Just ended a week long  retreat for the Sisters of Mercy at Parsons Boulevard in Queens, New York. I sat some time facing a small statue of Mary (above) and the image in a mirror of Catherine McAuley, the Irish woman who founded the community. Next to her image is what she wrote about the spirit and purpose of her institute:

“Each religious institute receives a grace particularly adapted to the service they are called to perform. We ought, then, to have great confidence in God in the discharge of all these offices of Mercy, spiritual and corporal, which constitute the business of our lives…visiting prisons and hospitals and by reconciling quarrels…the spirit of prayer should be most dear to us, yet such a spirit should never withdraw us from the works of mercy.”

May God give the Sisters of Mercy grace for that mission today. The world needs to be blessed by the works of mercy.