Tender Mercy on the World’s Margins: Calls of the XXII General Chapter
The core of Mt is constructed around five scenes of Jesus teaching alternating with five passages of Jesus in action. Chapters 8 and 9 summarize Jesus’ ministry in Galilee and are the action follow-up to the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus practices what he has preached by teaching, healing, and forgiving. He repeatedly builds bridges and breaks social boundaries to serve those on the margins. In these chapters, he ministers to lepers, Roman soldiers, tax collectors, sinners, the hemorrhagic and the deceased, all of which were taboo in his culture.
As a Marist, it’s difficult to read this passage and not think of the Calls of the XXII General Chapter. A General Chapter is an assembly occurring every eight years, in which delegates from all over the Marist world gather to elect a Superior General and General Council and establish a vision to guide the Institute over the course of their term. The last Marist General Chapter, the 22nd in our history, was held outside Medellín in 2017. The vision that the delegates formulated took the form five “calls.” The second, third, and fourth calls relate especially to this passage from Mt:
We are called to be the face and hands of your tender mercy.
We are called to inspire our creativity to be bridge-builders.
We are called to journey with children and young people living at the world’s margins.
These Calls remind us that the Marist Charism, like all true charisms, is a specific style of living out the Gospel. They ask us to take the example of what Jesus did two thousand years ago and put it into practice in our own time and culture.
