Commence your prayers with the posture and mode that you find best. You can say a brief prayer: “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your children”, or any other that you find good. Try to place all your being in the presence of God.

Topic: practical charity: acts of mercy

It is a practical and specific subject. It is clear in the Gospel: the Final Judgment will be on this subject: give food, shelter, to give…..Hospitality. A programme for whoever wants to be a consistent Christian.

1. In the words of John Paul II: “Side by side with the people and society that is well off y satisfied, that live in abundance, there is no lack of children that die of hunger… people who live in poverty.”
2. Just go outside or watch T.V. There you see it. I am thinking about those orgies of consumerism. Such squandering and contempt!!! Besides the opulence, my personal experience of the situation of workers in hard jobs (shipyards, mines), the shanty-towns of gypsies, poverty in the new villages, suburbs of the big cities: without electricity, nor water, nor aspirins, not even a “box” to bury the dead. How many people we buried wrapped up in plastic!! And this isn’t just literature.
3. Of course neither you nor I will be able to remedy these problems. What is more, the economic laws today tend towards more for the rich and less for the poor. But god is sensible towards human misery: “Father of the poor, humble and simple”…. (They sing this in Latin America and it gives you goose pimples…). Virgilio said: “Hearts of the gods, that don’t know, that are not capable of softening towards the begging of humans”. But our God, the God of the Christians is not like that.
4. It seems to me that the problem is within each one of us. The Gospel doesn’t ask us to solve the problems of the world, but to HELP THE SPECIFIC MAN, the one I find on my road. Saint Dominic had compassion not only in his heart, but also in all the moments of his life. MERCY my life opened up to mercy. Kindness, tenderness, patience, compassion, a disposition to forgive, are attitudes that take us towards goodness: they makes us have the HEART OF A MOTHER…That is what God is like, that is what JESUS is like.
5. To have mercy; to act mercifully. And always ensuring that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Cervantes says in “Don Quixote”: “¡Fortunate is the one to whom heaven gives price of bread without having to be obliged to be thankful for it to anyone but that same heaven!”
6. This mercy is not just for on occasions; from time to time. No, it isn’t a suit to put on or take off. ONE IS MERCIFUL. We are invited TO BE.

This mercy that Jesus asks of us has some very definite qualities:

1. It is a risk. It isn’t giving when there is nothing to loose = to give from a basis of security. The Gospel asks us to give from the necessary for my life, from what I have to live on. I remember how, in the Amazon forest, when smoke is seen it is a sign that there is food. And from this cooking-pot, everyone who turns us, known or not “was also for supper”. It didn’t matter who: it was shared.
2. Universal: there are no exceptions of people.
3. Generous. The Scriptures use the word “a generous measure poured into your hands” “The measure that you use for others is the measure God will use for you.”
4. Commitment: He, who has two capes, let him give on away. To give from a basis of poverty. I cannot forget a bishop in Peru that had to say 5 masses on Sundays because he didn’t have any priests. Yet the first 5 priests that he had, he sent them to Africa: to give from a basis of poverty.
5. We have to remember the mercy of Jesus. Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, the adulterous woman… At the centre of our life: compassion and mercy.

Conclusion: Is there something I could do in this sense? It is a case of starting off on the road, a new way of living. The Exercises are a great opportunity for that.