By Marnie McAllister, Record Editor
The Catholic Church around the world is nearly halfway through the Holy Year of Mercy, and here in the Archdiocese of Louisville there are several new opportunities to engage in the jubilee year.
Deacon Lucio Caruso, who serves on a committee coordinating mercy initiatives in the archdiocese, said that the local observance has focused so far on the interior life of the church. Plans for the latter half of the year, he said, tend to look outward.
“We were looking within our own church community and those who left it,” noted Deacon Lucio of the year’s first half, when the archdiocese invited people who had left the church to reconnect and share their concerns through the Catholic Connection. “Now, we’re looking externally, in light of our life within the world and how we bring the mercy of God into the reality of everyday life.”
Deacon Caruso, who shared the latest plans for the Year of Mercy during an interview last week, urged Catholics to take part in these jubilee events as a way to feel fulfilled.
Showing mercy to someone else “is a source of the deepest joy,” he said. “The reason for that is, we are being what we are created to be. We were created to move out of ourselves. It’s the very nature of God.”
Opportunities to show mercy to others in this archdiocese abound, he added. And the next mercy initiative — which begins this month — will encourage it explicitly.
- In the next few weeks, “Mercy Passports” will be available around the archdiocese. These passport-like booklets will encourage people to try the 14 spiritual and corporal works of mercy and to record their efforts. The booklet includes suggestions and examples of the works of mercy.The Archdiocese of Louisville is also hoping people will record their works on its website, www.archlou.org/worksmercy, so a tally of all the merciful deeds around the archdiocese can be made by the end of the jubilee year. The jubilee, which began in 2015 with the feast of the Immaculate Conception Dec. 8, will end on the feast of Christ the King on Nov. 20.
More information about the “Mercy Passport” will be featured in next week’s edition of The Record.
- This fall, on Oct. 22, the archdiocese is planning a Life Conference that will address a range of issues that affect human dignity — from outreach to refugees and victims of trafficking and addressing violence in the community to ending abortion and the death penalty, said Deacon Caruso.“This conference will be a neat way to come together and to celebrate and be aware of all the facets of life,” he said. “People don’t realize the connection between poverty and abortion.
“The church is often polarized on these issues,” he added. “There’s no room for that.”
Registration and more information will be available in early summer.
- A few days later, on Oct. 27, the archdiocese will host a free performance of “Psalms Reborn” by Music Serving the World Ministries at the Cathedral of the Assumption. More details about this event will be available in the fall.
- Holy Doors around the archdiocese, which opened in December, will continue to be available throughout the remainder of the Year of Mercy.Catholics are encouraged to make a pilgrimage to one of nearly two dozen local churches that have designated Holy Doors, including the Cathedral of the Assumption and the Basilica of St. Joseph Proto-cathedral in Bardstown, Ky.
- While the formal Catholic Connection campaign to actively invite and meet with those interested in returning to the church has ended, the church continues to invite former Catholics to reconnect on an individual basis at one of more than 100 parishes in the archdiocese or by visiting www.archlou.org/welcome-back.
The Record is also offering a one-year subscription to those who may be interested in returning to the church but might not be ready to register at a parish.
(Registered parishioners receive The Record automatically.) Visit therecordnewspaper.org/subscribe and click on Catholic Connection.
More information on the Jubilee Year of Mercy and these initiatives is available at www.archlou.org/year-of-mercy.
