But this year, another word seems to have surfaced and have come into prominence, along with the traditional “Merry Christmas”.
With the opening of the Year of Mercy on the 8th December, the word “mercy” has generated other connected terms like “Door of Mercy” and “works of mercy” and also the theme of the year “Merciful like the Father”.
But the word “mercy” seems to have dropped out of use in our everyday language. It seems to be out of fashion.
It seems to be restricted to Church language in the form of prayers and preaching.
But now the word “mercy” is brought up into prominence and the Pope, echoing his predecessors, declared the centrality of mercy in the Church’s mission and message.
Along with that, and among other things, is the re-emphasis of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
The understanding of mercy has its foundation in the opening lines of Psalm 50 – Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness, in your compassion blot out my offence.
So mercy is expressed in two forms – kindness and compassion.
Kindness is an act of charity to those in need and compassion is sharing in the suffering of others.
And that’s what we saw in the gospel account of what is commonly known as “The Visitation”.
The gospel account began by saying that Mary set out at that time and went as quickly as she could to a town in the hill country of Judah to visit her cousin Elizabeth.
Certainly it was not a casual or ordinary event. Mary has just conceived Jesus in her womb and she had her own worries and anxieties to handle.
It was certainly not a time to go travelling over the country side.
But having known that her cousin Elizabeth was already in her sixth month of pregnancy, Mary knew that she must be there for her.
It was a call to an act of mercy – to show kindness to Elizabeth in her time of need, and to share in her joy and anxiety of pregnancy.
The gospel passage reminds us that there is always something that we can give, even if it is only kindness and compassion. (Anne Frank)
Because life’s most persistent and urgent question is: “What are you doing for others?” (Martin Luther King Jr)
Some time ago, there was this rather touching and inspiring article in the papers.
A single mother Noriza A. Mansor gets only one day off a week from her job as a bedsheet promoter.
Most would use that day to rest, but she spends it looking after an old man she met by chance as he stood in a Toa Payoh supermarket soiled by his faeces.
Noriza, 49, made headlines last October when she stepped forward to help Tan Soy Yong, 76, who had soiled himself while buying groce¬ries with his wife, who was in a wheelchair.
Others had recoiled from the old man and his stench. However, Noriza not only bought him new shorts but even knelt to wipe the dried faeces off his legs – an act which moved a bystander to tears.
Since that day, she has made it a point to visit Tan for at least six hours a week at his three-room flat in Potong Pasir.
Tan has lived there alone since the start of the year when his wife, Lee Bee Yian, also 76, was hospita¬lised for cancer.
During her visits, Noriza cleans up Tan, who cannot control his bowels, and washes his soiled laundry. She also mops the floor and tidies up the flat while chatting with him in a mix of Malay and Hokkien.
Some days, she will accompany him to visit his wife in hospital.
On other days, she will take him out in his wheelchair to the hawker centre to eat his favourite wonton noodles.
“I only wish I could see him more often. Sometimes if I finish work at 8pm, I will go to see him. But I don’t always have the time,” said Noriza.
She often works 12 hours a day, taking home around S$2,000 a month. She has three sons and two daughters aged 11 to 26. Four of them still live with her.
Yet she has no qualms about ma¬¬king time for the elderly couple. “In my life, I am never tired,” she said.
Tan told her he has a son and a daughter but Noriza said that according to social workers, the couple have no children.
Noriza believes Tan was sent into her life by God, as she lost her pa¬rents when she was 21.
Her father succumbed to cancer and her mother wasted away in depression eight months later.
She said she treated the couple as “my own father and mother”.
Tan once asked her if she had a passport. “I said yes. He said when his wife is discharged, we can go on holiday together as a family.”
She smiled wistfully. “I know this kind of thing is very hard with their conditions. But of course I told him we would.”
Certainly that was a very touching and remarkable act of kindness and charity.
It is said that kindness goes a long way. But where does it go to?
Let us remember that every act of kindness, every act of compassion, every act of mercy, is a stepping stone towards heaven.
Every corporal and spiritual work of mercy is to make us be merciful, just as the Father is merciful.
May this Christmas be a “Merry Christmas” for us. And may this Christmas also be a “Merciful Christmas” for us as we give to others the gifts of kindness and compassion.
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