World Youth Day USA Guides Retreat Manual | Page 57

IV. Concluding Thoughts on


Solidarity and Suffering


(“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall

Struggle is not punishment or karma,

receive mercy” – Mt 5:7) leads us to

“…for (your heavenly Father) makes his

consider how we might show mercy to

sun rise on the bad and the good, and

those most in need and to consistently act

causes the rain to fall on the just and the

more merciful in our everyday lives, and

unjust.” (Mt 5:45b).


to be critical of systematic injustices by
criticizing the systems that keep people in

We are called to be in solidarity and

poverty and in dangerous situations like

accompaniment with those who

racism, unfair housing practices, and

struggle and suffer.


food scarcity.

Being in solidarity with those who live in



poverty and those who suffer: what does

lives (our friends, our families). How

Catholic social teaching?

might we be in solidarity with people
closest to us so that we might better

Indifference keeps us from fully

model solidarity and mercy as a family?

experiencing others in the world.


In doing so, we are then able to be better
attuned to the needs of others.

The Eucharist reminds us that we are to
be in communion with God and with one



another: “being the body of Christ in the

Jesus is our model of solidarity. Jesus
knows and understands human suffering

world for those who need us”

because he became man, experienced

(St. Teresa of Avila).


Family Life: sometimes people who need
mercy are right in front of us in our daily

this mean, in light of the Gospels and



The 2016 World Youth Day Theme

poverty, took our sufferings upon himself.
Jesus lived with those who lived in poverty

Through experiences of solidarity, we

and ate with outcasts (prostitutes, tax

come to know one another better, but

collectors, lepers, among others). Jesus was

we also come to know the Lord better

able to look beyond the events of people’s

through the experience of seeing and

lives and offer them mercy, reminding them

hearing from one another.

of God’s mercy and their own dignity.


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