Another's suffering

Mercy is Goodness confronting misery.

When another is suffering, do not simply say "Offer it up." This trite saying is often construed as "Stuff it. I don't want to hear about it."

You cannot know what he suffers.  No two people experience the same situation the same way.  Each event is met in a particular moment of that soul's journey; what can be accepted joyfully by one may be the last crushing blow to another.  This difference is partly one of exterior circumstances, but most acutely of the interior ones.  A soul that is already off kilter can be dealt a death blow by something that hardly tickles another.

Empathy can be helpful for the empathizer, because it helps you to not judge the other harshly. If you have gone through something similar, it is easier for you to react well.  However it is not necessary to the sufferer that you have empathy.  The sufferer needs you to understand what they need, not what they feel.  They need help loving Christ in their pain.  They need help accepting reality.  They need your mercy.  What they need most of all is for you to not judge them in their pain.

Possess your life

Possession of something means having control of it.  How little of our life we possess!  For we have no control over the past, nor the future.  The only piece of our lives we possess is the present moment.  This is why we must take each moment, live it to the full for God, and then let it go in order to grasp the next.  Your will can only act in the present; make use of it!

Reality

How much anguish we experience when we do not accept reality.  Consider what is upsetting you in your life right now: do you accept it as God's will, or are you rejecting it?  You can only move forward and find peace if you accept that what is, is.  Perhaps it is a situation which can or will change, perhaps it is something that is here forever.  Either way, the first step to inner peace is acceptance.  God is real; if you do not live in reality, He cannot help you. God is in the present; if you are not living in the present moment, He cannot help you.  It is in the present moment, and present circumstances that God's grace is seeking you.  If you are not there accepting, it will pass you by.  Do not waste your energy wishing a world that doesn't exist.

Friendship

Your friendships are always deepened by shared experiences.  In fact, many friendships are formed because of these mutual understandings.  Christ wishes to be our very dearest friend; why then does it surprise you that you encounter suffering? He is sharing with you His deepest experience.  Do not be afraid to enter that suffering and go deeper in your friendship with Him.  He will also share with you His resurrection.

Your role

When He calls you to your vocation, He is calling you to a particular piece of Himself.  For Mother Theresa, it was His call of thirst on the Cross.  She was both to satiate and to experience that thirst.  Ask God what He is asking you to live with Him; it will help to make sense of the trials that He sends your way.

"If we consecrate ourselves to Mary, then when we die, we won't get to appear before God clothed with the merits of our prayers and good works.  In fact, we'll have to appear before God with empty hands, because we will have given all our merits to Mary."  --Fr. Gaitley (33 Days to Morning Glory p.39)

What a relief! To stand before God, bare; to be accepted into His fold as His child because He recognizes our Mother, Mary, who will claim us as her own.  She will, in exchange for our gift of our everything, give us her everything.  Rather than our pathetic accumulation of prayers and merits, the merit of her sinless life will be our ticket to heaven.  Give her your all, and she will give you her Son.

Tax collector's prayer

Luke 18:13

"God, be merciful to me, a sinner."

A priest once taught me this very simple and short Act of Contrition: "Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner."  Though every priest in the confessional has accepted it, and it suits my poor memory very well, I've always wondered how something so short can be substituted for the long and seemingly more complete Act of Contrition.

Now I have my answer.

In Luke, Jesus tells the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector praying in the temple.  It is the Tax Collector, saying "God be merciful to me, a sinner" with true contrition who goes home justified.