After declaring the Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis wrote the following in a letter to the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization: “I have asked the Church in this Jubilee Year to rediscover the richness encompassed by the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. The experience of mercy, indeed, becomes visible in the witness of concrete signs as Jesus himself taught us. Each time that one of the faithful personally performs one or more of these actions, he or she shall surely obtain the Jubilee Indulgence.” The corporal works of mercy seem to be concrete and easy to pin down, and perhaps they are the works of mercy that are well-known by the faithful. The spiritual works of mercy are perhaps a little more difficult. Take the first spiritual work of mercy – Instruct the Ignorant. We see Jesus doing this again and again with his own apostles. They think that they know what Jesus is about. They think they know what they need to do as disciples, but often Jesus has to teach them about who he is and about the Kingdom of God is all about. The apostles often have a lot of misconceptions about Jesus and his identity and his proclamation of God's kingdom. We can see Jesus doing this in today’s Gospel, of teaching James, John, and Peter through the transfiguration that he is indeed the Son of God, that he came not to remain on the mountaintop, but to take the message of salvation and the kingdom of God to the people of the earth.
Yes, most of the world has heard about Jesus. Certainly, most of the people of Mississippi, at the heart of the Bible Belt in our country, have heard about him. However, some of those who have heard about him remain ignorant of what Jesus actually taught. This can be due to a false interpretation of the Gospels or a poorly formed conscience or misguided life of faith. We can miss the fullness of the Gospel message that Jesus is trying to communicate to us. Think of how in our parish we have so many collaborating in our faith formation programs. It is in fact the priest and catechists and faith formation directors and teachers of religious education who collaborate with the Bishop in forming the faithful in our Catholic faith. One of the messages of the New Evangelization is that we have the responsibility to participate in faith formation programs ourselves and to constantly be growing in our faith before we try to evangelize others.
St Augustine, the great theologian and Bishop of Hippo in northern Africa in the early 5th century, was able to say this about God in his book, The Confessions: (You, Lord, are the “most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong; stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking; supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things.” Such profound revelations about God do not come out of a vacuum or a void, they come out of a genuine search for God and a proper formation in the faith. Lent is a good time for us to re-engage in our faith formation and in our thirst to learn more about God. One of the prayers at the beginning of mass during Lent states this: “Father, through our observance of Lent, help us to understand the meaning of your Son’s death and resurrection and teach us to reflect it in our lives.”
I mentioned the many collaborators in faith formation here in our parish, those involved in instructing the faithful – our children, our youth, our adults, and those who are not yet formed in the Catholic faith. Jai Eschete is a religious education teacher here on Sunday mornings and a member of our RCIA formation team. Jai, in fact, just went through RCIA himself the first year I arrived here at St James. He is going to reflect today on this first spiritual work of mercy – instructing the ignorant – in the context of his service here at our parish.
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