New Years Day. Cursillo Winter Retreat at Christ the King Retreat Center. The Year of Mercy. This year, those three ideas came together for the "Perfect Storm," albeit it the "Perfect Retreat" this year for the Cursillo Community. New Years Day was on a Friday this year, which is the day we start the Cursillo Winter Retreat which is held at Christ the King Retreat Center.

The Theme for this year was Sowing Seeds of Mercy. Fr. Tony Dummer started us off with his talk, "Mercy: The Life-style of Jesus." Mmmm, that alone is a good nugget to medi-tate on for the year. Mercy was/is the lifestyle of Jesus.

Then Fr. Dummer challenged us with Luke 6:36 "Be merciful as your Father in Heaven is merciful."

He dwelt on how the image of God as a "punishing" God is an illusion. When we study the life of Jesus, we see for-giveness, healing, and restoration. He pointed out that there is a difference between ANGER and HATRED. Anger is simply an emotional response to a given situation and is pre-sent in God and Jesus as the visible image of God. Hatred, on the other hand, is brooding over anger and making deci-sions to resent, react, and relish the hurt and sadness brought about by the injury - real or perceived - toward the one who has harmed us.

Sr. Brenda Rose Szegedy talked of "Liberating Mercy". She talked of how liberating forgiveness is for us. For-giveness is not a benefit for the other person, but for our-selves. When we look at another through God's eyes, we see compassion, love, and look for the goodness in that person. Then we sense God looking at us with compassion, love, and the goodness God wants to bring out in us.

Sister Brenda Rose brought out that to be a person without mercy is to be a person without an honest aware-ness of our own humanity. "Each day, God invites you into the Galilee of human need," she reminded us.

Fr. James Deegan spoke to us of "Heartfelt Mercy." His first quote was from Isaiah 58:6-9 and he reiterated to us the benefits of mercy:

Your wounds are healed.

Your light will shine.

God will hear your cry.

What you give you will receive in abundance.

I think I will work on sowing seeds of mercy this year. Those promises of the Harvest seem pretty good to me.

Stu Walker