A Center For Mercy > Mercy Training Center Prototype
Mercy Training Center Prototype
Every Man in this century needs a Mercy Training Center. The following is a description of the Mercy Training Center we helped put in place in Fortaleza, Brazil in April of 2005.
My Heart looks like a Mercy Training Center. The following is a prototype:
If you could take my Heart and hold it up in public it would look just like the Mercy Training Center in the north of Brazil. You must experience a Mercy Training Center to understand it as you must touch God’s Heart to understand Mercy. If the training center were a meal it would be indescribably delicious. For a few lines we will try to describe the indescribably delicious Mercy Training Center.
First the ingredients - 18 students with a big fat joyful “Fiat” written on everything asked of them, a house in the center of an area of a large city where there are rich and poor side by side, a room in the house for daily “Ragionamento Spiritual Conversations”, a chapel in the house for Adoration and Mass and prayer and praise, four hours a day to go out two by two to receive and reflect Mercy, and an eight foot by five foot billboard of the Mercy Jesus surprising the Lost Sheep. Now that’s Heaven on earth. Eight months of Heaven on earth. That’s what my Heart looks like.
The layout of the central meeting place for Ragionamento is as important as the layout of the inside of our Hearts. The students decorated the room as their Hearts desired. It is square just big enough for twenty to twenty-five listeners, seated in a circle, some on couches or chairs, some on the floor. Being able to see and hear everyone plainly while looking in their eyes is part of Ragionamento. When the students express themselves they do not talk to the professor. There is none. They talk to each other and therefore look around from one Heart to another.
On one wall are pictures and brief descriptions of the lives of the “Big Five” who are the Saints helping in Ragionamento. They are called the Big Five because they were all canonized on the same day of the same year. They are four Spaniards and an Italian, Theresa of Avila, Isadore Labrador, Francis Xavier, Ignatius of Loyola and the Italian Philip Neri. Why were they all canonized the same day? Study their lives and then ask your Heart and then read the last chapter of Search for the Beautiful Garden.
Another wall is filled with the huge painting of the Merciful Heart picking up the surprised sheep. All Ragionamento in the training center is built around that painting and what it signifies in Mercy-Evangelization. The Merciful Heart painting signifies Mercy-Evangelization. One day we hung a piece of material where you see the arm of Jesus holding the sheep. Then Danelle draped the “arm” over herself, the surprised sheep.
The other walls are filled with various pictures, hand made posters and other objects reminding our Hearts of the Mercy-Driven Life. Jean Paul II is there and Gregory XVI. A large wooden crucifix that we made from a Christ that we got in Mexico, the beams of the Cross from Costa Rica and love from our Hearts is in one corner. It comes down often during the eight months to help us in Mercy-Evangelization. A large piece of cardboard cut in the shape of a Home has the words of Ragionamento from Luke 1:45-47 painted on it.
When we all come together each day, sometimes several times, someone says the Heavenly word “Ragionamento” and we start. Someone asks a question or tells something that touched their Heart while going door-to-door. And we are off on another journey into the Heart of Jesus by way of our own Hearts.
Maybe your Heart does not skip a beat when you see the ingredients, but ours does. In the training center when we sing and pray there is reality intensified by the knowledge that in a few moments we will be going through the front gate and out to face a wounded world in Mercy combat… every day for eight months. When our Hearts speak in the Spiritual Conversations they are echoing experiences lived out in the last twenty-four hours.
This brings to Heart the visit of our Mercy friend Father Daniel Ange, a French priest. He came to visit the training center and shared with us some of his wonderful experiences from around the world. “Daniel, would you like to hear the Hearts of a few of the students?” “Oh, yes. That is why I am here.” was his immediate enthusiastic reply.
“Ragionamento”, I said, looking at the students seated in a tight circle around Daniel. When we say the “magical” word Ragionamento, it means, “Let’s dialog Heart to Heart in Spiritual Conversation.” Livia or Niouma or Lidiani starts off. I am not sure which one, they all look so much like the Heart of Jesus, with smiles that would convert a tree. She shares about a woman who asked us to talk to her son on drugs when we were on the square last night. Then, Jonas or Beth or Edgar shares passionately how in going door-to-door yesterday a person’s life was transformed by a Mercy hug.
After several Ragionamento testimonies Daniel expresses his surprise at the freshness of the sharing. “They go back again and again to visit people?” He asks. “Yes, they now visit five hundred families and meet new people almost every day.” And they pray the Rosary, memorize verses, sing the Liturgy of the hours, dance and laugh and cry and hope that somehow the multitudes who see them on the streets will be wooed into Jesus’ Heart of Mercy.
The subject of the Mercy Training Center? You guessed it, Mercy. God teaches us through us as we receive and reflect Mercy from the Heart of God in us. How do you talk only about Mercy for eight months? Come and Ragionamento with us so we can receive from you more Mercy and become the Heart of Jesus together.
After preparing the Heart each morning in Adoration and personal prayer and Mass, then it is time to carry Jesus in us out on the streets. This is the time for several hours of being kneaded by Heart-to-Heart combat. Afterwards we come together in the center of the training center which is like the Heart of Jesus and we do Ragionamento. We do not describe what we did. We speak from our Hearts about what happened in our Hearts and the Hearts of those we met. We pray, we laugh we cry and we become the Heart of Jesus.
Though there are many fun times in the training center, almost all conversation becomes Ragionamento even during the meals of beans and rice. We have beans and rice on six days a week and then on the seventh day we change and have rice and beans. We also have many other wonderful Brazilian foods which are given by the Divine Providence department of the Divine Mercy. Seeing God daily provide for the training center is part of the process of becoming the Heart of Jesus.
I hear someone asking, “How can they learn without a teacher?” The answer to this good question is also in your Heart but after looking for it there you can also read the part concerning “Creativity and Evangelization.” Basically what happens is that we go and meet people and from the encounters come questions which we work out together in Ragionamento. When we meet a real life problem then we have a reason to seek the answer. Usually one of us has already found the answer and shares it from his Heart to the others.
We go out with nothing but a desire to receive and reflect Mercy. Usually we have no literature or money or any material thing to attract people. We don’t even have the answers to many of the questions they ask. If you want to learn humility go door-to-door without literature or answers. I don’t even have the language. All we have is a Heart and that is what everyone is yearning to encounter. It is in Ragionamento and prayer that we find the answers together.
We have found the way we want to spend most of our time for perhaps the rest of our time here on earth. That is to set up and participate in Mercy Training Centers everywhere. You get the ingredients together and convince our spiritual authorities and yours to start a Mercy Training Center and we will come or send someone to come and learn Mercy Evangelization with you. Every diocese and Catholic Community needs at least one Mercy Training Center. Every Man in this century needs a Mercy Training Center.
Mercy Training Centers are part of the answer to changing the world. Training centers based on practical daily Mercy Evangelization for eight months to a year release Mercy like a healing balm on a world starving for love.
Every Man in this century needs a Mercy Training Center.