‘Mercy By The Minute’

St. Paul Inside the Walls presents Jubilee Year of Mercy videos on website

MADISON  Mercy can take a minute or even less — to receive it, to give it or, in some instances, to get a clearer understanding of it.

And it only takes a minute or two for Catholics in the Paterson Diocese and beyond to learn more about the infinite mercy of God — and about the universal Church’s Jubilee Year of Mercy — by watching one of several short videos in a new ongoing series, “Mercy by the Minute.” The videos show Bishop Serratelli and other faithful giving informal individual reflections about the Holy Year, various aspects of the Lord’s mercy or personal stories of forgiveness. Viewers can look at any or all the videos at www.insidethewalls.org, the website of St. Paul Inside the Walls: the Diocesan Center for Evangelization at Bayley-Ellard, which has been producing and posting them.

Each week, “Mercy by the Minute” presents a new one- to two-minute video that features a Catholic presenting mercy in miniature: a short and easy-to-understand meditation on mercy. St. Paul’s posted the first video by Father Paul Manning, diocesan vicar for evangelization and the center’s executive director, on Dec. 8, the day when Pope Francis officially opened the Jubilee Year of Mercy. The second episode presents Bishop Serratelli, who calls the Holy Year “very, very important, because it’s an extraordinary time to focus on one particular aspect of what our faith teaches and that aspect is the heart of the Gospel.”

The Bishop speaks about God’s mercy at the center of Luke’s Gospel, found in such parables as The Prodigal Son, The Lost Coin and The Lost Sheep.

“It’s all about the mercy of God. There are so many aspects of our faith, but when we concentrate on what’s essential, it makes the year overflow with grace,” says Bishop Serratelli, who concludes his video with the words of Jesus: “ ‘Be merciful as your Father is merciful’ — as God loves us and is merciful to us. When we realize His love for us, it becomes very easy to share in that mercy with others,” he said.

In another video, Father Pawel Tomczyk, a St. Paul’s faculty member, stands outside the center to speak about the Sacrament of Reconciliation. He recounts the passage in the Acts, when King Herod jails Peter for speaking about Jesus. An angel appears to the Apostle in a bright light. The shackles and chains fall to the ground. Then, the angel leads Peter out of the prison, the priest says.

“This is what the celebration of the Sacrament [of Reconciliation] is all about. It’s about losing our chains and setting us free, so we can be free to love other people,” Father Tomczyk says. “People do not come to Confession because maybe, down deep, they are fearful. But Jesus comes to you and to me today and says ‘Don’t be afraid.’ Perhaps it’s been quite a while since you’ve been to Confession. And maybe that is a good time to go back…and to tell Jesus, ‘Yes, I want to love you back and be in that loving relationship.’ If we only had that awareness about how much God loves us, we would not be afraid,” he said.

Presenting mercy from a more personal perspective is Deacon Thomas Gibbons of Our Lady of the Mountain Parish, Long Valley, who serves as assistant director of the diocesan Permanent Diaconate. He speaks about his life 37 years ago, when he was a successful man in his early 40s, who allowed his social drinking “to progress to an obsession.” With God’s mercy and the guidance of his pastor at the time, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and stopped drinking, he says.

“I reformed my life and became the man, the husband, the father and the employee I should have been all that time,” says Deacon Gibbons, who noted that he joined a more spiritually centered group, in addition to AA. “This group restructured my spirituality. I developed a new relationship with God. I learned how to communicate with God. [Later], I became a deacon,” he says.

Other “Mercy by the Minute” videos available feature a Franciscan priest and a layman, who provided music for St. Paul’s Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults retreat. This week’s episode spotlights Monique Caron, co-minister to young adults, ages 23-39 at St. Paul’s. Upcoming episodes will feature other Catholics, such as Daniel Ferrari, Caron’s co-minister. These shorts have been designed to attract the attention of young people, who spend considerable time online and might share this faith-based content on social media websites, such as FaceBook, said Caitlin Fitzgerald, St. Paul’s communications and information coordinator, who produced the videos.

“These videos are casual presentations that show regular Catholics, who are easily accessible and easily understandable,” Fitzgerald said.

The first video in the series shows Father Manning, giving an overview of the Jubilee Year of Mercy. Pope Francis hopes that, during this Holy Year, “the Church and all her believers will experience the Lord’s mercy in their own lives, will give witness in their belief in the Lord’s mercy by being joyful and vocal Christians and will enact that mercy through the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy,” the priest says, sitting in his office at St. Paul’s.

“We can become focused on our weaknesses, our flaws, our sinfulness or on our failure to live the Christian life the way we want to and forget that the Father is merciful toward us and has given us the loving heart of Jesus for us to be in relationship with Him,” Father Manning says. “I think that it [the Jubilee Year of Mercy] is important, because it reminds us that we need mercy and have we got it.”

[To view the videos, go to insidethewalls.org, then to “Mercy by the Minute” on the Year of Mercy page.]