Thought for the Week – empathy, compassion and mercy.

We live in a world where people drive trucks into Christmas markets, where an ambassador is gunned down in cold blood in front of his wife, where refugees and migrants are pulled out of the Mediterranean, sometimes living, sometimes not. How should we respond? By building walls and saying, not my problem?

Well, the mystery we celebrate says very differently. In the words of Pope Francis, “In a world which all too often is merciless to the sinner and lenient to the sin, we are called to cultivate a strong sense of justice. In a world of indifference which not infrequently turns cruel, we are called instead to be people filled with empathy, compassion and mercy.”  Abbot Brendan Coffey