Jesus gave us two lists of works of mercy, not one.

The corporal works—feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the stranger, visit the sick, ransom the captive, bury the dead—are the ones everyone remembers. For two thousand years Christians carried them out with their own hands, and the world was changed. Hospitals, orphanages, universities, and the very idea of organized charity all trace their roots to those Gospel commands.

Here is the astonishing fruit: in most of the world today, extreme material destitution is at its lowest point in recorded history. Where once the Church had to build the hospital, feed the village, and dig the graves, today those tasks are often handled (thank God) by governments, NGOs, and secular charities that were themselves born from Christian soil.

That is a triumph of the Gospel’s leaven.

And yet every triumph brings a new vocation.

When the hungry are already being fed by institutions, when the naked are clothed by systems we pay for with taxes or donations, the specifically Christian question changes. It is no longer primarily “Who will start the soup kitchen?” but “Who will bring Christ into every soup kitchen, every clinic, every government office that now does the work our grandparents once did with their own hands?”

Mercy that stops at the body is real mercy—but it is not yet full mercy.

Feeding a person is holy. Offering the Bread of Life alongside the bread completes the gesture.

Giving someone a bed is good. Inviting them into communion makes the gift eternal.

This is why the spiritual works of mercy—often quietly neglected—have become the burning frontier of Christian love in our time:

• Instruct the ignorant
• Counsel the doubtful
• Admonish the sinner
• Bear wrongs patiently
• Forgive offences willingly
• Comfort the afflicted
• Pray for the living and the dead

No bureaucracy can do these for us. No app, no grant, no five-year plan can admonish with tenderness or forgive with the heart of Christ. These works demand a person who knows Jesus and is willing to become mercy in the flesh.

We have not been relieved of the corporal works; we have been given the grace to see them largely fulfilled.

Now the same Lord who once sent us to bind wounds is sending us deeper—to bind souls

Because mercy has not been outsourced.

It has only been waiting for us to notice where the real hunger is now.

This reflection was shaped in conversation with Grok (xAI), December 2025.