Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone you will presently come to love him.
Do you wish to honor the Body of Christ? Do not ignore Him when He is naked. Do not pay Him homage in the Liturgy, only then to neglect him outside where He is cold and ill-clad. He who said: "This is my body" is the same person who said: "You saw me hungry and you gave me no food," and "whatever you did to the least of my brothers you did also to me..."
The word "spiritual" is apt to be misunderstood, to be taken to mean bodiless or divorced from the body; our life is sacramental, it is a welding of soul and body; this is one reason why we can never escape the obligation of trying to help one another materially[.]
Caryll Houselander (The Passion of the Infant Christ, page 61)
If you've been praying and asking to feel closer to God or to have more opportunities to share His love, start by helping the homeless people you encounter. Don't ignore them, they're who Christ asked you to take care of, they're who he came to commune with. And, like, don't preach at them. Help them.
Kindness is an identity of a Muslim. Mercy upon humans and animals brings mercy and forgiveness of Allah upon humankind. We speak about climate crisis but we are deaf, dumb and blind towards humanity crisis throughout the globe.
Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: 'O Aisha, truly Allah is kind and He loves kindness and confers upon kindness which he does not confer upon severity and does not confer upon anything else besides kindness. Show kindness to every human whether believer or Non believer. (Collected from sayings of prophet ﷺ)
You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
James 2:24
This isn't to encourage anyone to be boastful, I'm just curious about which one is the most done or most popular. I also wanted to create an opportunity for people to talk about works because the concept seems to be swept under the rug often
We will be asked for a particular account of the works of mercy we have performed on the Day of Judgment. A work of mercy is a work by which we help our neighbor in his spiritual or corporal needs. Traditional lists of them are:
A. Corporal works of mercy
1. To give food to the hungry
2. To give drink to the thirsty
3. To give clothing to the naked
4. To give lodging to pilgrims
5. To visit the sick
6. To visit those in prison
7. To bury the dead.
B. Spiritual works of mercy
1. To give counsel to those in doubt
2. To teach the ignorant
3. To admonish sinners
4. To console the afflicted
5. To forgive offenses
6. To bear patiently with persons who are difficult
We are blessed in order to bless others. We are forgiven in order to forgive. We are loved in order to love. We are comforted in order to comfort others. We are saved to help others find salvation. Christ came to serve in order to teach us to serve others. Christ confesses us before His Father in heaven as His very own so that we will confess Him before the world. We are His people. He is in Us and we are in Him. The Liturgy continues after we leave the Church. We return to the world as 'other Christs' and the Liturgy we experienced in Church continues when we make real His love through our acts of mercy in the world.
Once, in Egypt, there lived a certain man who had a pious custom of feeding beggars at his house. Once, he met a certain man who was starving by the roadside. He invited him to his home, and he gave him supper to eat. After the meal, the host went to a certain curtain; he pulled it, and there was an icon of Christ behind it.
As he began his evening prayers, his guest started to scream at him, to blaspheme against Christ, and to curse God for his misfortunes. The host immediately kicked him out of the house, and returned to resume his prayers. At that moment, Christ Himself appeared to the man and said: "I have been putting up with that man and feeding him for twenty years, and you couldn't endure him for a single night?"
Bible Illustrated: Judge Not the Sinner and the Blasphemer
"Extend your mercy towards others, so that there can be no one in need whom you meet without helping. For what hope is there for us if God should withdraw His Mercy from us?"