Choose one work and bind yourself to it with a time and a place, because charity that stays general stays undone. A weekly two hours at a food pantry or soup kitchen; a monthly visit through the parish to a nursing home, a hospital or a prison ministry; a standing commitment to attend the funerals of parishioners who would otherwise be buried alone; a spare room or a coat given away. Do the work in person wherever you can, and learn the name of the person you serve; the corporal works are corporal precisely because presence is part of the gift. Give from your substance and not only from your surplus. Bring the children into it, at their own level, so that they learn it as ordinary. Join the work to prayer before and after, so that it does not decay into philanthropy or into a good opinion of yourself. And receive the poor as the Lord asks to be received: whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me (Matthew 25:40).

The list is drawn from the Lord's account of the judgement in Matthew 25 and from the burial of the dead in the book of Tobit. Misericordiae Vultus sets out both the corporal and the spiritual works and asks that they be rediscovered; Deus Caritas Est shows why the Church's charitable service can never be delegated away.

Mercy

The common practice of the whole Church

Ongoing; at least one work taken up concretely

mercy