By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Photographer: COURTESY | Archbishop Wenski
Sign at the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy on the American Continent.
From Aug. 27-30, Archbishop Thomas Wenski will be among 15 cardinals, 120 bishops and 400 priests, religious and lay people participating in the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy on the American Continent, a conference taking place in Bogota, Colombia. Archbishop Wenski has agreed to share his experience with Catholics in South Florida via this blog.
Sunday | Our celebration of the "Year on Mercy on the American Continent" opened this morning with Mass presided by Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). That the Mass was celebrated by an American archbishop (and in English) underscored the fact that the "encuentro," while sponsored by the Pontificial Commission for Latin America and CELAM participants, includes bishops, priests, religious and laity from Canada and the US — in the spirit of Pope St. John Paul II's "Ecclesia in America."
Photographer: COURTESY | Archbishop Wenski
Archbishop Thomas Wenski's view during the Mass in the Basilica of Our Lady of Lourdes in Bogota.
Photographer: COURTESY | Archbishop Wenski
At the morning session Aug. 28, Cardinal Marc Ouellette of Montreal, president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, urged the bishops and laity present to turn their parishes and movements into oases of mercy.
Cardinal (Marc) Oullette, who is the head of the Pontifical Commission in Rome, gave this morning's meditation on the Church as the "sacrament" of mercy. In her liturgy she celebrates seven sacraments, but the Church herself as a Sign and Instrument of Christ is the primordial Sacrament of Jesus Christ in the world.
A world beset by great challenges — war, poverty, fear, corruption — needs signs of hope and mercy. Thus, the Church preaches the gospel of mercy and shares with the world the joy that comes from knowing that one is forgiven. To do this, Cardinal Ouellette reminded us that our parishes and movements should be oases of mercy — where people know that they count and that they are loved.
To be the sign and instrument of the Divine Mercy requires confidence in the grace given us freely in baptism — and the willingness to get our "hands dirty" in the nitty gritty of people's hopes and fears.
The afternoon sessions were devoted to seeing how this has been concretely carried out in the lives of the saints, specifically the saints who lived and worked in the Lord's vineyard on this continent. Several bishops brought with them from their home dioceses exhibits to display the lives of local holy men and women who exemplified in their lives what it means to be missionary disciples of mercy — the mercy of God made incarnate in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead.
Photographer: COURTESY | Archbishop Wenski
Archbishop Thomas Wenski took this selfie of himself walking in procession, with other delegates, to the Basilica of Our Lady of Lourdes in Bogota the afternoon of Aug. 27.
