Emily Stimpson

God’s mercy, of course, is ever-present and ever-abundant. A Year of Mercy doesn’t make God more merciful or more inclined to forgive. God can’t change. But we can ... and must. As Pope Francis explained in Misericordiae Vultus (“The Face of Mercy”), the bull of indiction that announced the Year of Mercy, “At times we are called to gaze even more attentively on mercy so that we may become a more effective sign of the Father’s action in our lives” (No. 3).

The Year of Mercy is meant to be one of those times — a season for Christians to become “stronger and more effective” witnesses to the Faith we proclaim, changed both by contemplating the depths of God’s mercy and by imitating Christ in the world today (Misericordiae Vultus, No. 3).

To help make that possible, the Holy Father used Misericordiae Vultus not only to reflect on God’s mercy but also to outline a course of action. In it, he offered a series of practical suggestions for how Catholics should celebrate the Year of Mercy ahead.

Go to confession

The Sacrament of Reconciliation is the sacrament of mercy. In the confessional, God freely offers his forgiveness to all who ask for it with a sincere heart and a genuine purpose of amendment. He requires no payment and no sacrifice; he took care of that himself long ago on Calvary. Instead, all God asks is that we show up. If we do our part, he does his.

During the Year of Mercy, Pope Francis has granted extraordinary powers to all priests to forgive sins that, in some places, are still reserved to the bishop, such as abortion. He also has called for a special time of repentance during Lent. The initiative, 24 Hours for the Lord, will place special emphasis on the Sacrament of Reconciliation in dioceses around the world.

But the confessional isn’t just for those who’ve been involved with an abortion. The confessional is for every person who has broken faith with God in some way — who has yelled at their spouse, gossiped about a neighbor, skipped Mass on Sunday or wasted time at work. Which is to say, the confessional is for all of us.

We don’t need to wait until Lent to pay it a visit. Every week, in almost every parish across America, priests sit in those confessionals, waiting for us to come and tell God that we’re sorry. They know that when we do, we will, in the words of Pope Francis, “touch the grandeur of God’s mercy with [our] own hands” and experience “true interior peace” (Misericordiae Vultus, No. 17).

Read conversion stories

In the late third century, St. Augustine penned the first known spiritual autobiography, “Confessions.” The book told of the recently ordained Bishop of Hippo’s journey from unbelief to belief, from lust to chastity, and from love of self to love of God. The tale captivated readers then, just as it captivates readers now. It also set the mold for all similar stories of conversion that would follow.

Through the centuries, conversion stories have challenged, comforted and encouraged millions of men and women on their journey to God. They offer enduring and concrete examples of God’s mercy in the lives of individual believers. They remind us that no one is beyond the reach of God’s mercy, and they help us better understand our personal journey to holiness.

Above all, conversion stories witness to the fact that we all are called to conversion. Whether we were born and raised Catholic or not, every person must reject the world and give their heart to the Lord. Without choosing Christ once and then repeatedly thereafter — there can be no discipleship. There can be no living faith.

For those reasons and more, conversion stories are central to the forthcoming 24 Hours for the Lord initiative. During that time, and throughout the Year of Mercy, the Church wants the faithful to revisit famous converts of days past as well as familiarize themselves with more recent converts. Their testimonies of grace offer us guidance in how to give our own testimony of grace. They also, offer us, as Pope Francis wrote, “a new chance to look at [ourselves], convert, and believe” (Misericordiae Vultus, No. 21).

Perform works of mercy

God call us to be “doers of the word and not hearers only” (Jas 1:22). This year and always, being a “doer” entails performing works of mercy, both corporal and spiritual.

The corporal works of mercy involve caring for the bodies and material needs of others: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, healing the sick, visiting the imprisoned and burying the dead.

The spiritual works of mercy involve caring for souls and the spiritual welfare of our fellow man: counseling the doubtful, instructing the ignorant, admonishing sinners, comforting the afflicted, forgiving offences, bearing wrongs patiently and praying for the living and the dead.

Jesus, Pope Francis explained, “introduces us to these works of mercy in his preaching, so that we can know whether or not we are living as his disciples” (Misericordiae Vultus, No. 15).

He also tells us that we will be judged on how we cared for the least of our brothers and sisters (Mt 25:34-46).

But performing works of mercy doesn’t only offer us an escape plan from “eternal punishment”; it also helps us understand mercy from the inside. It reawakens our conscience, “too often grown dull,” and helps us learn to see our own spiritual poverty in the faces of the materially and spiritually poor (Misericordiae Vultus, No. 15).

Accordingly, throughout this Year of Mercy, the Holy Father asks us to heed Christ’s words and reach out to those in need. Practically speaking, that means we can donate food to a food pantry and clothes to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. We can invite a new family in town to supper and donate our spare change to a nonprofit that provides children in Africa with clean water. We can also have Masses said for departed friends and loved ones, visit the sick and the dying in nursing homes or hospitals, offer up Rosaries for the conversion of family members who have lost the Faith, and just hold our tongues (and tempers) the next time someone cuts us off in traffic.

Go on pilgrimage

Mercy isn’t free. We always pay for it. Not with money, but with effort. Mercy, wrote Pope Francis, requires “dedication and sacrifice”; it requires that we reject sin, selfishness and destructive desires (Misericordiae Vultus, No. 14). In effect, it requires doing things God’s way, not our way. Thanks to our fallen natures, that’s rarely easy. But, since the most ancient of times, the Church has recommended that those seeking mercy go on pilgrimage, both to better understand what mercy requires and as a means of developing the discipline necessary to walk in God’s ways.

As the pope explained, when we travel to a sacred place, we remember “Life itself is a pilgrimage, and the human being is a viator, a pilgrim traveling along the road, making his way to the desired destination.” We also come to see mercy not as a cheap handout but rather as a priceless gift, which cost Christ his life, and is a “goal to reach” (Misericordiae Vultus, No. 14).

For innumerable men and women throughout the ages, this experience of pilgrimage — to Rome and Jerusalem, Fatima and Lourdes, national basilicas and local shrines — has been an occasion of conversion and grace. It has offered them an opportunity to atone for sins, ask for forgiveness and draw closer to the Lord.

For this reason, during the Year of Mercy, the Church invites all believers to make a pilgrimage, whether to a nearby cathedral or to far away sacred ground, so that, while on pilgrimage, we might “find the strength to embrace God’s mercy and dedicate ourselves to being merciful with others as the Father has been with us” (Misericordiae Vultus, No. 14).

Walk through a Holy Door

For at least 500 hundred years, Holy Doors and Jubilees have gone hand in hand.

During this Jubilee of Mercy, however, Holy Doors will take on an unprecedented significance. Not only will the Holy Doors in Rome open for pilgrims, but Pope Francis also has asked that every cathedral and basilica around the world set up a similar door, a Door of Mercy.

The tradition of Holy Doors dates back to the early 15th century, when Pope Martin V declared that one of the doors in the Basilica of St. John Lateran could only be opened during a jubilee year.

By the end of the century, all the major basilicas in Rome had similar Holy Doors, set aside for jubilee years.

The doors themselves symbolize Christ, who called himself “the gate” to eternal life (Jn 10:9). For pilgrims, to walk through the Holy Doors is to walk, in spirit, from sin to grace and from death to life, acknowledging Christ as the only way to the Father.

During this Year of Mercy, all the Holy Doors in Rome and across Europe will be flung open. Everyone who walks through them will have the opportunity to obtain a plenary indulgence for themselves or a departed loved one. For those who can’t travel across an ocean, the same graces will be available in any local cathedral or shrine with a “Door of Mercy,” where, Pope Francis said, “anyone who enters will experience the love of God who consoles, pardons, and instills hope” (Misericordiae Vultus, No. 3).  

Obtain indulgences

When most people hear the word “indulgences,” they think of Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformation and the few bad apples who, in the late Middle Ages, promised people a quick escape from purgatory in exchange for generous charitable donations.

But indulgences are so much more than their checkered medieval history suggests. They are an ongoing manifestation of God’s mercy in the world, freeing us “from every residue left by the consequences of sin,” and enabling us to “act with charity” and “grow in love” (Misericordiae Vultus, No. 22).

As the Church understands it, through the centuries, by God’s grace, holy men and women have done good works. They’ve prayed, suffered, sacrificed and served. And the more they’ve done that — the more they’ve responded to God’s grace with faithful, loving obedience — the more grace God has poured out upon them.

Through this loving, fruitful exchange of grace and good works, something like an excess of merit and grace builds up. We call this excess “The Treasury of the Saints.” It is, in a sense, like a bank account of graced merit, which the rest of us can draw upon in order to escape temporal punishment for our sins.

Or, as Pope Francis put it, “[the saints’] holiness comes to the aid of our weakness in a way that enables the Church, with her maternal prayers and her way of life, to fortify the weakness of some with the strength of others” (Misericordiae Vultus, No. 22).

That aid can be plenary (meaning full remission from temporal punishment for sin), or just partial, and we can obtain it for both departed loved ones and for ourselves. As for how we go about obtaining it, there are many ways: walking through the Holy Doors, going on pilgrimages, even praying the Rosary and reading Sacred Scripture.

In every case, however, the conditions for obtaining an indulgence remain the same: complete detachment from sin, reception of the Eucharist, making a good confession that day or on a proximate day, praying for the intentions of the pope and being in a state of grace by the time the work for the indulgence is complete.

Contemplate God’s mercy in Scripture

Sacred Scripture is both the word of God and the story of God in time. It traces the history of God’s dealings with men, recalling his merciful provisions for humanity, from Eden to Calvary and beyond. God’s mercy cannot be understood apart from the Bible. Which is why Pope Francis has called upon the faithful to ponder its pages more closely this coming year, especially during the Lenten season.

“How many pages of Sacred Scripture are appropriate for meditation during the weeks of Lent to help us rediscover the merciful face of the Father!” the Holy Father asked (Misericordiae Vultus, No. 17). In Misericoriae Vultus, Francis pointed specifically to the prophets Micah and Isaiah as starting points for that meditation. But the psalms, which are ancient Israel’s songs of prayer, praise and thanksgiving, also offer almost endless insights into God’s mercy, as does the entire history of ancient Israel, from Genesis through Maccabees.

During Lent, or throughout the year, heeding the Holy Father’s advice to contemplate God’s mercy in Scripture is as simple as reading a chapter from the Bible each morning, praying the Divine Office with the Church or praying an abbreviated form of it with the Magnificat. Bible studies, like the St. Paul Center’s Journey Through Scripture and Ascension Press’s Bible Timeline, or books like Father Mitch Pacwa’s “Mercy: A Bible Study Guide for Catholics” (OSV, $9.95), also offer insights into God’s mercy through familiarizing people with the story of salvation history, while Pope Benedict XVI’s trilogy on Jesus of Nazareth can serve as a guide to seeing God’s mercy incarnated in the face of Christ.

Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm.

 “We need no wings to go in search of God, but have only to find a place where we can be alone and look upon Him present within us.” These words were written by St. Teresa of Avila in her book The Way of Perfection.

St. Teresa of Avila learned as a small child that one had to die in order to see God. Little Teresa wanted to see God. Practical and courageous by temperament she devised a scheme. She and her brother, Rodrigo, would go to the land of the Moors. There they would surely be martyred and Heaven would receive them. Very early one morning the two children stole away from their home and crossed the bridge leading out of Avila. But the plan soon ran into trouble. An uncle who happened to be entering Avila at the time, met the children, heard their fantastic plan and unceremoniously returned them to their parental dwelling.

Later on in life St. Teresa realized that one does not have to die to see God. “We need no wings to go in search of Him,” she wrote, “but have only to find a place where we can be alone and look upon Him present within us.”

These words of the saint contain three essential steps for fruitful mental prayer.

First, we must be searching for God; second, we must be willing to be alone with Him, and third, we need but look upon Our Lord Who is present within us.

At first sight, this advice might seem too general or too obvious to be of practical help in mental prayer, but the three steps go to the heart of the matter. St. Teresa is the antidote for those who can’t see the forest for the trees. With a woman’s intuition she cuts through the accidental and points out the essential conditions for mental prayer. Let us look at each of these principles in some detail.

First, we must be searching for God.

If God is just a name, if His love for us is an abstract truth which we believe but do not realize, we will hardly search for Him.

Mental prayer is too difficult for that. It will lack appeal. If, on the other hand, we are convinced that God is in Teresa’s words “a better prize than any earthly love,” if we realize that we actually have within us something incomparably more precious than anything we see outside, then we will desire to enter within ourselves and to seek God. When we are convinced that He cares for us and waits for us, we will have the security and the courage to love Him in return.

Mental prayer makes no sense to the loveless soul. Other prayers, for example, petitions or thanksgiving, even liturgical worship, can be said with little or no conscious love of God. Not so mental prayer. It is by definition in Teresa’s view nothing but friendly conversation with Him Who we know loves us. “The important thing in mental prayer,” she says, “is not to think much but to love much.” Mental prayer becomes passable when we realize the gift of God dwelling within our soul. Referring to her earlier years in religious life, St. Teresa wrote these regretful words, “I think that if I had understood then as I do now that this great King really dwells within a little palace of my soul, I should not have left Him alone so often and never allowed his dwelling place to get so dirty.” Mental prayer, you see, is nothing but our side of friendship with God—our “yes” to God’s call and invitation

This leads us to the second principle of St. Teresa’s advice. The willingness to spend time alone with God. For this saint, prayer is the way of perfection, the door to God’s great favors. “Once this door is closed,” she writes, “I do not see how He will bestow His favors

for though He may wish to take His delight in the soul and give the soul delight, there is no way for Him to do so since He must have it alone and pure and desirous of receiving His favors.” Teresa herself closed this door for one year of her life, during the long 18-year period of mediocrity which she describes as a struggle to reconcile these two contradictory things: the life of the spirit and the pleasures of the senses.

Teresa wanted God, but at the same time she was unwilling to give up certain little selfish habits, petty attachments that were displeasing to God. Giving up mental prayer was not the answer to this problem. It was almost a fatal mistake because this way is the only way to victory over ourselves and surrender to God. At the time she excused herself from prayer on the plea of ill health, but in her heart she knew the dishonesty of this reason. “One needs no bodily strength for mental prayer,” she wrote later, “but only love and the formation of a habit.”

Love, as we have seen, is the root. But let us be sure we know what this love is. Too many confuse being loved with love itself. Love is outgoing, unselfish, active. It means giving rather than self-seeking. It strives to please rather than be pleased. Listen again to St. Teresa: “Perhaps we do not know what love is. It would not surprise me, for love consists not in the extent of our own happiness, but in the firmness of our determination to please God in everything.” This kind of love moves us to spend time alone with God, not for what we get out of it, but for what we can put into it. We don’t go to mental prayer to feel good or enjoy a spiritual experience. These are secondary aspects at best. We go to protest our desire to accept God’s love, to allow Him to take over in our lives.

It is accidental whether we are delighted with consolation or tortured by dryness and desolation, whether holy thoughts and affections pour out of our hearts, or our minds are dull, sterile and unproductive.

Some of the best prayers are said when we don’t feel like praying, when we are tired and sluggish or burdened with self-pity and depression. When we are heavy, so opaque, so closed in on ourselves that only a heroic effort of our will keeps us kneeling at our prayer. It is this will to be alone with God and to talk with Him that distinguishes true prayer from delusion, because this will is the love of God.

Such love forms the habit of prayer. It makes us faithful to mental prayer day in and day out, in times of fervor as in times of coldness. It makes us choose God rather than ourselves outside prayer as well as in prayer, a choice that will be evident in our acts of fraternal charity, generosity, humility. This attachment to God and detachment from ourselves will measure the perfection of our prayer. As our life goes, so goes our prayer, and as our prayers, our life. We pray as well as we live and we live as well as we pray.

If we would improve then, where do we begin? Where shall we start? St. Teresa gives us the answer. It is the same answer that Our Lord gave in the Gospels: Perseverance, faithfulness, the formation of a habit. She would heartily endorse, I am sure, this thought of Dom Chapman: “If you want to pray well, then pray much. If you don’t pray much at least pray regularly and you will pray well.”

But one practical question remains. How? How shall I go about making mental prayer?

St. Teresa’s third principle is the answer. Simply look upon God present within your soul. The saint repeats this suggestion in many different ways. We are to fix our mind on the person of God, cultivate the sense of His Presence, have the realization of Whom we are addressing. This is her secret. You will find no new method of mental prayer in St. Teresa, no structuring of preludes and points. She is silent on these matters not because she is against them, but because she

reduces mental prayer to its simplest terms.

To certain nuns of her convent who objected that mental prayer was beyond their ability she wrote: “I am not asking you now to think of Him or to form numerous conceptions of Him, or to make long and subtle meditations with your understanding. I am asking only to look at Him.” It is as simple as that.

“Beginners,” she says, “do well to form an appealing image of Christ in His Sacred Humanity. They should picture Him within themselves in some mystery of His life, for example, the Christ of the agony or the Risen Savior in His glorified Body. Once they are conscious of Our Lord’s presence within their souls they need only look upon Him and conversation will follow. This friendly conversation will not be much thinking but much loving, not a torrent of words, much less a strained prepared speech, but rather a relaxed conversation with moments of silence as there must be between friends.”

This is the way St. Teresa prayed from the beginning. She simply gave her full attention to the Divine Guest within her soul and let her thoughts and sentiments take their course. At times she would console Our Lord for His suffering. At other times rejoice with Him in His Resurrection Sometimes her prayer would be affective, that is, made up of numerous acts of faith and hope and charity, humility and the other virtues. Other times it was contemplative. It was a simple lingering look of love that had the very feminine quality of blissful admiration.

But perhaps this way of prayer does not appeal to you. Such prayer, you may say, is all well and good for contemplatives, but I need a more active prayer, a more busy prayer. I must think through a mystery of Faith, make certain definite acts of my mind, work up concrete resolutions. I must follow a methodical meditation or I am doomed at prayer. To this I say well and good. Each one of us must pray the way God gives him to pray, but does not this simplified method of

St. Teresa meet the real needs of many? Are there not many among you who cannot meditate but who can pray?

In any case, St. Teresa’s teaching reminds all of us of what is truly essential in prayer, especially that it is a person-to-person contact between intimate loving friends. St. Teresa did in fact envy those who could meditate. She saw the value of extended reflections and dynamic dramatization on events of Our Lord’s life. She well knew that thoughts and images rouse up the will and incite lively sentiments of the virtues, but at the same time she knew that the essence of mental prayer lies on a deeper level than our own reflections and thinking, that real prayer exists when one strives to make contact with God whatever success is had, and that the measure of prayer’s perfection is the love that inspires it. And so St. Teresa prayed the only way she could, suffering the increased difficulties that were bound to come from the fact that the imagination, the memory and the intellect were not given a methodical plan of action.

She would use supports wherever she could find them. In books, for example, or in the beauties of nature, even in holy cards. Books were her standby. She never began mental prayer without some reading to collect her thoughts and put herself in the atmosphere of prayer. She returned to the book as often as needed in the course of the prayer. Daily spiritual reading assumed special importance because of the relative lack of reflection at prayer itself. Vocal prayers, like the Our Father, said slowly and with an effort to “taste” each phrase were also employed to express her love of God. But the starting point and the way to her whole system lay simply in looking at the Lord present in her soul.

In the beginning His Presence would be recognized by an act of faith expressed and made graphic in the dress of a picture of Our Lord. With growth in the spiritual life, in faithand hope and charity, and hence in prayer itself, the sense of His Presence would become more profound, more realized, more experiential. At all times this loving union with the Indwelling God was the immediate goal of her prayer. It should be your goal at prayer, and you will more quickly~ and more surely attain this union with God if you take to heart the discovery of St. Teresa of Avila:

“We need no wings to go in search of Him, but have only to find a place where we can be alone and look upon Him present within us.”

The Elective Chapter of the Carmelite Monastery of Sutri, Italy, was held 11 February 2016. The following were elected:

• Prioress:  Sr. M. Daniela Solustri, O.Carm.
• 1st Councilor:   Sr. M. Martina Simeone, O.Carm.
• 2nd Councilor:  Sr. M. Francesca Romana Gargano, O.Carm.
• Director of Novices:  Sr. M. Daniela Solustri, O.Carm.
• Treasurer:  Sr. M. Martina Simeone, O.Carm.
• Sacristan:  Sr. M. Elisabetta De Bellis, O.Carm.

Taking advantage of the congress of federal leaders of all the religious orders, organised by the Congregation for Consecrated Life, at the end of the year dedicated to the consecrated life, the five Carmelite federal leaders (3 from Spain, I from the Philippines and 1 from Italy), along with the coordinator of the monasteries in Brazil and representatives of monasteries in the Caribbean and the U.S.A. were invited by the Delegate General to a meeting that was held from the 3rd to the 5th of February at St. Albert’s International Centre (CISA) in Rome. This assembly was first of all an occasion for getting to know all about the federations and the monasteries outside the federations, and then to promote communication and communion between the nuns themselves and between the monasteries and the rest of the Carmelite Family. In this context, the proposals put forward by the Secretariat for Nuns and presented by Mother Ma. Elena Tolentino (BUR) (see citoc-online 112/2014) were further developed. The 15 participants also shared their thoughts about what emerged from the Vatican congress, beginning with a report on the event given by Mother Martina Simeone (SUT).

Two further moments of great interest were the participation of the Postulator General, Giovanna Brizi, and of the Prior General, Fernando Millán Romeral, O.Carm.  The Postulator General spoke about the causes of nuns underway at this time and the procedure that has to be followed if there is a desire to introduce a new cause. The Prior General shared an amount of information regarding a number of topics, events and initiatives within the Order, and concluded by encouraging the nuns to continue on this path towards greater communion. As a result of the exchanges two important decisions were taken: the holding of the assembly of federal leaders and representatives of non-federated monasteries every three years, and a mode of procedure for the updating of the nuns’ constitutions.

At the end of the meeting, the Prior General made a presentation to the Prior of CISA Míceál O’Neill, O.Carm of the type-writer that belonged to Fr. Bartolomé Xiberta O.Carm. a candidate for beatification, with which Xiberta wrote his great theological works and hundreds of letters to Carmelite nuns.