“We are called to enlarge the horizons of our hearts, to be surprised by the life that is presented each day with its newness.” (Pope Francis’ 2016 Advent message)
This year Advent challenged us to enlarge the horizons of our hearts and be surprised by the celebration of new life revealed in the mystery we might call “Mercy Christmas.”
A parish volunteer helps in the renovation of Mercy House.
As Bishop Larry Silva beautifully said on the first Sunday of Advent in blessing Mercy House, a transitional home donated by the diocese for formerly incarcerated women, “Christmas is a way we can say that God’s mercy became concrete in Jesus.”
“He came to live with us, to heal us, to teach us, to embrace us and that is what this house is meant to do,” the bishop said. “That is what all of the works of mercy are meant to do — to make that merciful face of the Father concrete in our lives and in our world.”
Here is what parishioners working on Mercy House have been doing in “making the face of our merciful Father concrete in our world”:
The St. Ann Parish Knights of Columbus cleaned and cleared away the rubble around the house while others from that parish painted the interior walls and tiled the floors.
Parishioners from St. John Vianney in Kailua greeted women upon their release at the prison gates with welcome baskets prepared by folks at Chaminade’s Mystical Rose Oratory.
Parishioners from St. Anthony, Kailua, transported former prisoners to Mercy House where a meal waited for them prepared by St. George Parish, Waimanalo, and served around a dining room table and other furniture donated by Immaculate Conception Parish in Ewa.
Mercy House is part of a concrete collaboration called “Going Home” whose mission is to assist women released from prison transition into community life through employment, training, housing and appropriate supportive services.
Mercy also became concrete through parishioners’ participation in the annual Advent celebration of “Star Light, Star Bright!,” the diocesan prisoner mother and child Christmas reunion project.
As Bishop Silva says in this year’s Christmas video (www.officeforsocialministry.org), “Star Light-Star Bright has been going on for almost 20 years. It’s really our way of going to the women who are at the prison here in Kailua and bringing Christ’s love to them; not having them to seek it out or go find it, but taking it to them — through having a luncheon, a party, a joyful time, and uniting them with their children who are so important to them so that they can renew those bonds of family through whatever mercy is needed in those relationships of healing, of strengthening. We can be instruments of that healing and strengthening”
Star Light, Star Bright! connects women in the Women’s Community Correctional Center with their children and family caregivers from all the islands in a special celebration that could be called a Mercy Christmas.
Mercy House and Star Light, Star Bright! represent opportunities to enlarge the horizons of the heart and be surprised by the newness of life accompanying families affected by incarceration through an experience of encountering God incarnate.
These “mercy ministries” manifest that we are concretely connected to God and each other through our shared vulnerability and that compassion can draw us closer to God and to one another. Christmas reminds us we believe in a God revealed, embodied in a very vulnerable baby born in a stable — a God manifested by making mercy concrete in our world.
We pray all have a very Mercy Christmas. Mele Kalikimaka!
Your friends at the
Office for Social Ministry