 You're talking about Pope Francis the year of mercy. What is this year of mercy? How do we live it? And we've been examining the theme of mercy a lot through the gospel of Luke. But I want to share with you a fun story from an encounter I had with with Pope Francis just a few months ago. I've gone to Rome many times leading many pilgrimages and in this particular year we got up to the front row for the papal audience on the Wednesday, which often happens with our group. And I had my nine-year-old son with me, little Carl, and he came along on the pilgrimage. And we were in the front row and the Pope came by and you saw him kiss a baby, and then he's driving by on the Pope mobile, and all of a sudden Pope Francis just stops right in front of us, and he points at my son Carl. And the next thing I know these Swiss guards come over, grab Carl, and put him over here in the Pope mobile, and then the Pope goes back and kind of taps him on the head, gives him a little kiss, and I thought, oh wow, I mean I've seen him take babies before, I've never seen him take a nine-year-old, but okay, that's kind of nice. And then all of a sudden the Pope mobile drives away with Carl. This is supposed to be the year of mercy, and the Pope just kidnapped my son. And he's driving around for like 20 minutes all around St. Peter's Square, and I'm wondering, how am I ever going to see Carl back? So eventually he dropped him off in the front, and Carl's coming back and he's walking along the front, and all these people from all these different countries are just giving him high-fives as he's going down the line. So amazing things happen, I guess, in the year of mercy. You know, one really big area of mercy I'm hoping the graces will overflow and touch my heart, is I'm a Cubs fan. And this morning I woke up at 3.45 in the morning, and I, you know, to catch a six o'clock flight out of Denver, and it was about a month ago I realized that my assistant booked the flight through Chicago, and my folks have been trying to have my boys come out and visit. I'm from Chicago where we originally, and so we schemed that I would take Carl and Carl and Luke, and they'd come with me, and they would come on the plane, and then when we land in Chicago I drop them off, you know, through security, wave to my mom on the other side of security, and then I'm going to meet up with them Saturday night when I fly back on my way back, and then Sunday we're going to go to Wrigley Field. And I've not been there, I can't tell you, since 1991 I think, and I'm hoping that this year will be a year of mercy for Cubs fans, but I have to realize while, you know, being a Cubs fan there's a lot of Catholic, you know, ethos in being a Cubs fan because there's a great theology of suffering. The only difference between Catholic suffering and Cubs suffering is that Catholic suffering is redemptive. Cubs suffering is just pointless, but we're not here to talk about the Cubs, we're here to talk about the year of mercy, and as I think about this, you know, what is mercy? When I think about mercy I'm reminded of that little kids game. Do you know that kids game of mercy where two children may put their hands together like this, and it becomes a tournament of strength, and one tries to overpower the other one and break the arm of the other one, and the only way the game ends is if the weaker child cries out, mercy! And as a kid growing up, that's what I thought God's mercy was all about. You know, that we're, you know, God is up there, the all-holy, all-powerful, all-good God, and you know, we make mistakes, we sin, we're wretched sinners, and what we need to do is cry out mercy so that we don't go to hell, and then God, if He hears our cry and we cry loud enough, then He'll pardon us and He'll let us into heaven. That was kind of the, you know, skewed concept I had of mercy, and sadly I think many people have that, that they think mercy is just about one powerful person just pardoning a weaker person saying, well, okay, I'll overlook what you did and I'll let you get by and I'll just declare you innocent. But that's not a Catholic understanding of mercy. It's certainly not a biblical understanding of mercy. Mercy is much more an expression of God's love for us. The God who is love created us freely out of love. He created us so that we can participate in His love, and even though we have turned away from Him over and over again in many thousands of small ways and some big ways, even though we turn away from Him, He constantly seeks us out because He's so madly in love with us. Some of the great saints, when they reflect on just how much God loves us, they just say, God is mad, St. Catherine of Santa said, you are a mad lover. You are drunk with love. He loved us so much He sent His own Son to die for us and to restore us to unity with Him. He gave us the church. He gave us the teachings. He gave us the sacraments, and He wants to constantly go out and touch as many souls as possible with His mercy. You see that in Jesus' own public ministry, don't we? He's constantly going out. He's moving from one village to the next, from one person to the next, going to all the dark corners of Israel, all of those that were the outcasts, all those that were lonely, all those that were suffering doing as much as He can because He just wants to be at one with us. He is so driven by His love. And it's that great mercy of God that Pope Francis is drawing our attention to in this particular year of mercy. Now, Pope Francis, when asked, why this year? Why is this year a year of mercy? He said this. He said, hours is a time of mercy. Hours is a time of mercy. He said, yes, I believe that this is a time of mercy. The church is showing her maternal side, her motherly face to a humanity that is wounded. She does not wait for the wounded to knock on her doors. She looks for them on the streets. She gathers them in. She embraces them and takes care of them and makes them feel loved. Now, why is this such a time of mercy? He mentioned something about humanity being wounded. And I want to elaborate on that. In many of his writings, Pope Francis has talked about this idea of a wounded humanity. Why is humanity wounded? Listen to what he says. Humanity is wounded, deeply wounded. Either it does not know how to cure its wounds, or it believes that it's not possible to cure them. And it's not just a question of social ills or people wounded by poverty. Relativism wounds people. All things seem equal. All things appear the same. Now, let's think about this for a moment. The secular modern world has turned away from truth, turned away from the gospel, turned away from traditional values. We can't even get bathrooms right anymore. As we've turned away from truth and embraced this relativism, that there's no truth. Everyone just does whatever they want. There's no right or wrong. It's not just that we're no longer getting religious teachings right. We can't even get the basics of human life right. As Pope Benedict often said, when we turn away from these gospel values and traditional values, we lose the art of living. We no longer know how to live. Isn't that true? If there's no right or wrong and we just tell everyone, just do whatever you want, then we don't live marriage well. We see marriages suffering so much. Think about how many people have been wounded in their broken marriages. We don't live family life well. And so, so many people wounded because of broken family life. Young people don't know how to live dating relationships well. They don't know how to live out their sexuality in a proper way. And so, they experience great pain, the great heartache, great insecurity, feeling used, disillusioned about whether they can ever find a lasting love. Is marriage even possible? Humanity is deeply wounded. We don't know how to live friendship, live in community, care for the poor, care for those in need. Humanity is wounded, deeply wounded, Pope Francis says. And that's why he's calling on a year of mercy so that we can go out into the world with the truth and the love of Jesus Christ. In the end, this is all a part of Pope Francis' desire for evangelization, to bring souls closer to Jesus Christ and to the fullness of the Catholic Church. But we have to realize that we can't just go out with the truths of the faith. The truths of the faith always have to be accompanied by mercy. You know, one of Pope Francis' favorite images for the church is that of a field hospital, a hospital out on a battlefield. And when you're out on a battlefield, you've got somebody who has a severe injury. You know, they've been shot in the chest. They have a ruptured spleen. When these seriously injured people come into the field hospital, the doctor doesn't go up and say, hey, I think we're going to need to talk about your cholesterol level. You know, oh, I think we need to talk about your blood sugar level. And how much are you exercising? Can we talk about your diet? No, those are important things, right? Don't get me wrong. But you've got to deal with the most urgent matters first. And Pope Francis says we need to do the same thing when we're talking to people from our secular, relativistic culture. That we may be talking about some very important issue, like the definition of marriage or contraception or whatever the issue is, very important issues. But we ought to realize that behind those issues, there's also a person that very likely is deeply wounded by the culture. They don't know God's love. They don't know how merciful God is, how willing God wants to forgive them, how much God wants to help them in their lives. And we've got to address the most urgent matters first. And if they don't know the story of God's love, then it's going to be very difficult for them to make sense out of all these other important moral issues that are a direct consequence of that story. But if they don't know the heart of the gospel, then they're not really going to listen to us well. I remember talking to my asthma doctor recently. She was asking me about this image of the field hospital. And I said, it's kind of like this. You know, let's say there's some kid, one patient of yours, who's severely allergic to dogs. They get a really bad asthmatic attack if they play with dogs. And let's say this little boy happens one day to play with a really furry dog, has a horrendous asthmatic attack, can't breathe. They have to rush him to the ambulance to the hospital. When he comes in, is the first thing you're going to say to him, hey, don't you know you're not supposed to be talking to dogs? You're playing with dogs? No. You've got to get the kid breathing first. You get the kid breathing then. Then we can talk about the other things. And so Pope Francis in this year of mercy is drawing our attention to mercy so that we can go out to the world more effectively with mercy. And what I want to do in our short time together is offer you a few practical ways to put the year of mercy into your life so that we can be more effective witnesses to the fullness of the gospel and sharing the truth and the mercy of Jesus Christ to a world that desperately needs it. So can we start with a Hail Mary before we jump in? Let's ask Mary's intercession for us in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. Now and at the hour of our death, amen. In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen. So the context of where I want to go, I want you to see the end, the telos, the main goal here. It's evangelization. It's to bring souls to the fullness of the truth, the fullness of the gospel, Jesus Christ and his church. But to do that, we're going to step back from the culture and look within because sometimes we think about this year of mercy, well, oh wow, there's so many troubles in the world and the world needs mercy. And that's true, but we can look at it, the year of mercy detached. We say, oh yeah, we need mercy given what's happened in France and Germany recently. The world needs mercy or we see what's happening in the Middle East. The world needs mercy or what happened in Orlando or Dallas or Baton Rouge. Our country needs mercy and we see what's going on. The culture is falling apart. The culture needs mercy. And we can look at it like that, detached, but what I want us to do is get really personal here and see that you know who needs mercy first? Me. I want us to look into our own selves because we're never going to be effective witnesses to God's love and mercy and truth unless we've encountered it profoundly ourselves. So let's take a look at that aspect of mercy for ourselves. Pope Francis is calling us to have a renewed encounter with Christ's mercy, a renewed encounter with Christ's mercy. I think this is important for those of us that are especially, we're very on fire about our faith and we can sometimes forget this. Again, we can often think, yeah, well those people out there, Planned Parenthood, they need mercy and all these other groups need mercy. But we can often forget how much we really need mercy. And I can understand that because look, if we're faithful Catholics, you know, if we believe in God, just the fact that if we believe in God, you know, wow, we stand out. Our faith is important to us. We stand out in our culture. And I could actually just say, wow, you know, I go to church on Sunday. Now I'm really part of the elite, you know, I'm really religious. You know, I go to church on Sunday. And not only that, guess what? I believe all the church's teachings. I'm Orthodox. Whoa, now you're putting yourself in the tiny, you know, small percentile of people out in the universe right now. You know, so I believe all the church's teachings and I strive to follow them and I'm involved in my parish and we can kind of pat ourselves on the back saying, I'm doing a lot better than a lot of people out there. I mean, those people, they really need mercy out there. I mean, I know I need mercy too, but you know, but I'm not as bad as all of them. You know, I'm pretty good because I follow all the rules. You know, I'm a pretty good Catholic. And we can fall into this trap, can't we? But let's just think about that. Just simply following the rules, being Orthodox, it's absolutely essential. But is that enough? Is that enough? I mean, if I told you, you know, I'm an amazing basketball player. What if I told you that? I'm an amazing basketball player. And you said, well, Ted Sri, tell me, what makes you a great basketball player? And I said, because I follow all the rules. I'm really good at following the rules. I don't go out of bounds. I don't double dribble. I don't travel with the ball. I'm an amazing LeBron would want me on his team. You say, no way. I mean, it's good. Don't get right. You know, you need to follow the rules. That's important, right? It's absolutely essential. But in the end, that's just permission to play. That's just the starting point. If you don't have the skills of dribbling, shooting, boxing out, all these kinds of things, you're not going to be a great basketball player. And the same is true. We've got to follow the Ten Commandments. We have to believe what the Catechism teaches. We have to follow the church. Absolutely. But that's just the beginning. The Christian life isn't just about following the rules. It's about following Jesus Christ and imitating Him. How are we growing in our imitation of Christ taking on His qualities, His virtues, striving for holiness? That's what the Christian life is all about. And when I, if I'm comparing myself just to people out there in the world, that's not the standard. The standard's right here. And all I do is have to take one glance there and say, I need a lot of mercy. I need a lot of mercy. It reminds me of my daughter, Josephine. I think I might have shared this story last year with you a bit, because it happened just last summer around this time. My little daughter, Josephine, she's five, very vibrant and curly hair and she was energetic and just full of energy. And one day we left her with a babysitter and there were other kids that were over and she was piling on the other kids, getting a little rough with them. And the babysitter just happened to say, Josephine, don't be so rough. And then my daughter jumped out of the pile really quick. The babysitter told her, she jumped out and went like this. And the babysitter said, is everything okay, Josephine? She goes, I'm really trying to be good. And the babysitter just kind of smiled and said, how's it going for you? And she just almost started to cry and said, it's really hard. Isn't that true though, for us, if we're really striving to be good? It's not about, oh, I went to church and I believe the things in the catechism. I'm pro-life, I'm pro-marriage. Yeah, great. But are we striving to be good? Are we really trying to imitate Christ? Because if we are, we're going to realize how much we need His help, His forgiveness, His mercy, His mercy. Now, when some of the things that keep us from recognizing our need for God isn't just following rules and kind of holding onto that as our security blanket, but it's also sometimes we're just afraid to change. We're afraid to admit how much we need God's help. We don't want to have to change our lives. We kind of like coasting as we are. So our conscious, do you ever have your conscience kind of tell you like, ooh, maybe I shouldn't have said that to my spouse that way? Or, oh, maybe I didn't handle that situation with my child the best way. Or maybe I shouldn't be looking at this on the screen. Or maybe I should have handled this situation better with my colleagues at work. You know what I'm talking about? You kind of get your conscious, kind of just the Lord knocking on the door of your heart, getting you to think about something. And what do most of us do when the voice of conscious comes up? Do we listen to it? Or do we suppress it? See, our modern world wants us to suppress our conscience. Our modern world says, hey, don't feel guilty. Guilty is a bad thing. Guilt, that's just a bad Christian thing. You Catholics are all caught up in guilt. We shouldn't be guilty. We all have little mistakes, but we should just feel good about ourselves and even hug our shadow and everything should be fine. So just don't feel guilty. Guilt is a bad thing. But actually, we have to say, no, guilt is something good. When you feel guilty over something that you've done that's wrong, that's actually a good thing. What that means is there's some good part of me that doesn't resonate with the bad thing I just did. If I'm just too short with my wife, I didn't treat her well in a certain exchange and then I feel badly about afterwards, that's a really good thing. That means there's a good part of me that didn't like the bad thing I just did. But if I didn't have that guilty feeling and I treated my wife horribly and I like it, that's actually a really bad thing. That's what you call a jerk. And I don't want to be that. So we want to let that good voice. We want to let that speak, let that come out. You know, too often what we do is we tend to, many people we tend to rationalize our sins and just justify, oh, it's okay, it's not that big of a deal or we make excuses for ourselves or we blame other people for our problems or we just distract ourselves, keep us really, really busy and constantly on our phones so we don't have to stop and think about our lives and where we're going. But that voice of conscience is still there. We want that voice to come out. Let's take time. If you sense the Lord touching your heart saying, you're struggling here or I want this to change, let's let Him speak. And that requires humility. That's what we're really talking about in this first point. That recognition of our need for God's help, our need for God's mercy, that's humility. And I mentioned this in the talk earlier today. You know, we all talk about humility, right? We all know about humility. If I give you all a quiz, if I give you a quiz right now and the quiz question was, do you need God's help in your life? Do you need God's mercy? What are you all going to say? I bet every one of you are going to say yes on a quiz. And that's good. But that's what I like to call intellectual humility. But experiential humility, the humility that the saints write about is much more profound. It's not just, oh, yeah, I know I'm a sinner and I have concupiscence and I make mistakes and I need God's mercy, I need confession. That's just all up here. I'm talking about at the core of our being, are we utterly convinced of how much we need God in his help moment by moment? I mentioned this afternoon in my workshop about how St. John, in John's Gospel, do you remember what Jesus says about without him how much we can do? Do you remember? He says, without me, you can do about 50%. Is that what Jesus says? He says, without me, you can do nothing. Are you convinced of that? I mean, we all know that. Again, if I give you a quiz, do Jesus say that? Yeah, do you agree with that? Yes, you get it right. But are you convinced of it? I mean, when you walk into your workplace, do you have that attitude? Jesus, I give you my work today, help me to give the best of myself in my work. Whether I'm working at the church or working at a hospital or working in a business office, am I asking for his help in my life? Or wake up in the morning, I'm doing my morning for Jesus, I need you to help me to serve my wife today, help me to be the best husband I could be for her today. Jesus, I don't know how to handle the situation with my teenager, I don't know how to handle the situation with my top. Jesus, help me to be the dad I need to be for them. Do we have that attitude? Sometimes we just go through life, I know I need God, but I'm not turning to him, begging for his help, moment by moment, day by day. And when the good Lord sees us just kind of trying to do it all on our own, guess what he does? He lets us go. And we'll only go so far. But the saints, the great souls that are utterly humble, that recognize how much they're dependent on the Lord, those are the ones that God does great things in and through. And in this year of mercy, Pope Francis is challenging all of us, especially those of us within the fold, those of us who are part of the convinced minority, as Pope Benedict would say, of the faithful Catholics. He's challenging us to renew our own encounter with mercy and recognize how much we need God's help. We have so many areas we need to grow in. We need his forgiveness. We need to save and grace in our lives. And that leads now to our second point that we can take away. And that is the actual encounter with mercy. So if we recognize we need God's mercy, now we need to experience it. I want to talk about two pillars of mercy, two pillars of mercy. On one hand, there's forgiveness. And I think this is what most people associate mercy with, that they think of someone who's merciful, that they're very forgiving. They will forgive you. And that's an important point, that we can be forgiven. And this is good news for us first and foremost. It's also incredibly good news for people out in the world. I want to do a little exercise right now, okay? Close your eyes, don't fall asleep, but close your eyes real quick, close your eyes. And I want you to think about some interesting sin. Maybe the sin, you think it's your worst sin, maybe it's something you did a long, long time ago, or maybe it's something you're struggling with right now. Just think about what that is, and then keep your eyes closed. I want you to imagine, if all of a sudden that hidden sin came out into the open and everybody knew about it, your spouse found out about it, your kids found out about it, your parents found out about it, your friends, your fellow parishioners, your coworkers, everyone just knows about it. How would you feel? Maybe you'd feel just afraid. What are people going to think of me? What does this mean for my life now? Maybe you'd feel just totally embarrassed. Maybe you'd feel angry, angry at how it got out, angry that the way other people are looking at you, you're probably angry at yourself, maybe you're self-condemning. And so just imagine this moment and then all of a sudden in the midst of this shame and fear and frustration, Jesus comes and sits right next to you. He holds your hand. He looks you in the eye and he says, I don't condemn you. Go and sin no more. You can open your eyes because you know that story, don't you? That's the story from John's Gospel, chapter 8, the woman caught in adultery. All of a sudden thrown before the Jewish leaders and Jesus publicly shamed. She was probably experiencing all those kinds of emotions of fear, embarrassment, anger, and probably a lot of self-condemnation. Before anyone was throwing stones at her, she was probably throwing stones at herself. And right at that moment, Jesus came and said, I forgive you. This is the love of God. This is how merciful he really is. And he wants to bestow that mercy upon all of us, especially in the sacrament of confession. And he wants it for us first and foremost, but there are so many people out there that really think that their lives can never change, that they're defined by whatever things they've done in their life and what they're doing now, and that they're unforgivable, unlovable, and we need to preach the good news that they can get a fresh start in life just like that woman in John 8 did. Now, I mentioned I do pilgrimage to Rome. One thing I like to do is show people something in St. Peter's Basilica. If you look at the main altar off to the right, there's this section where all these confessions are heard in all these different languages. You can go to confession in German, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and practically every day hundreds of pilgrims come from all over the world to confess their sins in this part of the basilica. And after you leave this area and you're walking back into the main part of the basilica, there's this big mosaic depiction of a scene from the Gospels. It's the story of when Peter goes out on the boat and starts walking toward Jesus. Do you remember that on the Sea of Galilee? They're at night, they see Jesus coming and Peter starts walking toward him, and it's all exciting because he's walking on the water toward Jesus, but then do you remember what happens? He takes his eyes off of Christ and he's distracted by the wind and the storm and he starts to sink and he's desperately crying out to Jesus, Lord, save me! And Jesus is reaching out to him and he says, he brings him back into the boat. Why is that image there where all the confessions are heard? It's because that story is very much about what happens in confession. That similarly in our own lives when we take our eyes off of Christ then our lives, we start to sink. We're not on track anymore, but all we have to do is reach out to Jesus and say, Lord, save me! And you know what Jesus does in the Sacrament Confession? He says, it's about time you confess that sin. It's been 30 years I've been sitting here waiting for you. No, no, he's there because he's not there to condemn. His mercy is always reaching out to him. He just wants us to turn back to him. And so no matter what you may have done or no matter what your children may have done or your grandchildren or your friends or your coworkers, we have to know that no matter what we've done no matter how many times we've done it no matter how long we've been away Jesus is waiting for us in this great sacrament. He just wants to restore us. But if that's all you knew about confession in this year of mercy you'd really be missing out on a lot because forgiveness is only one aspect of mercy. There's a whole other aspect that a lot of people don't talk about. There's a whole other aspect of mercy that a lot of people don't care of that you encounter in the sacrament of reconciliation and that is the healing power of Jesus Christ that is made manifest there. All throughout his public ministry you see Jesus forgiving people's sins but he's giving sight to the blind he's raising the dead making the deaf be able to hear the paralyzed walk and that same Jesus wants to do the same thing with us he doesn't just want to pardon us he wants to heal us he wants to heal us of our own spiritual blindness he wants to make us be able to hear him more and those areas of our lives where we feel paralyzed, unable to change he wants to make us walk again and whatever is dying in our souls he wants to come and raise that's the Jesus we encounter in the sacrament. Pope Francis said too many times we Catholics we treat confession like the dry cleaner I love that image we treat the confessional like the dry cleaner you get a little stain on your shirt you go bring it to the dry cleaner and the dry cleaner removes the stain that's what we think confession is about I get a little stain on my soul I sinned and now nice and clean granted we are forgiven there is an aspect of that Pope Francis highlights a very important truth that our sins are not just a stain on our soul they're a deep wound we cultivate bad habits and Jesus doesn't want to just remove the stain he wants to get to the root problem he wants to heal us Jesus wants to come not just as a judge and pardon us he wants to come as a physician and he wants to heal us so whatever you may be struggling with maybe there is some addiction you struggle with maybe you lose your temper a lot maybe there is someone you just feel like I just can't forgive them or maybe you find yourself judging people whatever the issue you might have go to Jesus in this year of mercy especially in the sacrament confession and confess it not just to be forgiven but to beg for his mercy to change your heart so that you can live ever more like him now I want to move to another aspect of mercy and that is how we treat the people around us our neighbor how do you respond when you notice someone else's faults you notice they didn't go to Mass again this week wow she's in a mood today you know they're not married and I think they're living together oh he voted for that political candidate how do you respond when you notice other people's weaknesses or faults certain actions you know many times what we do is we set ourselves up as a judge we set ourselves up as a judge we see a certain fact a certain little point, a data point and then we just assume oh this is how it is but Pope Francis and many of the great saints have been writing about how we often will see just certain facts but we don't necessarily see the whole story we don't see the whole truth it reminds me of a true story a professional who was raised Catholic but was no longer practicing her face she wasn't going to church on Sunday but she had a couple of Catholics that she worked with at this company and they invited her to this women's group Bible study that they were doing and she liked going to the Bible study she was good friends with the people and liked what she was learning and the women in the Bible study they would invite her to Mass and she didn't come but they were always very welcoming to her and as soon as confession came up this young woman just body language just started closing up and she was normally very outgoing she didn't say a word that Bible study as soon as it ended she said I got to go and they shouldn't hang out for the fellowship afterwards and everyone's wondering what happened the Bible study leader felt awful she went to bed that night with a stomach ache thinking did I say something wrong we've been trying to reach out to her what happened and so from the outside it just looked like well here's this girl she's got a problem but the next morning the young girl called the Bible study leader and said hey I'm really sorry I know everyone's probably wondering why I left so abruptly but I gotta be honest that whole confession thing just really hit me hard you all know I haven't been to church in a long time and I don't go to Mass the last time I ever stepped foot in a Catholic church was in high school at my father's funeral and then she just pauses she gets a little teary and she says I just haven't been able to forgive God for taking away my dad all these years and she went on and threw some tears just said but you all have been just so kind to me and such good friends and you've shown me what the faith is really about and I want to set things right with God I heard you guys say that there's confessions at the church can you tell me when does that happen how does that work so it's every Saturday and then she says I want to go this Saturday do you think you and all the other women in the study would come with me to the church to be there with me at that moment when I come back to the church and I share that story because I've heard so many stories like this where you just see a little data point young girl not going to church and you just see that backed but you don't see the whole story now the whole story of the suffering that she went through losing her father doesn't take away there's a real problem she really needs to go to church she should have never stopped going to church but all of a sudden you look at the situation a little bit differently you can look at it with more compassion a little more empathy and realize part of the issue is addressing that her sorrow over losing her father so our love for our neighbor has to always be that of a spirit of compassion and mercy and not quickly setting herself up as a judge St. Catherine of Siena struggled with this by the way she often was really good at noticing people's faults especially priests and she thought she was just really gifted at reading human nature until God one day confronted her and said you know Catherine all those insights you're getting about other people's weaknesses those insights aren't coming from me they're coming from the devil so God told her the devil is allowing you to notice their faults to catch them just at that one moment so that instead of responding to their suffering with compassion you set yourself as a judge so Catherine learned very quickly and she wrote a lot about how we should always have great compassion on others and assume the best and she always said you know if anything just say well there go why I would do the same thing unless grace held me up and to recognize we all have our own weaknesses I think this is a huge point to take away this is something Saint Bernard of Clairvaux mentions is that we can't really have compassion on the people who annoy us the frustrations we experience in our parish or our workplace or our family when they hurt us even we can't have compassion on them until we recognize our own sins and our own weaknesses you know if we tend to be people that are critical and judgmental we struggle with that even if we don't say it but we have it in our head it's often times because we haven't followed step one or two that we talked about tonight we haven't really recognized our own weakness and how much God needs to be merciful on me I haven't experienced God's own mercy with my life I truly experienced how patient and gentle God is with me and I truly know what a mess I am then when I see someone else doing other things and promoting bad things in the culture I'm less likely to just look at them and look down on them I see well he's been so patient with me I'd probably do worse if it wasn't for my relationship with Christ this is what Saint Bernard of Clairvaux says listen the sound person feels the sick ones pains it is fellow sufferers that readily feel compassion for the sick and the hungry you will never have real mercy for the failings of another until you know and realize that you have the same failings in your own soul in other words maybe I haven't committed adultery or maybe I'm not looking at pornography like other people but maybe I struggle sometimes with my glances and purity of heart so I might not have the exact same thing but I have something of that in me or maybe I'm not pro-abortion but how much do I actually go out and live in solidarity with the weakest members of society and care for people that are suffering that are lonely and that are poor again it's much more severe to promote abortion but John Paul II pointed out it's that same individualistic spirit that leads individuals to just not care for others in great need that same attitude that neglects the poor is the attitude that builds the culture of death in promoting abortion that we don't want to care for those that need our attention the most so what have we seen so far we need to understand that we need God's mercy secondly we need to experience it experience his forgiveness and his healing power and if we do truly experience God's patience his gentleness his compassion and mercy with me and we experience his healing power in my own life if that happens then when I'm looking at my neighbor I'm going to tend to be more gentle and compassionate with them as well and now we go to a fourth step and now we're moving toward evangelization now we go out and we give witness to the love of Jesus Christ that we have experienced ourselves how do we do this I'm going to talk about two ways briefly one is to encounter the poor Pope Francis has drawn particular attention to service of the poor in his pontificate and in this year of mercy do we go out and really serve the poor and I have to be honest for me in my own life I know I've said well I'm a theologian I'm doing all this great work I think every state of life will be different every individual will be different but all of us are called to do something to have contact with those in great needs Pope Francis once said he challenged us to do a lot more than just give money to do a lot more than just write checks he once was addressing a group of people and he said do you give alms I said yeah we give alms he says do you look them in the eye when you give alms oh you know I just throw them the coins he says then you haven't really encountered them do you give alms yeah father we give alms do you touch them do you talk to the poor oh no we just give them money then you haven't really encountered them Pope Francis is calling us to not just give money but to encounter the poor to live a little bit in solidarity with them so that we grow in love Pope Benedict says when we do this when I go out and I actually I've seen the poor I've got some contact with them I'm not just helping this poor man's condition not just helping him clean his house or helping serve him some food and put food in his belly or handing him some money there's a change that's happening on the outside indeed he has a nicer house he has more food or he has some more cash there's a change happening out there but Pope Benedict said there's a change that happens in here when we do that that we who've encountered Christ's own love want to go out and share that love with those in need that's a true mark of a faithful Christian Pope Francis says this is one of the key marks of orthodoxy in the early church a key mark of Catholic identity in the early church when Saint Paul was checking is my gospel message okay can I go off to the Gentiles and say amen go for it just make sure you do one thing care for the poor and as Paul sets up all these communities around Asia Minor and into Greece ultimately in Rome you get all these Christian communities that are living a counter cultural lifestyle very different from the pagan hedonistic self centeredness of the world around them and so when Paul and his communities are serving the poor other Christians or the people in pagan Rome are looking at wow we've never seen anything like that and Pope Francis says we live in a similar time of an individualistic hedonistic age that is just centered on myself my own pleasure my own entertainment my own comfort and now is the time that Christians more than ever need to give a counter cultural prophetic witness to care for the poor now whether that means you go help at a soup kitchen or you go visit a nursing home you help someone that you know in your own community a neighbor a widow next door whatever it is it's gonna look differently for all of us but I think we can all be challenged to give a little more of ourselves personally to those in need last point is not just the corporal works of mercy but we need to also share our faith you can think of this as the spiritual works of mercy and that's what this is ultimately leading to you see if we've truly encountered Christ then we just want to share him with others and it's not just I'm sharing some ideas about him but if I've truly encountered his love and patience and his saving help his grace healing me in my own life then that's just good news I want to share with others but I meet so many Catholics that say oh I'm just not so sure how to do that I don't know what to do I don't know how to say it I'm not a theologian I'm afraid guess what this isn't that hard this isn't rocket science Jesus there's gospel stories all the time about people who encounter Christ and then they go off and tell others about it like you know the story of the Samaritan woman remember her she has a very colored past all these different husbands and Jesus comes to her and she goes through a conversion she comes to believe in Jesus as the Messiah she goes to her community her other Samaritans and she starts telling them about Jesus and she's a successful evangelist these Samaritans come to believe in Jesus as the savior of the world through her own witness isn't she incredible do you know why she was such an effective witness to the gospel message it's because on her way back to her village she stopped at the diocesan office for that workshop on evangelization it's because she encountered Jesus experienced something good and just wanted to share it now don't get me wrong that workshop or further studies all those things make you better you get more effective but if you experience something good you want to share it so let me ask how many of you have ever seen a good movie in the last year or two did you tell anyone about the movie how did you do that that's amazing do you have a masters in film criticism did you study with Roger I want to meet you that's amazing how many of you married here any married folks here how many of you could say something wonderful about your wife your spouse yeah do you have like a masters in marriage theology how did you do that that's amazing now when you experience something good you just want to share it with other people and it's the same thing with the gospel if you really encounter Jesus and experienced his mercy in your life which is forgiveness but also he's healing grace to change you to bring you to a happier life then that's just good news if you're convinced that a relationship with Christ and the Catholic church makes a difference in your life then you can share that with other people and you don't have to be an expert and this is where Pope Francis and John Paul II often talked about the ministry of accompaniment if you just love people whether it's your niece or your grandson or your friend at work whatever it is and you're accompanying them in life you're not just coming in with hi I'm here to give you Catholic truth but no you're here to just love them and you're involved in their life and you're asking questions many of them have never had people ask questions about their life I can remember when I was a young college student a seminarian in my diocese took me out to breakfast but I remember he just asked me a simple question we're just catching up so Ted tell me are you happy I never had anyone ask me that question so yeah I'm happy grades are going well I got a girlfriend I'm playing in a band at college and yeah things are happy but that question haunted me and all that day I kept wondering am I really happy and then for the next several weeks I just kept wondering am I really happy and then I realized on the outside had a lot of good things going on again good grades, girlfriend, friends all this nice social life but deep on the inside while I was Catholic and going to church Jesus wasn't first and there was a lot of insecurity a lot of fear I wasn't really happy and that question led me to ask deeper questions about where my life was going and it wasn't until eventually saying no I don't want Jesus to be a part of my life but then things started to go in the right direction at a deeper profound level have the confidence that if people aren't put in Christ first in their life just know their hearts are restless as St. Augustine says they just are no matter how confident they seem how disregarding a religion they might seem just know the truth their hearts are restless until they rest in God now going out and talking about the faith that's just getting the starters accompanying them, asking questions sharing about your own in that context when they start bringing up something a question about life then you could share something from the faith that made a difference for you but at some point you're going to have to be ready though for the challenges that the culture is raising about the faith today because I hear from so many parents the same kind of story something about I raised my kids Catholic I sent them to Catholic schools and then they got into high school and they start wondering hey mom why do I need a church I believe in God I'm a good person why do I need a church then they start saying things like I don't need religion I could just be spiritual then they go off to college and they come home one spring break and say why is the Catholic church so judgmental why is it so critical of all these other views and ways of life we should just be tolerant and just all coexist then they graduate and they get married they get a job find a boyfriend or girlfriend then they start living together and mom and dad say hey did you ever think about getting married well who needs marriage why bother we got a job we like each other we get along why do we need some certificate from a church this is the culture we live in today and we need to be equipped to answer those questions eventually maybe not on the first round but eventually we've got to be able to answer those deeper questions that are in the culture but first and foremost we've got to be able to encounter God's mercy in our own lives so that we can just have a spirit of his mercy and love with the people around us loving our neighbor well and then give a witness in our care for those in great need and then most of all give a witness to our own faith so we can be more effective in evangelization we're out of time I wish I could I wanted to get into a couple more I wanted to answer some of those questions I just threw out there about why do I need a church why do we talk about morality but I'll just defer you to this book that I wrote here called The Love Unveiled the Catholic Faith Explained where it's a walk through the faith that goes through those questions if you want an article that's based on my talk today I wrote an article actually for Franciscan University for their catechetical journal it's called Living the Year of Mercy it's on my website which is just my name EdwardSiri.com it's on my Facebook page for all of you so you can just take that it's for free share that with anyone that would be helpful with