God’s mercy has a concrete countenance: the “compassionate and merciful” face of Jesus Christ that the Gospel brings close to us through the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Good Shepherd, and even more through the image of the father of the Prodigal Son. It is this countenance of God’s Son that we are called to contemplate, in order that at least some of His compassion and tenderness will shine forth on our faces and in our actions.
To make this easier for us, the Church proposes to us the example of the saints, for something of God’s love and compassion is also reflected on their faces. During this Jubilee of Mercy, the Church is presenting to us the person-model of Mother Teresa.
For Mother Teresa, everything began in prayer, in her relationship with God, in letting God’s merciful gaze penetrate to the depths of her heart. And having experienced this gaze in prayer and contemplation, she channeled it to others.
On Divine Mercy Sunday, Pope Francis challenged the faithful to become “living writers of the Gospel” by practicing the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, which are “the hallmarks of the Christian life.” In Mother Teresa’s words and deeds, in particular the examples that show how she practiced works of mercy, the “Gospel became alive,” as one of her followers said. She was, so to say, “writing” the Gospel by the way she lived it. This is what the Church is recognizing in her and offering to us as a model through her canonization.
Let her canonization and this book be an incentive to us to remember her love, her compassion, her soothing smile. When we see our brothers and sisters in need, let us be “apostles of mercy” by touching and healing the wounds of their bodies or of their souls, as Mother Teresa did. She keeps inviting us: “Just think for a moment, you and I have been called by our name, because He loved us. Because you and I are somebody special to Him—to be His Heart to love Him in the poor, His Hands to serve Him in the poorest of the poor…beginning with those around us, and even in our own families.”
This is how we can be, as Pope Francis calls us to be, witnesses to mercy.