A Year of Mercy

"Mercy is a good thing, for it makes men perfect, in that it imitates the perfect Father.  Nothing graces the Christian soul so much as mercy."
-St. Ambrose

If ever the world needed mercy it is now.  I look around and see terrorists, evil, and a country that seems to have lost its moral compass.

Some drag out the Founding Fathers and talk about their search for religious freedom.  Forgetting that as soon as they landed they set about making sure that everyone obeyed their version of religious freedom.

Have we forgotten that they committed genocide on the Native Americans.  The same Native Americans that saved them from starvation and certain death from the brutal New England winter.

We have always had different rules for different ethnic groups for immigration.  It depends on who we consider our enemy to be at any given moment.  Every time in history that we have attempted to divide our country on ethnic or religious differences we have lost.  We lost because of the Chinese Exclusionary Act, the Japanese Internment Camps, the Indian Reservations.  As Catholics have we forgotten that Maryland was a Catholic Settlement because the others did not want us.

Have we forgotten the Jesus came as a man.  A man that would look like most of the individuals on the no fly list. Jesus was not blond haired and blued eyed.  No, He looked Middle Eastern.  He looked Jewish.

I do not have many answers but I do know this.  We all will be judged based on how we have treated our fellow man.  Jesus is in the face of every refugee, every illegal immigrant, the stranger that walks past us, the beggar on the street corner, and the family member we haven't spoken to in years.

Mercy is something that the world needs now.  Mercy begins with me.

Lord,
Help me to see past the person
and see You in them.

Fill me with mercy for my fellow man.
Help be to be an agent of mercy for You.

Let not my fear stop me from seeing You.

~Cindy