Pope Francis: Mercy Is “What Pleases God Most”

As we start this Jubilee Year of Mercy, let us not avoid those in our society who made mistakes and are suffering the consequences of them.

With his gestures, homilies and speeches, the first 33 months of his pontificate led toward that door in a way very much like the early years of St. John Paul II’s energetic papacy prepared him to lead the church into the new millennium, calling Catholics to throw open the doors of their hearts to Christ. But a pope can proclaim an “extraordinary” jubilee when he deems it necessary. For example, the year 1933 was declared a Jubilee Year to celebrate 1,900 years of the redemption of the human race dating from the death and resurrection of the Lord in the year 33 AD. Instead, let us encounter the lost and dejected and put ourselves in their shoes, realizing that we could easily be the ones who are in need of Christian charity.

Francis recommends dialogue with Muslims and Jews and other religious traditions “so that we might know and understand one another better”. The Vatican highlighted this particular work of mercy this year when the new “Gift of Mercy” homeless shelter was established in October. The event featured a speech by the Rev. Dermot Roache of Brooklyn, founder of the worldwide Divine Mercy Family Apostolate, and ended with participants sharing a meal with soup-kitchen clients and distributing clothing, blankets and sleeping bags. That’s our call to practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy in this year. Without mercy, the pope said, any reform would be in vain because “we would become slaves of our institutions and our structures”.

“The world needs to discover that God is father, that there is mercy, that cruelty is not the path, that condemnation is not the path”, he said. The jubilee year ends November 20.

Mercy is at the heart of the Gospel. The central moment was the Great Jubilee 2000, which had as its focus Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever. That’s the motto I took: God the Father of mercies.

“This is not just an opportunity to do a few holy things – and go back to where we were”. An extraordinary jubilee for an extraordinary time. May that describe us.

Iorio said Catholics are encouraged to seek out Jews and Muslims and communicate with them about the nature of God’s mercy, developing a cross-cultural understanding of how mercy plays a part in their faith.

According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in the introduction of the sealing of the holy doors, “Pilgrims and penitents pass through it (holy door) as a gesture of leaving the past behind and crossing the threshold from sin to grace, from slavery to freedom, and from darkness to light”.

Pope Francis concluded: “Dear brothers and sisters, I hope that, during this Holy Year, each of us might experience the mercy of God, and be witnesses of “what pleases God most.’ Is it naive to believe that this could change the world?”

Oklahoma City Archbishop Coakley said he chose the archdiocesan sites in an effort to make the Holy Doors experience more widely available to people throughout the diocese. The list of the pilgrimage churches follows this column.

Once people realize “I’m wretched, but God loves me the way I am”, then “I, too, have to love others the same way”, the pope said in an interview published just a few days before the December 8 start of the jubilee year. For the first time, the pope instructed all cathedrals around the world to open their Holy Doors to pilgrims to encourage the faithful to mark the jubilee at home rather than coming to Rome. For the upcoming Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis has invited the dioceses around the world to have a holy door at their cathedral or prominent church of their diocese.