Kargador at Dawn

Kargador at Dawn
Work in the Vineyard

Monday, May 04, 2015

May is the Month of Compassion

Badaliyya Philippines
Cotabato City

May 2015

Dear Friends of the Badaliyya,

Our Badaliyya Prayer group dedicates the month of May 2015 to pray for PEACE and RECONCILIATION amidst the cruelties and extremism now raging in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world… Please join us in spirit as we pray for peace and reconciliation, particularly in the Holy Land and throughout the Middle East.

Our theme this month is "compassion" since it was so key to Fr. Massignon's understanding of the Badaliyya and substitution as a call to intercessory prayer, action and inter-religious relationship.

In his twenties, in 1908, Fr. Massignon had a profound experience of what he later described as "God breaking into his life" and as his "conversion experience". From this beginning he recognized the compassionate caring and prayer for him by others, including Charles de Foucauld and the Muslim Alussy family in Baghdad.

Deeply affected by his correspondence with Foucauld, his understanding of compassion became a center piece of his spirituality and a vital component of his experience of authentic relationship with God and others. As we explore the meaning of compassion in our lives, and pray with and for those suffering in our world, hear the words of Fr. Louis Massignon:

"As long as God leaves us absorbed in our own suffering we remain sterile, nailed to ourselves. As soon as compassion brings us beyond, to another's suffering other than our own, we enter into the science of compassion experientially, we discover wisdom in it; in the immortal company of all creatures purified by angelic and human trial we glimpse the joy of tomorrow through the pain of today".

Pax et Bonum!

Fr. Eliseo ‘Jun’ Mercado, OMI
May 2015
Cotabato City


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