In his care for imprisoned slaves, St. Martin de Porres reached out to the most outcast and rejected people of his society.

Martin grew up in the humblest of circumstances in 16th century Lima. He joined a Dominican monastery, and wanted to become a foreign missionary. He was not allowed to leave the monastery, so he became a missionary in his own city.

He established an orphanage and hospital for abandoned children, and reached out to care for slaves who were taken from Africa and being unloaded in Peru after a miserable journey.

He went into the city to care for the sick. At times, the food he gave out seemed to increase miraculously—he fed 160 people every day—and his help led to surprising cures and healings.

To read more of the life of St. Martin de Porres, including the supernatural signs that accompanied his prayer (once, the kneeler he was praying upon burst into flames), follow this link.

An Offering of Gifts

By Abigail Braun ‘05

In my second year of graduate school, I was invited to help with the Easter Mass in a correctional institute. I agreed, despite being exhausted from the countless hours I’d just spent working on Holy Week liturgies, sensing that the invitation was coming not only from my supervisor but also from God, who still had something to teach me that Easter.

The Mass was celebrated by the archbishop in the prison chapel and was both simple and profound. I was moved by the humility and courage of the eight incarcerated men who entered into the waters of Baptism, allowing the light of Christ to shine through what was surely a dark place their lives.

What struck me most was the offering of the gifts. As the gifts were being prepared, a collection basket was passed through the congregation, just as it is passed in our own parishes. The difference was what the basket contained: a bar of soap, a pen, a cigarette. These men didn’t have money, yet they were offering up the few small luxuries that they were allowed. They were giving all that they had to give.

I still think of that experience whenever my hands touch a collection basket. And as I return once again to the season of Lent, contemplating anew what I am being asked to give up or give over, I’m pondering how the love and generosity I witnessed in prison all those years ago is still calling me to deeper conversion. I feel Jesus gently reminding me, “Give everything. Give until it hurts. Give, because all that you have is a gift from God and it never really belonged to you in the first place.”

This, I think, is precisely what the Year of Mercy is about. We who have experienced the abundant goodness and mercy of God, who loves us most deeply in the very places where we are most broken and limited, are sent forth to share that mercy with others.

You might say that I performed a corporal work of mercy that Easter Sunday: visiting the imprisoned. It feels more honest to say that I participated in an experience of mercy, the kind that Pope Francis speaks of when he says, “Mercy is the force that reawakens us to new life and instills in us the courage to look to the future with hope.”

I showed up to prison tired and weary, and I left reawakened by a force that was not of my own making. I pray that in this Lent and this Year of Mercy, God might reawaken me to new life once again, resurrecting all that is lost and defeated and broken in me. Chances are, it will happen in the unlikely places where I dare to step outside my comfort zone and encounter those who are different than me and yet not so different after all.