The Works of Mercy or Acts of Mercy are actions and practices which Christianity, in general, expects all believers to perform, and are a means of grace, which aid in sanctification.
The Works of Mercy have been traditionally divided into two categories, with seven elements each: the Corporal Works of Mercy, which concern the material needs of others, and the Spiritual Works of Mercy, which concern the spiritual needs of others.
These duties (e.g., feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless) are enjoined by many Christian churches on their adherents, including Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, Lutheranism, the Anglican Communion, and Methodism.
Beginning in the 20th century, the Roman Catholic tradition saw an extension of the framework for the traditional Works of Mercy with the establishment of the devotion to Divine Mercy and encyclicals such as Dives in Misericordia.
Read more about Works Of Mercy: Biblical Basis, Methodism
Famous quotes containing the words works of, works and/or mercy:
“We thus worked our way up this river, gradually adjusting our thoughts to novelties, beholding from its placid bosom a new nature and new works of men, and, as it were with increasing confidence, finding nature still habitable, genial, and propitious to us; not following any beaten path, but the windings of the river, as ever the nearest way for us. Fortunately, we had no business in this country.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Piety practised in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendour of beneficence.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)