Misericors App fosters Works of Mercy for Year of Mercy

Check out this screen shot from the mobile app, Misericors, and then take a look at this photo from the Boston Globe news story  about high school boys engaging in a dramatic corporal work of mercy. Does this not melt your heart?!

Photo: THOMAS FARRAGHER/GLOBE STAFF – Please read his excellent story here about the Roxbury Latin School students who bury the dead when no one else is there to. http://ow.ly/XRtHZ

That’s a big part of what the Year of Mercy is all about. Putting faith (in this case, works of love/mercy) into action. For the Year Of Mercy or for Lent, we are impressed with the way people have stepped up to the challenge of engaging in Works of Mercy. It isn’t enough to know what they are, we need to live them, Pope Francis explains. That dramatic photo highlights why we feature a new app designed to help foster intelligent, Gospel-based responses to the call of the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy–

Misericors (Free) Apple, Android.

The straightforward aim with this app: getting users to do works of mercy in their daily lives, just like these fine young men have been challenged to do at Roxbury Latin School wherein they bury the dead when no one else is there to.

Here’s how Misericors works:
After signing in, we are immediately hit with a listing of Spiritual Works of Mercy and Corporal Works of Mercy (seen in the screen shot above). Several examples are revealed under each work. That way we learn what the Church teaches about these types of service of love to others.

We are then encouraged to choose an act of mercy and commit to doing it. Conscious of the youthful audience, the app offers a means of social engagement whereby users post specific acts of mercy they performed. This is a wall populated by a world-wide audience with a corresponding audience in the user’s language. On this wall, for example, a user may post under clothe the naked...”I sorted my clothes and donated a bunch to the thrift store.” Under comfort the afflicted...”I comforted someone whose dog is dying.” What a creative way to share fresh ideas and encourage one another!

The app keeps track of users’ deeds so they can see their personal progress in developing a habit of conscientiously looking for opportunities to perform works of mercy (love).

The Church in Poland created Misericors a couple months ago and gave it to the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization as a resource to help people live out the Jubilee Year of Mercy. As reported, it was a “birthday gift” for Pope Francis. Sweet gift!

Considering that the popular 20th century devotion to Divine Mercy is rooted in Poland (with the revelation to St. Faustina), the combination of this Year of Mercy app specially designed to work in conjunction with World Youth Day in Poland is irresistible. Although it is Polish-based, Misericors automatically opened up in English after a United States download. Available in English, Polish, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian.