Editorial

The Year of Mercy Begins

Posted

As Americans, Parisians and others around the world find themselves targeted by violent extremists, the promise of Christmas peace may seem a distant dream.

That’s why the Jubilee Year of Mercy, which Pope Francis inaugurated Dec. 8 at St. Peter’s Basilica, could help us focus in a concrete way on the good that’s open to us—even as we remain vigilant against the reality of evil in our midst.

As the pope pushed open the basilica’s Holy Door, he led a ceremony that symbolizes God’s justice and mercy, and that also invites Catholics to walk through and deepen their encounter with the Lord.

Cardinal Dolan will perform the same ritual on Sunday, Dec. 13, opening the Holy Door of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, thereby declaring it a holy site and place of pilgrimage, along with four other shrines and churches in the archdiocese.

Announcing the holy sites and the full program for the Jubilee Year that ends Nov. 20, 2016, the cardinal said he hopes that the Catholic faithful—clergy, religious and laity—will come to know God’s mercy and show it to the world through the thoughts, words and actions of their daily lives.

The cardinal quoted Pope Francis, who said he wants the sites to become Holy Doors of Mercy “through which anyone who enters will experience the love of God, who consoles, pardons and instills hope.”

We want to encourage Catholics in New York to participate in the Jubilee Year events. It does not cost anything, and demands only that one make the effort to get to one of the holy sites on a personal “pilgrimage” (yes, a prayerful visit to a designated holy site is considered a pilgrimage), and either then or shortly thereafter to go to confession and receive the Eucharist.

But that’s not all. There’s much more on the calendar for those who wish to expand their experience.

During Lent, Cardinal Dolan will hold six daylong events in regions of the archdiocese, primarily on Saturdays, to give Catholics another opportunity to focus in a special way on God’s mercy, with talks, witness testimonies, individual confessions and guided examinations of conscience, concluding with a vigil Mass.

At the same regional locations in the fall, the archdiocese will co-sponsor forums exploring the issue of why people leave the Church.

In April and May, the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Center for Thought and Culture is planning to take its recent production of The Amish Project, a one-woman play about the tragic killing of Amish schoolchildren in Pennsylvania and the community’s ability to offer forgiveness, to Catholic high schools and colleges.

For those who want to make more extensive pilgrimages, Cardinal Dolan will lead two: the first, in April, to Rome, and another, in October, to Washington, D.C.

Finally, throughout this special year for the Church, we can all make an extra effort to perform the corporal works of mercy, those seven steps of helping others that include feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless.

And, in this troubled time in the world, we can join Pope Francis in his prayer that the jubilee will “open us to even more fervent dialogue so that we might know and understand one another better…eliminate every form of closed-mindedness and disrespect, and drive out every form of violence and discrimination.”