Emmanuel
FROM THE EDITOR
I was recently given a copy of Pope Francis’ The Name of God Is Mercy.
In the book, a conversation with Vatican reporter Andrea Tornielli, the
Holy Father sets forth, in the simplicity and directness we have come
to expect of him, a vision of an all-merciful God.
I read the following in the concluding chapter, “Living the Holy Year
of Mercy”:
We have received freely, we give freely. We are called to serve
Christ the Crucified through every marginalized person. We
touch the flesh of Christ in he who is outcast, hungry, thirsty,
naked, imprisoned, ill, unemployed, persecuted, in search of
refuge. That is where we find our God; that is where we touch
the Lord. Jesus himself told us, explaining the protocol for
which we will all be judged, “Whatever you did for one of these
least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Mt 25:40). (98-99).
This passage speaks to the critical nexus between belief and action,
namely, that what we have come to experience and to believe deeply
of God impels us to act in the name of God with regard to the world
and others.
“We have received freely” is an expression of belief; “we give freely,”
an expression of action. From the two emerges one’s spirituality, a
distinctive way of being spiritual and of living in the power of God’s
Spirit.
From the moment on the night of March 13, 2013, when he stepped
out onto the balcony of Saint Peter’s, Pope Franci ́