Fr. JC Maximilian

“His Mercy endures forever.” In case you didn’t get it, this refrain is repeated three times in the first stanza of today’s Responsorial Psalm. Actually, if you look at the complete text of Psalm 118, which is today’s psalm, the phrase “His Mercy endures forever,” is repeated four times. Obviously for the Psalmist it was very important that people knew that God’s mercy endures forever. How fitting that this emphasis on the mercy of God is made in today’s Responsorial Psalm, for the Second Sunday in the Octave of Easter is also known throughout the Church as Divine Mercy Sunday.

Quite simply, Divine Mercy is what we call God’s love when it encounters sin. Sin builds up a barrier that keeps us from being one with God; that keeps us from fully participating in the Divine Life as a child of God. Divine Mercy is God’s work to remove the barrier of sin that impedes us from living fully in God who is Love. The definitive act of God’s Mercy is the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God, which conquers sin and its consequence, death, and restores us to the life of Sanctifying Grace.

This teaching concerning Divine Mercy is nothing new. As we see from today’s Responsorial Psalm, which was written hundreds of years before the birth of Christ Jesus, God had revealed His profound mercy to the Chosen People. However, we can be very forgetful people. Therefore, in His great, God frequently raises up an instrument to remind us of the Truth of His love. One such instrument of God was St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, known throughout the world today as the “Apostle of the Divine Mercy,” and recognized as one of the outstanding mystics of the Church.

She was born in 1905 in a small village in the heart of Poland; the third of ten children of a poor, though pious, family. As a child she first felt the call of God deep in her soul, calling her to embrace the religious life. In 1925 she entered the cloister of the Congregation of Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Warsaw. She died thirteen years later, a young woman at age 33, after suffering much physically. However, it was the mystical experiences of Jesus speaking to her, recorded in her diary, which caused this simple, contemplative nun to become the great witness of the Divine Mercy to the world. As part of her legacy she has given the Church both the well-known image of Divine Mercy, and the Divine Mercy Chaplet.

Probably the most distinctive feature of the Divine Mercy image is the two set of rays, one red and the other white, emanating from the from the heart of Jesus. What do these rays mean? I will let St. Faustina explain them using the words she received from the Lord in prayer:

“The two rays denote Blood and Water. The pale ray stands for the Water which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls . . .

“These two rays issued forth from the very depths of My tender mercy when My agonized heart was opened by a lance on the Cross.

“These rays shield souls from the wrath of My Father. Happy is the one who will dwell in their shelter, for the just hand of God shall not lay hold of him. I desire that the first Sunday after Easter be the Feast of Mercy” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska #299).

In another place the Lord says to St. Faustina, “I desire that this image be displayed in public on the first Sunday after Easter. That Sunday is the Feast of Mercy. Through the Word Incarnate, I make known the bottomless depth of My mercy” (Diary #88).

Of course the most perfect way in which the Word of God is Incarnate, is in the person of Jesus. In the womb of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, the Second Divine Person of the Most Holy Trinity, emptied Himself and took on the form of a slave, and united to His Divine Personhood our human nature. As the Incarnate Word, Jesus revealed the Truth of Divine Love to us, and revealed how we are suppose to respond to the love God offers each of us. The infinite God took on the limits of our human flesh so that we might know Him intimately, and so that He could suffer and die for us, thus saving us from sin and death.

The Incarnate Word, even after Ascending into Heaven, continues to remain with us today. Of course He remains with us in the Most Holy Eucharist, represented by the red rays emanating from the heart of Jesus in the Divine Mercy image. The Eucharist is the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ (and I spoke about this in my first homily of this 40-Hour Devotion on Friday night). However the Incarnate Word is present in the world in another way, namely in His Mystical Body, which we call the Church.

As has already been noted, the white rays emanating from the heart of Jesus in the Divine Mercy image represents the water that flowed from the pierced side of Christ as He hung on the Cross. St. Faustina noted that this is the water that makes souls righteous. The word “righteous” comes from a Hebrew word that means “to be in a correct relationship with the Lord; to be declared just and innocent before God.” Only the sacrifice of Jesus makes us righteous before God, and the means by which He incorporates us into His righteousness is through the waters of Baptism.

We all know that by Baptism the stain of Original Sin is washed away, as is all personal sin. However, baptism also “makes us members of the Body of Christ” and “incorporates us into the Church” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1267). So what is the Church?

Msgr. Luigi Giussani, a theologian and founder of the movement Communion and Liberation, identified three constituent factors of the Church. First the Church is a community. In today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles we hear, “The community of believers was of one heart and mind, …” This community, however, is unlike any other community because, as Msgr. Giussani notes in his second factor, it is comprised of people who are aware that what brings them together is determined by the gift of the Holy Spirit. In today’s Gospel reading we hear of Jesus giving His disciples this Gift when He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Finally, the Holy Spirit gives to the Church a new kind of life; a life of love, both of God and of neighbor. It is in this way that the Word of God remains Incarnate, manifesting the will of God through His creation.

As Jesus, who is sinless, embraced the sinners who came to Him, and offered them the Divine Mercy, so too must the Mystical Body of Christ embrace sinners and pour out Divine Mercy. “Having become a member of the Church, the person baptized belongs no longer to himself, but to him who died and rose for us. From now on, he is called to be subject to others, to serve them in the communion of the Church, and to ‘obey and submit’ to the Church’s leaders” (CCC #1269). This is often very difficult because we become so focused on the “mud,” the sin and limits of the human beings, that we fail to keep our eyes on the “gold,” the grace of redemption and the gift of divine life won for us by Jesus’ Passion, Death and Resurrection. We must humbly confess the sinfulness that we encounter in ourselves, our neighbors, the world, and even in the Church, however we must not become obsessed by it. In recognizing the sinfulness we must be brought to see the Divine Mercy. Then, having encountered the Divine Mercy in our lives, we must go out and be witnesses of Divine Mercy to the world, so often lost in sin.

This is the purpose of Divine Mercy Sunday: to commit ourselves to not only being open to the gift of Divine Mercy in our lives, but to proclaim the Divine Mercy to all we meet by our words and deeds. As the Lord said to St. Faustina, “This Feast emerged from the very depths of My mercy, and it is confirmed in the vast depths of My tender mercies. Every soul believing and trusting in My mercy will obtain it” (Diary #420).

JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU!

I was asked to give the homily for the start and end of a Forty-Hours Devotion at Divine Mercy Parish in Trenton. As I type this I realized that I was preaching the start and end of the first Forty-Hour Devotion at that parish; last July 1, three parishes — Holy Cross, St. Stanislaus and Ss. Peter & Paul — were merged into the new Divine Mercy Parish. The pastor is my spiritual director, and when he was the pastor of the three named parishes (yes, he was pastor of three parishes at once, before they were suppressed as three individual parishes to create the new one) he help an annual Forty-Hours devotion around the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in September, and I have tried to make the closing Mass for that the last several years. He is what I said last night, then I need to write my homily for this weekend.

Friday in the Octave of Easter
Start of the Forty Hours Devotion
at Divine Mercy Parish, Trenton
April 21, 2006
Fr. John C. Garrett

What do we mean by Divine Mercy? I know that for the past week, as you have been participating in this Divine Mercy Novena, you have been learning about this very thing. I would like to just add a few of my own thoughts. St. John, in his first epistle, states the simple truth about God when he says, “God is Love” (1 John 4:16). Love is not merely what God DOES, it is the entire BEING of God. Every other characteristic that we can apply to God – such as He is kind, He is just, etc. – must be just one form of manifesting that God is Love. So what is Divine Mercy? Simply put, Divine Mercy is God’s love encountering sin. Divine Mercy is God trying to dispel the misery that comes as a consequence of our sins. Our sins separate us from God, so in His mercy God offers to remove the defects that keep us from living His life to the full, so that we can live in the freedom of a child of God. Of course, since God is love, He does not force His gifts of love upon us – we must respond to God’s love, experienced in our sinfulness as Divine Mercy, by lovingly accepting God into our lives.

When I was growing up, I would often visit my grandma and grandpa Foley, and one prominent image in their dining room was a framed print of the Divine Mercy image. One of the mysteries of my grandfather, who was very English/Irish, was that he had a devotion to the Divine Mercy image and Sr. Faustina. This was before the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, who really did so much to make this devotion more widely known outside of Poland. How and why my grandfather developed his devotion to the Divine Mercy image I never found out, but it was a part of my childhood long before I understood what it was all about.

Probably the most distinctive feature of the Divine Mercy image is the two set of rays, one red and the other white, emanating from the from the heart of Jesus. What do these rays mean? I will let St. Faustina explain them using the words she received from the Lord in prayer:

“The two rays denote Blood and Water. The pale ray stands for the Water which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls . . .

“These two rays issued forth from the very depths of My tender mercy when My agonized heart was opened by a lance on the Cross.

“These rays shield souls from the wrath of My Father. Happy is the one who will dwell in their shelter, for the just hand of God shall not lay hold of him. (#299, Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska).

Blood and water. Two profound realities for us Catholics, for they are connected with two of our sacraments; the Eucharist and Baptism. Since you are going to be hearing from me twice during this Forty Hour Devotion, I would like to focus my talks on the two rays pouring out from the Heart of Jesus; on the Eucharist and on Baptism.

In tonight’s Gospel reading we hear the Risen Jesus ask the Apostles, who had been fishing all night, if they have “caught anything to eat?” Then Jesus provides them with food to eat. In light of this reading, and since we beginning a 40-Hours Devotion, I would like to begin with focusing on the red ray in the Divine Mercy image, which represents the Eucharist.

“The Sacrament of the Eucharist is key to the devotion of The Divine Mercy. The Eucharist is so central to the life of Sister Faustina that most of the pages of her Diary have some reference to it” (Rev. George Kosicki, Tell My Priests, p. 35). This is most fitting, for the Second Vatican Council taught in the document, Lumen Gentium, the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life” (#11). So many volumes have been written concerning the Most Blessed Sacrament that it would not be possible to discuss it all in a single homily. I would like to focus on several of the Fruits of Holy Communion (see Catechism of the Catholic Church #1391-1401).

The principal fruit of receiving the Eucharist is an intimate union, a true oneness, with Jesus. St. Faustina experienced this oneness with Christ Jesus most profoundly. Once she had a vision of the Sacred Host and heard the voice of Jesus say to her, “In the Host is your power; It will defend you” (#616, Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska). The Eucharist preserves, increases and renews the life of grace that we receive in Baptism. Again St. Faustina speaks to us, “One thing alone sustains me, and this is Holy Communion. From it I draw my strength; in it is all my comfort” (#1037, Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska).

The Eucharist also separates us from sin. During the consecration, the priest repeats the words of Jesus, who said at the Last Supper after taking the cup of wine and declaring it His most Precious Blood, which is “shed for the many for the forgiveness of sins.” This is the very definition of Divine Mercy I gave at the start of this homily; that Divine Mercy is God’s love as it encounters sin, and removes the defects of sin that keep us from being one with God.

“The Eucharist strengthens our charity, which tends to be weakened in daily life; and this living charity wipes away venial sins. By giving himself to us Christ revives our love and enables us to break our disordered attachments to creatures and root ourselves in him” (CCC #1394). The Eucharist draws us into an ever-deeper relationship with Christ Jesus, sharing in His life, which makes it more difficult to commit mortal sin.

Most of what we have been discussing is specifically speaking about the reception of the Eucharist in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. However, as we begin tonight the celebration of 40-Hours, it is important to recognize the relationship of Eucharistic Adoration to the Mass. In a letter to a bishop in Belgium on the 750th Anniversary of the first celebration of the feast of Corpus Christ, two years ago, Pope John Paul II noted that Eucharistic Adoration extends Holy Communion in a lasting way, “and prepares us to participate more fully in the celebration of the Eucharistic mystery” (USCCB, Committee on the Liturgy, Thirty-One Questions on Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, October 2004, p. 2). In Holy Communion and Worship of the Eucharist Outside of Mass (1973), three purposes of Eucharistic exposition are listed. First, Adoration of the Eucharist, exposed on the Altar, clearly acknowledges Christ’s marvelous presence in the sacrament. Secondly, this acknowledgement should lead us to a fuller participation in the celebration of the Eucharist, which should culminate in reception of Holy Communion. Finally Adoration fosters the worship that is due to Christ in spirit and truth.

As we begin this 40-Hour devotion, let us in our contemplation of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, allow the Blood of Christ pour over us. Let us permit the red rays that we see emanating from the heart of Jesus in the Divine Mercy image enlighten our souls so that we admit our faults, so that we receive the God’s mercy in our lives. Let us allow Our Risen Lord to feed us with the Bread of Life, so that nourished by His Body and Blood, we can be witnesses to His infinite love, so often manifested as His Divine Mercy.

Easter – Mass During the Day

In life, all of us have many small hopes. Most of these are legitimate and good hopes, however they are also poor and incomplete. Most of us hope for a long life; to see what the future will bring in 50 years. We hope for a good and well-paying job, which is also personally fulfilling. If we are young, we hope to have enough money to buy a computer, or starting around age 16, to buy a car so that we can be free from asking our parents for rides everywhere. We hope that our children grow up healthy, do well in school and are always well behaved. Most of us also hope to win the really big lottery. Others hope that their favorite sports team will win the pennant.

Whatever it is that we hope for, it seems that we all hope. Yes, human beings are born to hope. Now what happens to these small hopes that all of us have? Well either we do not fulfill them and we feel disappointed, or once we do achieve them we find that they do not truly satisfy our capacity for hope and we find ourselves feeling incomplete and maybe empty. So we develop new hopes, but they are just as ephemeral as the hopes we have already fulfilled. So are we doomed to always feel disappointed, maybe even hopeless? If we set the eyes of our hope only on the things of this world, then yes, we will know only a life of disappointment, of hopelessness. What can fully satisfy our entire capacity for hope? In answering, let me tell you a story.

Shortly have the French Revolution, which did its best to sweep both God and the Church away, and replace them with Reason and the Human Person as the pinnacle of all that is, one revolutionary, named Reveillere, tried to start a new “religion” that would enshrine the secular, humanistic ideals and values of the Revolution. However, he did not find many converts to his new religion, and he complained to another famous revolutionary, Barras, about his lack of converts while the disciples of Jesus Christ were so faithful to their Master, who, in the view of Reveillere, only imposed on them privations. Barras chuckled at his friend and said, “Well, as for me, I do not wonder, and I can give you a piece of good advice on how you can be more successful.” Reveillere was eager to hear Barras’ advice, so Barras said, “Have yourself killed on Friday, let them bury you on Saturday, try your best to rise on Sunday morning; and take my word for it, people will immediately believe in your new religion.” Reveillere did not follow this advice, and he and his religion are quite forgotten.

Only God can fully satisfy our capacity for hope; both in this world in which we live and work, and in eternal life in which we will see Him as He is and will love Him with all our being. We know that God does not disappoint us because He is God and His name is Faithful. As testimony to God being both the source and the fulfillment of all hope, we have Jesus Christ who humbled Himself, taking on our human nature. The importance of Jesus is not merely His Incarnation, nor even His profound teaching. The importance of Jesus is what we celebrated these past few days – His Passion, Death and Resurrection. The joy of Easter is the knowledge that Jesus has conquered sin and death, and had opened the gates of heaven for all who believe in Him.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines hope as “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (#1817). The great and beautiful truth of Christianity is that no one is excluded from Christian hope. God wants all to be saved; He calls all people to the bliss of heaven.

This is where we come in. In today’s first reading we hear St. Peter proclaim, “We are witnesses….” St. Peter was not speaking just for himself and for the other Apostles. No, he was speaking for all of us who call ourselves Christian. In his first letter, St. Peter says, “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” (1 Peter 3:15). Of course the reason for our hope is the Resurrection of Christ Jesus, and His Resurrection, which we celebrate today, is a call to be a light to the world.

“Our task as Christians is to proclaim the kingship of Christ, announcing it through what we say and do. Our Lord wants men and women of his own in all walks of life. Some he calls away from society, asking them to give up involvement in the world, so that they remind the rest of us by their example that God exists. To others he entrusts the priestly ministry. But he wants the vast majority to stay right where they are, in all earthly occupations in which they work: the factory, the laboratory, the farm, the trades, the streets of the big cities and the trails of the mountains” (St. Josemaria Escriva, Christ is Passing By, #105).

The biography of Pope John Paul II by George Weigel is entitled, Witness to Hope, and certainly the Servant of God, Pope John Paul II, was that, not only in all the beautiful words he spoke and wrote, but also especially in the way he lived. Despite being shot, and then infirmed with illnesses of old age, Pope John Paul II trusted in Christ and desired heaven.

This Easter let all of us re-commit ourselves to being witnesses of hope to the world. Let there not be an office, marketplace, home, park, or public square where the hope of Christ is not known. “Fill everything with the spirit of Jesus, placing Christ at the center of everything” (Eph 1:10). PROCLAIM CHRIST JESUS, VICTOR! LIVE JESUS, RISEN FROM THE DEAD!

I really meant to write this post a couple of days ago, but things just got too busy. Living in the world we now do, where attending Mass is for many people just a “thing to get out of the way” on Sunday, there is often grumbling on the Feast of the Passion of the Lord. I mean there are TWO Gospel readings, and the reading of the Passion is “SOOO long” as I heard more than one person muttered. Now, the rubrics say that the priest may give a homily after BOTH Gospel readings on Palm Sunday. I fear for any priest who tries to do that. However, it really is not appropriate to not preach at a Sunday Mass, so priest typically give what we call a “fervorino,” a brief homily to promote fervor for the Faith. Here is the jest of mine for this year:

What a difference a week makes. At the beginning of the week of the Passover celebration, Jesus enters Jerusalem to shouts of exaltation, as the people joyfully call Him king. By the end of the week they are shouting for him to be crucified. Why this reversal? Because Jesus was not going to be the type of King that they wanted Him to be. They wanted a King of their own liking, who would not challenge them on how to live. They did not want to set their sights on Eternal Life, but wanted a merely horizontal king, taking care of their material and political needs.

How often are we like the crowd in Jerusalem; praising the Lord when all is going our way, but rejecting and complaining when it is not “our will being done”?

Reversal is nothing new for the Christian. In Genesis we see God creating everything good, the first man and woman in a garden of paradise, where there is a tree. By their disobedience the fruit of that tree lead to death. At the end of Holy Week we see this reversed. Jesus is in a garden, not of paradise but of sorrow. His obedience lead Him to a tree of death, but the fruit of that tree is Eternal Life.

As we enter into Holy Week, may there be a reversal in our lives. May we reverse the disobedience of sin by which we shout for the crucifixion of Christ, into the shouts of obedience exalting Him as Christ the King, Victor.

I know that it has been nearly two weeks since I last wrote anything on this blog. I don’t really know what to say. I have taken my father’s death in December very hard. It has lead to a very bad case of writer’s block. Everytime I sit to write anything nothing comes. Trying to write a homily is very laborious. Of course I keep trying.

I will comment some on what I have been up to, of late. One ministry (besides the Mass and other Sacraments), which I truly love is Adult Faith Formation. For Lent I have been leading a series called, “God’s Love in Jesus.” It is actually the third of three series based on the mini-series, “Jesus of Nazareth.” I told the group not to fret because we are doing the three sets is reverse order. In a way we are doing them in the order of how the original preaching (kerygma) of the Gospel; first focusing on the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus; then in the Fall I plan to do the middle set (”You are My Disciples”) which focuses more on the preaching and miracles of Jesus; and finally for Advent, “God in the Flesh.” I have done two sessions each Thursday during Lent, one during the afternoon at St. Anthony’s, and one in the evening at Our Lady of Sorrows. I have no comparison as to whether the size of the group attending has been good or bad, but I do not really fret about that. Each session we have started, after the prayer, with watching about 20 minutes of the film, and then afterwards there has been discussion. I have thought that the discussion has gone well. We finished the series last night, which is very appropriate since we watched basically the last week of Jesus’ life, starting with His entrance into Jerusalem. Of course we start that week on Sunday. Astonishing isn’t it, that in a week the people went from shouting in joy as Jesus entered Jerusalem and a week later they were shouting for His death. It has made me reflect on how fickle is my relationship with Jesus at times.

I am excited about our next project: On May 18, from 7-9 pm in the Lower Church of Our Lady of Sorrows, we will have a discussion about the movie, The DaVinci Code, which will open the next day in theaters. The exact format of the discussion night has not been finalized. We have ordered 100 copies of the book, The DaVinci Deception, published by Ascension Press, which we will make available. We will also have a DVD of a talk by Dr. Sri, on the inaccuracies of the theory with Mr. Brown’s novel proposes. I am not sure if we will use the DVD to set the stage of the discussion, since I have not seen it. However I have secured a very good leader for the discussion (no, not me). Fr. Martin Miller, a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei who is assigned to the Mercer House in Princeton, has agreed to come. He will be a wonderful counterpoint to the poor fiction of “Opus Dei monks” (they are not a monastic group) portrayed in the novel.

The other major spiritual thing that I have been involved in is learning more about Communion and Liberation, an ecclesial movement started by an Italian priest, Msgr. Luigi Giussani. He started the movement in the high school at which he taught. I did not like the fact that at student assemblies it was always the Communists and Fascists who got up to talk, often against the Church. He wanted to help form a group of students who would be willing and able to speak up for the Church, well, really for Christ. While he wrote a lot, his main works are a trilogy: “The Religious Sense,” “The Origin of the Christian Claim,” and “Why the Church?” Basically it encourages people to gather weekly for prayer and study. Within the group sections of one of his books (or other spiritual/theological works) is read aloud, and then people discuss it. This year the movement is focusing on the third book, “Why the Church?” and I started in the middle. That is why I have not put reflections on it here on my blog. It is an exciting presentation of the Faith.

OK, I need to work on my homily for this weekend, Easter, and for preaching the opening and closing of 40 Hours at Divine Mercy Parish the weekend of the Second Sunday in the Octave of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday. I will try to write more.