When I looked over the readings for
today, it was the Psalm that struck me, especially in its response: “The Lord
is kind and merciful.” The psalmist goes
on to say that: “The Lord secures justice and the rights of all the oppressed. Merciful and gracious is the LORD, slow to
anger and abounding in kindness.”
Our saint of the day is also a Doctor
of the Church – St Peter Chrysologus. His name may seem a little odd to us, but
the word “Chrysologus” means “golden-tongued” or “golden-worded”. He was given that name due to the brief and eloquent
homilies he used to give. One might
wonder what relevance a bishop from Ravena, Italy who was born at the turn of
the 5th century might have to us in our modern world. Well, in relationship to the psalm today,
Peter Chrysologus asserted that there are three things that we need to practice
in our lives of faith that will help our faith remain constant and that will
help our virtue and our values to endure.
Those three things are prayer, fasting, and mercy. These are also the three holy practices that
we are called to in the season of Lent in preparation for Easter each year.
Our God is merciful – we hear this
again and again in Sacred Scripture.
Yet, how do we reflect that mercy in our own lives?
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