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:
“Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most Oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature, in which Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and eclipse, there? The works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity of nature. The AEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.”
—Bible: New Testament, Galatians 2:15-16.
“Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)