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!