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:
“The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you’re weary or a stool
To stumble over and vex you ... “curse that stool!”
Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not,
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!
This hurts most, this ... that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute..”
—Edmund Burke (1729–97)
“For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face;
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)