Devoted Heralds of the Lord's Mercy

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - October 5, 2007

The editorial on the left of this page focuses on Pope Benedict's recent description of the inadequacy of a cold scientific study of God and the truths of the faith. God should never be a rarified object of research, but is rather a personal subject who invites us to enter into an intimate dialogue of life and love. For that reason, the true study of God needs to occur, as Benedict says, on one's knees, in an attitude of humble awe and adoration.

This distinction between studying God merely with the head and studying him with one's whole person — head, heart, and knees — pertains not just to theologians. It is relevant to the life of every Catholic believer. It is also something deeply desired not just by the vicar of Christ on earth but by his Boss.

In the 12th century, for example, the Lord Jesus appeared to Blessed Juliana of Liege and asked her to propagate in the Church love and devotion for him in the holy Eucharist. It was not enough for Christ that his people know about the reality of the Lord's presence or conceptualize accurately the doctrine of transubstantiation. He wished for these truths to pass from from their head to their heart to their knees, from knowledge to love to devotion.

From these apparitions came ultimately not just the feast of Corpus Christi, but a much greater appreciation for the daily sacrifice of the Mass and for Eucharistic adoration. The Catholic faithful grew to recognize that if they truly believed in Jesus' real presence, and loved the Lord, then their love must be expressed in concrete acts of piety.

Even more than adoration to Him in the Eucharist, however, the Lord has sought to establish veneration of his merciful love. This month we celebrate the feast days of two saints he chose to help foster this devotion.

The first is St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, whose birthday into eternal life we mark on October 16. In 1673, the Lord began to appear to this humble Visitation sister in France, and asked her to spread the devotion to his Sacred Heart. In asking for this devotion, the Lord was seeking veneration not only of his sacred humanity but in particular his divine love symbolized by his heart. His heart was offended and wounded, he said, by the sins and sacrileges of the age, particularly the neglect and disrespect of him in the Eucharist. But more than anything, his heart still beat with merciful love and he desired for people to come to receive that forgiveness.

From this one cloistered sister in a small French village, this devotion to the Lord's mercy spread throughout the world. Statues depicting the Lord's heart, crowned with thorns, yet still burning with love propagated to all Christian lands, as houses, families, whole nations and countless Churches were consecrated to the Sacred Heart.

After 250 years, however, the hearts of many Catholics had grown cold to the love of the Lord's Sacred Heart. For that reason, the Lord acted again. This time he chose as his "secretary" the Polish nun whose feast day we celebrate today, St. Faustina Kowalska.

In the 1930s, in a series of divine locutions and apparitions, Jesus asked her to spread throughout the globe devotion to his divine mercy. It wasn't enough that Catholics know about his mercy. Jesus wanted them to love his mercy, recognize their need for it, come to receive it from him in the sacrament of confession, and then spread that mercy toward others.

Jesus dictated to St. Faustina five practices he desired to help bring about in his people this awareness of their need for mercy, their seeking it, and their sharing it.

The first was an image depicting Jesus in an act of blessing, with white and red rays emanating from his heart symbolic of the blood and water that flowed from his heart when upon the Cross; underneath the image was to be the saying, "Jesus, I trust in you!" The Lord wanted people to visualize his mercy flowing from his wounded side and renew their confidence in its saving power.

The second practice was the hour of mercy, in which he asked the faithful to stop what they're doing at 3 pm each day and unite themselves to his merciful act of salvation upon the Cross.

The third was the chaplet of divine mercy, in which he asked the faithful to pray a rosary of mercy to God the Father, offering the Father Jesus' own sacrifice in expiation for their and others' sins.

The fourth practice was a novena of mercy in which they would for the forgiveness of various groups of sinners.

The fifth and last was the establishment of Divine Mercy Sunday as the culmination of the Easter Octave and on which the Church always recalls in the Gospel the establishment of the sacrament on confession. Pope John Paul II established Divine Mercy Sunday throughout the Church in 2000, on the day he canonized St. Faustina.

The Lord was asking for devotion not for his sake but for ours. St. Faustina and St. Margaret Mary both not only spread this devotion but lived it.

They are shining models for us about how to let the reality of God's merciful love move from our minds, to our hearts, to our knees.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.