Reflection: Divine Mercy Novena - Day 8

"Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to My mercy...Oh, how much I am hurt by a soul's distrust! Such a soul professes that I am Holy and Just, but does not believe that I am Mercy and does not trust in My Goodness. Even the devils glorify MY Justice but do not believe in My Goodness. My heart rejoices in this title of Mercy." - St. Faustine's Diary (350)

I’m always surprised by the amount of despair I encounter…and it seems to come from such unlikely places. 

Years ago, I worked with a bright, young man. Ambitious and competent, he’s gone on to have a distinguished business career. I remember when his father died. On the day before the funeral, I stopped by his office to express my condolences. I'll never forget his response.

"No big deal,” he said. “After all, life is just a crapshoot. That's why we've got to have as much fun as possible. Make money and have fun. Because when it's over…it's over!"

You can’t miss the despair in these words. And yet, were you to meet him, you'd think he was full of enthusiasm and joy at just being alive. But that joy and enthusiasm struggles against a dark backdrop of death and oblivion.

He's not alone. Others, including many Christians, worry about their physical health, and ignore their spiritual health. They worry about how they will spend their retirement, but not how they will spend eternity. They worry about helping their children get into good schools, but not helping them get into heaven. They focus on work, money, vacations, TV shows, food, possessions -- every created thing under the sun -- but rarely think of the Creator.

For so many the created world, the material world of the here and now, becomes an end in itself. But they're not blind. They see the world perishing, themselves aging, time unravelling. And unable to look beyond the world, they despair.

Well...so far, I suppose this hasn’t been a very cheerful reflection. But that’s about to change. For God has provided a cure and an antidote to despair. He gave us His Son. He gave us the personification of Divine Mercy.

The very fact of the Incarnation should be enough to cure anyone of despair. If we believe in Jesus’ divinity, how can we not accept the reality of God’s Mercy? Just meditate on the Cross. That’s our Creator hanging there. We see how God’s Mercy knows no bounds, so far beyond our understanding of mercy. The Father didn’t allow His Son to be sacrificed in such a horrible way for nothing.

But in addition to being the ultimate redemptive act, the Cross is also a plea from God to man. In giving us the gift of the Cross, God is saying: 

“Do you see how much I love you? Do you see the extent of My Divine Mercy? Then why don’t you trust in Me? You rejected My Son, you tortured Him, and you killed Him…and I knew that you would do this. And yet I still went ahead with my redemptive plan.”

His love for us, His gratuitous love, is so complete, we not only don’t deserve it, but also can’t even comprehend it. Grasping this do we then jump to the presumption that God’s Mercy will save everyone? No, because that’s not our decision. It’s God’s.

We must neither despair nor presume. God just wants us to trust. We cannot save ourselves, but by accepting and cooperating with God’s Grace, we can allow God to save us. Isn’t that a consoling thought?

Look at the world, at its hatreds, its violence, its sinfulness, its despair. How did Jesus put it in today’s reading from St. Faustina’s Diary?

“Mankind will not have peace until it turns in trust to My Mercy.”

Divine Mercy is the cure. Trust is our only response.

Reflection: Divine Mercy Novena - Day 6

Once, when I saw Jesus in the form of a small child, I asked, 'Jesus, why do you now take on the form of a child when You commune with me? In spite of this, I still see in You the infinite God, my Lord and Creator.' Jesus replied that until I learned simplicity and humility, He would commune with me as a little child" (St. Faustine's Diary, 335).

Many years ago, Fr. Adam Domanski, a Polish priest and friend, gave me a copy of St. Faustina’s Diary. I’ll confess, I didn’t read it right away, but when I finally got around to opening the book, I could hardly put it down.

And when I read those words you just heard, I thought immediately of St. Therese, the Little Flower. For she, like St. Faustina, came to understand the necessity of approaching our God with the humility and innocence of a small child. Indeed, as St. Therese wrote:

 “…I am too small to climb the rough stairway of perfection…then… I read these words coming from the mouth of Eternal Wisdom: ‘Whoever is a little one, let him come to me.’ And so I succeeded. I felt I had found what I was looking for… for this I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more.”

Such an attitude, of course, goes against everything the world tells us. Can anything be more countercultural? To try to remain childlike…but not childish. For as our Lord taught St. Faustina, to be childlike is to embrace simplicity and humility.

So often you and I try to complicate our relationship with God when all He wants from us is our love. To love God is to embrace the simple truth of the Gospel. It’s not complicated. You don’t have to be a theologian; in fact, that’s probably an obstacle.

Realize, too, that humility is simply the byproduct of reality. As St. Faustina reminds us, our God is “the infinite God, my Lord and Creator.” Knowing this, accepting it, believing it can do nothing but drive us to humility.

These two holy women, then, have taught us so much about becoming a spiritual child. We must learn and accept our total dependence on our God, so we can lead a life of trust and abandonment. We need to let God carry us to holiness. As Saint Therese confessed:

"What pleases Him is seeing me loving my littleness and poverty, the blind hope that I have in His mercy."

Childlike trust is possible only by God's merciful love towards all sinners. His mercy is bigger than any sins we may have committed. Let us always try to approach God with love, and with confidence in His mercy. To live in simplicity and humility is to rid ourselves of all that draws us away from God. When we've sinned, we must throw ourselves, like a child, into the arms of God's mercy. That's the beauty of the sacrament of reconciliation. God always waits for us with open arms.

Anxiety comes from worry, worry about that over which we have little or no control. Don’t worry about the past or the future. Live in the present moment as a child does. Interestingly, the older I get, the more I come to accept this. Children and saints seem to find lots of joy by living in the here and now. Let's join them, forgetting the sins of the past, and trusting that God will take care of our future.

Reflection: Divine Mercy Novena - Day 9

Before our wonderful cantors led us in singing the chaplet in day nine of the Divine Mercy Novena, I offered the following brief reflection:

___________________________

The other day, after writing a few words about an event in the Old Testament, I was reading a bit from St. Faustina’s Diary and was struck by what Jesus told her.

“You are a witness of My mercy. You shall stand before my throne forever as a living witness to My mercy” [# 417]

and

“You are My delightful resting place; My Spirit rests in you [# 346].

Relating this to the Old Testament, I couldn’t help but apply it to the Patriarchs, Prophets, and others who were recipients of Divine Mercy.

In the Old Testament, we encounter some truly remarkable lives, lives bathed in God’s mercy. Consider the twins, Jacob and Esau: one, along with their mother, conniving and deceitful, and the other, arrogant and foolish. And yet Jacob, with all his blemishes and sins, becomes one of the great patriarchs of our Judeo-Christian tradition.

Perhaps Jacob’s sons offer us one of the best examples of sinfulness in need of mercy and forgiveness, when out of envy they plan the murder of their brother, Joseph, and eventually sell him into slavery [Gen 37].

We encounter this again and again. Consider David, the great king who also happened to be an adulterer and murderer [2 Sam 11] and David’s son, King Solomon, who neglected God's gift of wisdom, became enamored of foreign women (quite a few of them, actually), and turned to idolatry [1 Kgs 11]. Remarkably, these two kings, perhaps along with Hezekiah, Josiah, and a few others, were probably the best of the bunch.

So…What are we to think?

Well, in truth, we should thank God for the gift of the flawed men and women who fill the pages of God's Word. What a gift they are to us! In these broken, oh-so-human lives we come face to face with God's enduring forgiveness. We come face to face with God's mercy.

If you worry about your family being mildly dysfunctional, just take a closer look at Abraham's, or Isaac's, or Jacob's. Despite all their problems, all their sinfulness, God's mercy just overflows into their lives. And how good it is that God wants to shower you and those you love with that same outpouring of mercy.

Brothers and sisters, without God's mercy, we would be - what's the best word? - doomed!

Without God's mercy our sins would overwhelm us.

Without God's mercy, there would be no Incarnation, no redemptive sacrifice on the Cross, no Resurrection to offer us the hope of eternal life.

Without God's mercy there is no salvation; for the Incarnation is the supreme act of mercy, the supreme act of our merciful, loving God.

He becomes one of us, He lives with us, He teaches us, He forgives us, He heals us, He loves us, and He suffers and dies for us. He does all of this for our salvation. He does all of this so we can be healed.

That's right. Without God's mercy there can be no healing. And we are all, every single one of us, in need of healing, aren't we? What about you?

Are you in pain, physical pain, the kind that can scream at you, causing you to question God's love?

Do you suffer from illness, one of those devastating, fear-laden illnesses that makes prayer so very hard?

Have you been attacked by depression, or another spirit-draining affliction that seems to attack your very humanity?

Perhaps you are faced with a combination of many things, some little, some not so little, that overwhelm you and your ability to deal with them?

Or maybe you are simply afraid, afraid of the future, afraid of the unknown, afraid of death, and need the consolation of the gift of faith.

What kind of healing do you seek? What do I seek? But what about the healing we actually need? You see, brothers and sisters, I don't know the fulness of God’s plan for me, and I certainly don’t know God's plan for you...and neither do you. But I do know what He wants of both you and me.

He wants you, He wants me, He wants every single one of us to come to Him, to abandon ourselves to Him, to allow His will to move within our lives.

But it's never easy to set aside our own willfulness and abandon ourselves to God's will. When our wills dominate, we end up broken; and yet it's through that brokenness that God call to us.

And that’s when our need for His mercy, for His healing touch, is greatest.