Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, D.D., closed the recently concluded Third Philippine Conference on New Evangelization (PCNE 3) by sending the participants for a mission to proclaim the merciful God in word and deed.
On the last day of PCNE 3 held at the University of Santo Tomas Quadricentennial Pavilion, Cardinal Tagle delivered his talk, “Missionaries of Mercy”, where he emphasized two aspects of the mission of mercy that we have received from Jesus, “the healing of betrayal through the gift of self” and “mercy as binding and loosing.”
According to him, the “throw- away culture” is a form of betrayal. He said that, when we throw away food, time and values, we consider them useless. We throw away even persons by abusing and by not respecting them. In a culture of betrayal, he said we need to restore the sense of gift as an act of mercy.
“Betrayal can be healed when we restore the sense of gift. We are being sent as missionaries of mercy by restoring that, making the Eucharist as our lifestyle,” Cardinal Tagle said.
The second point that Cardinal Tagle highlighted is “mercy as binding and loosing.” He appealed to help bind or restore broken relationships and to untie the knots that represent the problems and instances that blocked the minds and the hearts of the people to be merciful and compassionate toward others.
“Tulungan po natin, as acts of mercy. ’Yung napatid, let us bind together. At ’yung nagkabuhol-buhol, tulungan natin makahanap ng kalayaan,” Cardinal Tagle said.
He stressed that we are all missionaries of Jesus Christ, and being a missionary is both a privilege and a big responsibility. As Jesus said in John 20:21 “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” we are called to pattern our missionary life the way He fulfilled the mission He received from the Father. To do this, we have to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit.
The cardinal’s message was clear. Jesus was sent to be the living presence of God’s mercy. He was sent to love and save the people, not to condemn them. So, as missionaries of mercy, like Jesus, we are being called to heal betrayal by giving ourselves as gifts and to help bind broken relationships and untie the knots of indifference that hinders people to do acts of mercy. As missionaries of Jesus, we are missionaries of mercy, the living sign of God’s love to us all.
PCNE 3 is a three-day conference on evangelization held from July 15 to 17. With the theme “Awa, Unawa, Gawa: The Filipino Experience of Mercy”, PCNE 3 aimed at mining the richness of God’s mercy and the trinkets of our Filipino culture. It was attended by more than 5,000 participants from all over the Philippines.
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