Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy

Writing with a wisdom and compassion informed by her own vulnerabilities, Mary Pezzulo helps us to recognize need when we see it, and then shows us how to apply the Christian Works of Mercy, one circumstance at a time. In a world that seems filled with new normals, strange challenges, and more people than ever carrying the heavy weights of illness, poverty, loneliness, displacement, and disillusionment, we may all find ourselves stumbling into grace and feeling ill-equipped as we do. This book is the helpful guide we need to stay focused on Christ, live, and serve within a world that is very different from the one most of us were born into.

Elizabeth Scalia

Editor-at-large

Word on Fire Catholic Ministries

Author of Strange Gods

"In Stumbling into Grace, Mary Pezzulo invites you into a robust spiritual and theological initiation into each corporal and spiritual work of mercy. Pezzulo’s gift as a writer is to educate through bold narrative, and after reading this book you’ll never think about giving a drink to the thirsty or instructing the ignorant in quite the same ways. This is an excellent resource for both committed and searching Catholics who want to live out their faith through the incarnate mercy of Jesus Christ. Pezzulo is a provocative and trustworthy guide for just such an adventure."

Timothy P. O’Malley

Director of McGrath Theology Online

McGrath Institute for Church Life

University of Notre Dame

So many books on spirituality seem written from a distance, usually from on high, or from the vantage point of suffering endured but comfortably now in the past. Mary Pezzulo’s writing is, blessedly, nothing like that; it sings with the immediacy of what Johannes Metz called the ‘painful experiment of living.’ We need more work like hers, rooted not just in the ideals of our faith tradition but in the lived experience of Catholic women, to accompany us on the spiritual adventure of being human. This book itself is a work of mercy.

Jessica Mesman

Associate editor of The Christian Century

Author of Love and Salt

A deeply personal, raw encounter with the Works of Mercy. Mary Pezzulo’s insights are not only emotionally moving and inspirational, they are also intricately relatable and practical for most everyone’s everyday life.

Fr. Casey Cole, O.F.M.

Author of Called: What Happens after Saying Yes to God

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, DC, and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

____________________________________

© 2021 by Mary Pezzulo

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews, without written permission from Ave Maria Press®, Inc., P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556, 1-800-282-1865.

Founded in 1865, Ave Maria Press is a ministry of the United States Province of Holy Cross.

www.avemariapress.com

Paperback: ISBN-13 978-1-64680-063-6

E-book: ISBN-13 978-1-64680-064-3

Cover image © peeterv / iStock / Getty Images Plus.

Cover and text design by Samantha Watson.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pezzulo, Mary, author.

Title: Stumbling into grace : how we meet God in tiny works of mercy / Mary

  Pezzulo.

Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : Ave Maria Press, [2021] | Summary: "In

  this book, the author instructs readers on living the works of mercy

  while describing their redeeming power during tumultuous periods of her

  own life"-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020055001 (print) | LCCN 2020055002 (ebook) | ISBN

  9781646800636 (paperback) | ISBN 9781646800643 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Corporal works of mercy. | Spiritual works of mercy. |

  Christian life--Catholic authors.

Classification: LCC BV4647.M4 P49 2021 (print) | LCC BV4647.M4 (ebook) |

  DDC 248.4/82--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055001

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055002

This book is lovingly dedicated to the volunteers at the Friendship Room in Steubenville, Ohio, and to everyone else who has helped me find Christ when I was in darkness.

Contents

Introduction

Feed the Hungry

Instruct the Ignorant

Give Drink to the Thirsty

Counsel the Doubtful

Clothe the Naked

Admonish the Sinner

Shelter the Homeless

Bear Wrongs Patiently

Visit the Sick

Forgive Offenses

Visit the Imprisoned/Ransom the Captive

Comfort the Afflicted

Bury the Dead

Pray for the Living and the Dead

Appendix: List of Charities

Introduction

Listening to the gospel reading at Mass one day, I realized I hadn’t failed after all. I’d felt like a failure for a long, long time. I thought I had failed at everything I set out to do.

I had come to Steubenville, Ohio, to study for a master’s degree in philosophy at Franciscan University. My undergraduate degree—from a secular college in the town where I grew up—was in English with a concentration in writing, but I felt I didn’t have anything to write about. I wanted to learn something worth writing on. Franciscan University had such a strong reputation for holiness and orthodoxy in the circles where I dwelled at the time, so I was sure I could learn all there was to know there. With this master’s degree I’d be a professor and a bioethicist and write all kinds of compelling things to bring the enemies of the Church to their knees. I was full of fire, passion, and naiveté; I was going to learn all there was to learn to teach people, save lives, and win souls for Christ. All I had to do was stay the course and study hard, and God would show me the way.

Of course, I couldn’t stay the course. And there I was fourteen years later, still in Steubenville. The gospel reading at Mass that day was from Matthew 11. Jesus asks the crowd about his cousin John, What did you go out to the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind? (v. 7).

Steubenville had been nothing but desert for me—a dry and barren wilderness. First, I had a series of medical emergencies and surgeries, combined with some nastiness that ended with me cutting ties with most of the community in which I grew up. Then I met Michael, and we fell in love. We married in the big baroque Catholic church downtown. My health got worse and worse until I was finally diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a chronic neurological illness causing nerve pain, fatigue, anxiety, and digestive issues. I couldn’t finish school no matter how hard I tried because of the extreme fatigue caused by my illness. Michael had to drop out of school to take care of me.

I had some embarrassing and even traumatic experiences with a priest and some students at Franciscan University, which made it feel awkward even to be on campus. Then I got pregnant unexpectedly, and our daughter was born. We found ourselves unemployed, living in a slum apartment on a very bad street in a bad part of town, with no job prospects, no friends, and no hope. We were trapped.

In the gospel, Jesus kept up his questioning: Then what did you go out to see? Someone dressed in fine clothing? Those who wear fine clothing are in royal palaces (Mt 11:8).

I was wearing fine clothing, by my standards, just then. I had sent away for a gently used new outfit and a brand-new scarf to wear to church. Nice clothing was a pleasant change in our lives, as for years we’d had nothing nice to wear. I felt that I had seen nothing nice at all. The city of Steubenville is a grim, cruel, lonely place in so many ways. I felt that I’d seen no beauty for more than a decade. And yet I had. I had seen glimpses of the most glorious beauty—the kind of beauty you don’t see clearly unless you’ve been trapped in ugliness for a long, long time.

I had seen beauty that time somebody helped us. The time I got a chance to help somebody, and for a change I’d taken it, instead of missing the opportunity as I usually do. I’d seen beauty in the friends I’d met downtown at a little hospitality house called the Friendship Room, where the poor are welcomed, and in the way those people welcomed me.

Again Jesus asked, Then why did you go out? To see a prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written: ‘Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way before you’ (Mt 11:9–10).

A prophet is a mouthpiece. A prophet is someone who tells you what God has to say, who shows you the things that God wants you to see.

What have I seen since I’ve been here? I’ve been through some cruel things that would make you feel as though the love of God wasn’t real at all. But I’ve also received mercy through the hands of other people, and that mercy showed me that the love of God is real. I’ve seen so many places that lacked love—places where God was shut out in favor of selfishness, including in my own heart. I’ve seen so many terrible injustices I hadn’t known existed before.

I have also seen people who, in the face of cruel injustice, tried hard to help others. I’ve seen how one little spark of kindness can dispel a whole world of darkness. And I’ve wanted, more than anything, to be a part of that light. I have learned so much about darkness and how light can push it back. I have so many ideas about how to help people and how to make a difference now that I’ve seen what needs there really are. I didn’t have any idea before.

When I started my blog at Patheos, I didn’t expect to speak about poverty and abuse so often, but now that’s what I’m known for. And I have so many stories about how people have fought back to help the poor and the abused, the people our social structures, systems, and networks tend not to see or, worse, deem worthless.

I realized that day as I listened to the gospel that I have discovered the mercy of God in the very way he meant it to be discovered—through the mercy of people. I’ve found God again and again in my own life when I’ve been helped and when I’ve been able to help other people.

After Mass, I went outside into the hazy late evening, which had already grown dark. The mist was rising off of the noxious, polluted Ohio River, and the near-perpetual December rain was falling. The whole world was wet, gloomy, and cold, but I felt warm.

I had come out to this wilderness to learn about God so that I could teach others. I tried to learn about God from textbooks and teachers. I dropped out of school due to sickness and was in darkness for a long, long time. But along the way, I learned about God. I learned about God in the Works of Mercy. I discovered what I should have known all along—that God comes to us through others when they care for us, and that we bring God to others when we care for them. I stumbled into the grace of understanding that of all the ways God can choose to come to us in the pain and suffering of our day-to-day lives, he loves most of all to come to us through people.

I found the thing I came out to see after all. I wanted to see the living God, and I found God living in us, with us. Emmanuel, God with us, is here in the dark, ugly mist and the cruelty of Steubenville, Ohio. He is here in the people who need our help: "For I was hungry and you gave me food,