Her name is Mercedes. She is one of the residents at the nursing home, a beautiful woman from Puerto Rico with a smile that makes you feel like you’ve known her your whole life. September 24 is the feast day of Our Lady of Mercedes, Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, a devotion that goes back centuries in the Spanish-speaking world and one that so many families in Puerto Rico still carry close to their hearts.
Mercedes means mercy. Not kindness exactly, though it holds kindness inside it. Mercy is something bigger. It’s the compassion someone shows when they didn’t have to. It’s love that reaches toward a person in need and refuses to look away.
I think about that every time I walk into her room. So many of the residents I care for spend long stretches of the day waiting. Waiting for a visitor. Waiting for someone to sit down and simply be present with them, no rushing, no clock running. I can’t always give them everything they’re missing, but I can give them my attention, my patience, and whatever mercy I have to offer that day. Some days that feels like so little. But Scripture tells me it is never nothing.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7). Jesus didn’t say blessed are the impressive or the efficient. He said blessed are the merciful, the ones who notice, who show up, who treat another person’s need as worth their time.
There is something holy about a woman named Mercy spending her whole life surrounded by that word, whether she ever thought about it that way or not. There is something holy about getting to celebrate her birthday, to bring a little extra joy into a day that could just as easily pass by unnoticed in a place where birthdays don’t always get remembered the way they should.
I don’t know everything Mercedes has carried in her life. I don’t know every hard road that brought her from Puerto Rico to a nursing home bed. But I know this. For at least a few minutes on her special day, she will know she is seen. She will know someone thought her day mattered enough to make it special. And maybe that is what mercy looks like most days. Not grand gestures. Just showing up, again and again, for the people the world moves past too quickly.
A Porch Prayer
Lord, thank You for Mercedes and for every life that carries Your mercy in ways we don’t always notice. Bless her tomorrow. Let her feel loved and celebrated and completely seen. Thank You for the gift of getting to show up for her, and for every resident who is waiting on someone to walk through the door. Teach me to be merciful the way You are merciful, patient and present, even on the days I have very little left to give. Amen.
Is there someone in your life who could use a little extra mercy this week, maybe someone who feels forgotten? I’d love to hear who you’re thinking of in the comments.
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