Father Kevin’s Posts

Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
The diocese recently announced the 1,000,000 Acts of Mercy Challenge. Bishop Parkes is challenging everyone in
the five counties of the Diocese to renew their understanding of the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy and
then together complete one million works of mercy by Advent 2025.
What’s an act of mercy? Perhaps you’ll recall the corporal works of mercy: feed the hungry, give drink to the
thirsty, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned, bury the dead, give alms to the poor. And the
spiritual works of mercy: counsel the doubtful, instructing the ignorant, admonishing the sinner, comforting the
sorrowful, forgiving injuries, bearing wrongs patiently, praying for the living and the dead.
Can the goal be reached? Easily. We did a rough sum of the acts of mercy we expect to perform hereat St. Anne
as part of our regular ministries.
· Giving ~400 families food each week (400X 52) …20,800
· Taking communion and visiting the sick… 3,500 (Our Eucharistic Ministers recorded 3,541 visits in 2024)
· Teaching the faith to our children (30 weeks X 300 children) … 9,000
Addin St. Vincent de Paul, all our prayer groups, and the bereavement ministry and we’re easily over 35,000 acts
of mercy. Once we include all the individual things you and I do, that number will grow even more.
So, is this just a bookkeeping exercise? Hopefully not! Yes, the diocese is expecting us to participate and that
means going to their website and recording what is done. But there is an opportunity here and I hope we’ll take
advantage of it in at least two ways.
First, logging our individual and groups acts of mercy will raise our awareness of what we already do. Before
reading this article, would you have expected St. Anne to be doing 35,000 acts of mercy each year? Once
everyone records their individual works, we may be wonderfully surprised.
More importantly, this challenge can spur us to do even more. As you look at the 14 works of mercy, perhaps you
notice something that you could do and yet do not. Who knows where that opportunity might lead if we accept it.
I hope you will be willing to help us out and log the acts of mercy you do individually or as part of a parish ministry.
Here’s a few quick things to keep in mind.
· The office will log everything related to the homebound ministry, food pantry, and Faith
Formation program
· For everything else, go to https://www.dosp.org/jubilee2025/mercychallenge/
challenge form/ to fill out the short form

Born into an ancient noble Hungarian family, he studied agriculture, chemistry, physics, philosophy,
literature, music, and medicine at the University of Vienna, graduating with a medical degree in 1900.
Twoyears later, Ladislao opened a private 25-bed hospital in Kittsee, Austria. He worked there as a
general practitioner, and when he had sufficient staff, specialized as a surgeon and eye doctor. During World War I
the floodof injured soldiers required him to expand the hospital to 120 beds. In 1915 Ladislao inherited the castle
of Körmend, Hungary, and with it the family nameStrattman and the title of Prince. In 1920 he moved his family to
the castle and turned one wing into a hospital specializing in eye diseases.
Dr. Ladislao never turned away a patient because they could not pay and provided funds to the destitute. He
treated all, kept them in the hospital as long as necessary, gave away medications, accepted what patients would
pay whentheywould,never asking for afeefromanyone, asking only thatthey pray an Our Father for him.He
prayed over each patient before working onthem, knew that his skills were simply God working through his
hands, and used his family fortune to help the poor. Pope St. John Paul II beatified Ladislao on March 23, 2003.