart that holds me. He knows who I am, and He carries me in my suffering and accompanies me through all its depths. He has made those depths His own. His mercy is His brokenness on the Cross which He invites me to share.
We are all so much in need of mercy and compassion. We are all suffering. Our lives are full of struggles and afflictions we don’t even understand.
A particularly valuable way we can show mercy to one another is to help bear one another's burdens, to open our hearts to the mystery of the other person's suffering. This is what we need from one another. It is the way that we can discover the presence of Jesus in every person's life, not with condescension but with a great reverence for the person.
I must welcome the person I encounter, because this person is loved by Jesus. It is the great Heart of Jesus that gives value and dignity to every person and to all our relationships. Whenever I speak to a person, my words should be shaped by the desire that Jesus come more fully to us both — to heal us in His mercy and draw us together along the paths of His mercy.
As our late beloved Pope Francis often said, "We cannot trust in our own strength, but only in Jesus and in His mercy." Indeed, our strength is much too small to fathom the mercy of God. Our strength is too frail to bear His weakness on the cross.
Jesus, teach me to be merciful.Have mercy on me.
Give me a merciful and compassionate heart.
Make me an instrument of Your mercy.
Jesus, I trust in You.
