The Music of Divine Mercy

Hidden in the mystery of my neighbor's greeting is a stream of divine music that resounds with tenderness and that rings with goodness. The sacredness of human life is validated when I recognize its call and empathize with its heart piercing dynamism. Under the enchantment of this tolling theme, the individual is not ever an accidental and isolated note, but a delicate part of a divinely purposed chord in which we are all caught up. In this resonance of life and truth, our very core reverberates if we let it. In the silence of my neighbor's glance, a symphony is ready to break forth as if for the first time -- when and only when I learn to listen.

Just as all true music expresses stirrings in the heart that time cannot contain, the wonder of this particular neighbor before me is the object of Divine jubilation -- an exquisite expression of joy so serious that the whole reality of heaven and hell weighs in this moment of encounter. Even a chance meeting bears this existential weight. This is because these moments have height and depth. At a moment's precipice, eternity can break in with its thunderclap of meaning. Hardly a word exchanged, the silence binds souls together. Or else, with the wrong word, what was to be a moment of grace devolves by neglect or indifference into lifeless banality. Yet, this risk on which God pauses is what makes His music so beautiful.

This particular person whose path I have crossed is for God a new turn, a surprising twist in a never heard before symphony, an irreplaceable part of a whole that I too am caught up in. A melody from above this world waits to catch us off guard if only we will bring this encounter into tune with its subtle movements. Yes, divine harmonies play out in the real life concrete historical choices we make. They are heard not by escaping or surmounting life, but plunging into it with an attentive heart, with a living faith, with humble vulnerability, with the readiness to do something beautiful for God. 

The eternal hymn that could resound requires a harmony in which both word and silence be raised to love and by love and for love. If earthly music resonates in the connection of rhythm and sound with the heart, this heavenly canticle relies on the Holy Spirit stirring our hearts, liberating our wills. With a gentle touch He tunes us. He restores the right relation of encounter and recognition, empathy and truth, forgiveness and reconciliation. In these ways, the Spirit of Love fills the silent emptiness of human misery with melodies of Divine Mercy, setting a limit to evil to make space for a new love to be born -- if only, in this moment, especially this difficult moment, we will offer our "fiat." 

The life giving presence of the Holy Spirit is why whenever any soul cries out to God for help, the Father never sees anything other than His own embodied image and likeness, and hears only the voice that the Son has joined to His own. Within the space of a humble prayer, with great respect for our liberty, the Trinity tenderly embraces us like delicate musical instruments, patiently waiting for us to sanction the immense and subtle movement of Infinite Love that the Divine Persons desire to unleash. The music of God's Heart is ready to forgive and to help us forgive, to plant new hope and to help us bring hope to others. Love's own melodious fullness is ready, ready to sound a new and unvanquished beginning to what we thought to be destroyed.

The Trinity waits for us, on our side, on the side of humanity, as the One God who longs to see each man and woman thrive in a new solidarity of life and love. Through the movements we allow the Trinity to raise in our souls, God's very presence resounds by a knowledge and love too great for this life to contain. On this Divine Hymn of Mercy, the story of our humanity finds sure footing, ground firm enough to hold its weight as the music of its frail prayer echoes on earth as it is in heaven.

Happy Divine Mercy Sunday 2013!

Divine Mercy Sunday reminds us of the truth on which the whole Christian life stands.   Although internal and external politics in the life of families and nations seem overbearing, actual conflicts or any potential strife do not ever have to consume the meaning of our lives.  There are deeper and more powerful forces at work in the course of human events, even in the course of our personal lives.

In the radiance of the face of the Risen Lord, the merciful love of the Father waits to be discovered by faith.   After two millennia of searching these vast frontiers, the Church has yet to fully plummet the inexhaustible riches are Christ.  Indeed, for all our efforts in this noble task, we have only scratched the surface of all that God has in store for those who believe.  In the unbridled inflow of God's presence in the world which the Lord continually makes known, we have reason for great hope.  May this great celebration of merciful love be a blessing for you and your family -- and through you for the whole world.  

Here are some previous reflections on divine mercy:

For a little background on this great feast and the Holy Spirit - click here.

For some thoughts on this celebration and wisdom of heart -- click here.

For a reflection of St. Faustina Kowalska and this wonderful day -- click here

Contemplating the Triumph of Mercy

The resurrection is a mystery of the triumph of divine mercy over human misery.  When the Father raised Christ Jesus from the dead, humble humanity was not overcome, surmounted or diminished.  Instead all that is good, holy and true about this life was rescued from futility and death.   Christian contemplation beholds this victory and by faith allows the splendor of Easter morning to baptize the soul anew.   

Th prayer of faith sees the resurrection of Christ from the dead has the first fruits of an astonishing work of God.    The Risen Lord animates this work of new creation as a fountain of grace, a boundless source of divine love flowing into our parched hearts.   Those who drink from these living waters are no longer prisoners to the dying life we now live. Humble prayer drinks this in and discovers the hidden fruitfulness of God.

Just as Jesus rose from the dead, Christian prayer rises up in faith.  To believe that Jesus is risen from the dead, this is to lift up our hearts to the Lord and take our stand on the firm ground that knows evil is not the last word about our lives.  This faith may well be tested by our mediocrity and repeated failures, but if we do not deny Christ, He will not deny us - instead His faithfulness to us is being revealed in our struggles to be faithful.  

The Risen humanity of Christ is the very yeast of prayer so that even in the depths of our most bitter struggles, prayer rises to God.   By His passion and death, Christ sewed into the mystery of sin, the mystery of grace.  The mystery of grace makes all things new so that even when we fall short, turning to the mystery of Mercy we can always make a new beginning.  In this work of grace, it is God's inexhaustible love and not our failures that defines who we are.  He continually lifts us up.

Prayer is all about grace, the grace that flows from the wounds of Christ.  This sheer gift entrusted to humanity can only be welcomed in humble faith.   It is the gift of the merciful love of God at work in us.  

Prayer ponders the dimensions of merciful love, a suffering love pierced to the heart over the plight of another.  God is pierced over the plight of each one of us.  This is why He could not bear that we should suffer alone.   To show us how much He has implicates Himself in our misery, He suffered death on the Cross for us.  So that we might know our dignity, our freedom, the saving truth about who He is and where we stand before Him, Christ drained to the dregs the cup of our misery, treasuring each drop because He treasures each of us even more.  Prayer is the response of a heart that is moved with gratitude for this inestimable gift and, in this gratitude, opens the heart to be like God's - pierced by love.  

Christian contemplation takes all of this in by faith.  In the dawning of the Third Day, we come to know how no sin, no addiction, no shortcoming, no weakness, and no other burden of guilt can overpower or exhaust the love of God at work in those who believe.  This suffering love is the truth and this truth is what sets us free.   Even when believers allow themselves to fall back into the slavery of sin, the very thought of this new freedom stirs a longing to return to the life of faith.  This is a holy freedom filled with God's ineffable freedom, a freedom to turn back, to reverse course, to rediscover the embrace of the Father.  It is a freedom that is expressed in conversion from sin and renunciation of anything that threatens our dignity as sons and daughters of God.  It is a freedom to seek the goodness and mercy of God yet again.  

To pray in this freedom is to keep vigilance with the eyes of the heart so that with every breath, in every moment, we might gaze on a love so much stronger than any form of slavery or even death.  A new life blood animates the spirits of those who live by such contemplative faith so that even when they suffer death, the life by which they live only becomes stronger.   Here, precisely because they are more fully alive, their praise becomes all the more beautiful.    Unfolding in all kinds of astonishing ways throughout space and time in the lives of those who put their trust in the Risen Lord, this illuminating work of love brings the only thing really new our old, tired existence has ever known.  Here, prayer that lets itself be captivated by the freshness of merciful love ponders a true word of hope for a discouraged world.  

Christian prayer extends through the vast horizons of love pioneered by Christ into human poverty.   The mysterious prayer of the Lord, a prayer that implicates the whole of his sacred humanity in merciful love, effects radical vulnerability and complete trust in the goodness and wisdom of the Father's plan in every situation, no matter how difficult.  Here, the prayer of the Word made flesh is not merely an example for us to follow.  His prayer is a new principle that animates the cry of recognition and love that lives in the Church and resounds throughout the cosmos in every trial, suffering and joy.  

The Blood of the Lamb and the Sign of the Cross

For Christians, the ancient rites of Passover and the Passion of Christ are deeply connected.   To deliver the People of God from slavery in Egypt, God sent an angel of death, a great power that stole from families the lives of those they deemed most precious.   To protect His own People from this destroying angel, He commanded the Hebrews to gather as families, slaughter a lamb and to sprinkle the blood of this lamb on the doorposts of their homes.  Seeing the blood, the angel of destruction passed over the homes of those who belonged to the Lord.  In the tradition of Christian prayer, this sprinkled blood foreshadows the power of the Blood of Christ signified by the Sign of the Cross.  So much did the early Christians connect their faith in the Blood of Christ with that of the saving events of the Passover, St. Paul explains, "Our Paschal Lamb, Christ has been Sacrificed" 1 Cor. 5:7.

Ecce Homo
By St. Albert Chmielowski of Krakow

The Gospels explicitly connect the sacred rites of the Last Supper of the Lord with the Passover celebration.  There are also other theological contexts connecting the sacrifice of the lamb with the Cross of Christ. (See Mark 15:25-37.)  In the Gospel of John, according to St. Augustine in Tractate 117, Jesus dies on the Day of Preparation for the Passover, the day on which lambs were slaughtered for the celebration of passover (See John 19:14).  The diversity of these Scriptural traditions is symphonic, speaking to the inexhaustible horizons of the Lord's saving work, a mystery so vast and beautiful the only proper response is thanksgiving (eucharist).

Whenever we prayerfully reflect on the beautiful connections of our salvation prefigured in Exodus and fulfilled in Christ, our hearts are made vulnerable to the vision of the early Christians.  Their vision was filled with wonder over the blood of the sacrificial lamb and what it revealed about the Mystery of the Cross.   They marveled over how the blood that was shed in ancients rites foreshadowed the Blood of Christ they received by faith and they rooted their worship in this contemplation.

"The Passion of the Christ was prefigured by the Jews when they received the command to mark the doors of their houses with blood.  It is by the sign of His Passion and Cross that you must be marked today on the forehead, as on a door, and that all Christians are marked."  St. Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus, as cited by Jean Danielou, The Bible and the Liturgy, Ann Arbor: Servant Books (1979), 167.

St. Augustine is connecting the ancient rite of sprinkling the blood of the lamb, a saving sign for the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt, with the cross that is given in the baptismal rites, a saving sign for those seeking freedom from sin.  Before baptism, the Church entrusts the Sign of the Cross to the chosen catechumen by tracing a cross on the forehead with the Oil of Catechumens.   This ancient Christian rite is continued in our Catholic practice today.   Those who receive the Sign of the Cross (sphargis)  through this anointing are safe from demonic attack in a manner similar to the way ancient Hebrew families were saved from the angel of death.   The blood of God, the life of God, is more powerful than evil.

"There is no other way to escape the destroying angel than by the blood of God, Who by love has poured out His blood for us.  And by this blood, we receive the Holy Spirit.  Indeed the Spirit and the blood are related in such a way that by the blood which is connatural to us, we receive the Spirit which is not con natural, and the gate of death is closed to our souls.  Such is the sphragis of the blood."  Paschal Homilies of Pseudo-Chrysostom as cited by Jean Danielou, The Bible and the Liturgy, Ann Arbor: Servant Books (1979), 166. 

Making the Sign of the Cross is like covering ourselves in the Blood of Jesus.  Whenever we make the Sign of the Cross with devout faith, we are renewing our baptismal commitment and the Lord communicates His life to us in new and unimaginable ways.  This Sign of Victory plunges us into the saving power of God foreshadowed in the Exodus.  In a world of all kinds of slavery and death, this Sign of Freedom reminds us that God has intervened.

This Sign of Salvation proclaims to all principalities of destruction and powers of darkness that God Himself has implicated Himself in our plight and helps us remember that we are never alone -- no matter how difficult or dark the circumstances we must face.  This Sign of Hope renews our faith that the saving power of His Blood is such that no matter how intense the struggle, no irrational force in the heavens above or on the earth below is able to surmount the love of God.  Through renewing this Seal of our Hearts, the heart covers itself again with the Blood of the Lamb so that even in death it knows Eternal Life.

Pope Francis: To follow, To Edify and To Confess

On March 14, following the conclave, Pope Francis gathered with the Cardinals to pray for the Church.   He exhorted his brothers with words that encourage me to pray, "After these days of grace I would like us all to have the courage, simply the courage, to walk in the presence of the Lord, with the Cross of the Lord, to build up the Church in the Blood of the Lord, the blood shed on the Cross, and to confess the glory of Christ crucified."  (Click here to for his very first words as Pope to those gathered at St. Peter's square - via Sr. Lisa at Nunspeak.)

The tender but challenging truth suggested in these three simple ideas fills my soul: to prayerfully walk in Christ's presence whereever it leads, to build up the Church with the Blood of Christ no matter the price, to confess the glory of Christ crucified with every fiber of strength God has given us - this is life to the full!  There is so much more to say, but for now, this close to Easter, it is good to think about the essence of His message, his invitation to have courage together before the mystery of the Cross by the blood of Jesus.  This is the way forward for the Church and for each one of us personally.

The blood of Jesus - fountain of our salvation!  My heart goes here because it helps me realize how much the Lord has loved us and the power of the life He gives us.  Because Christ has loved us with a love that is stronger than death - we have hope even in the face of our failures.

But there is an implied challenge in these words - to the degree that our hearts remain hard, that we will not repent, that our lives are unconverted by the love revealed by Christ Jesus, we have not fully welcomed the gift of our redemption - and only those who welcome this gift can enter deep into its saving mystery.  As the Holy Father preached today, God is so merciful that the problem is not that He will ever stop extending His forgiveness to us - but we might stop asking if we allow our hearts to be hard to his Word.

 If we want to be disciples of the Son of God, those who hear the word and keep it, we must deny ourselves and pick up our cross and follow our Crucified master. In order to be the disciple of the Lord, in order to listen to the Word in our heart, we must make space - a movement of self-denial, not only a denial of sin but a denial also of those things that dispose us to sin.

We can only be filled with the riches of Christ if we are empty of ourselves.  Filled with ourselves, drunk on materialism, caught up our cleverness, tied down to our need for control or riches or security or reputation - there is no space for God to give us His Word or freedom to welcome this gift of love.  And His Word laid open on the Cross is the true life of our hearts and only hope of this dying world. 

With the Word of the Father, the Word made flesh, we have everything. Without this Word of Hope living in our hearts and in our actions, we live without the meaning or purpose the Father created us to know.  Indeed, without the Word who was from the beginning, all else is loss and can only end poorly.

Our lives must begin and end in the Word entrusted to us by the Father, the Word who proceeds from His Heart, the Word who knows the way into our hearts, the Word who knows the only pathway into the Heart of the Trinity.  To live by the Word of the Father, to live by the Truth Himself, means, in addition to self-denial, the acceptance of suffering for the sake of love - this is a life covered and filled with the blood of Christ.  Love suffers the hardships of others - our spouse, our children, our parents, our neighbors, even our enemies - because love cannot stand for the beloved to suffer alone.   Love raised up by the blood of Christ suffers rejection and being misunderstood because it is more powerful than persecution.

Love never gives up hope because the blood of Christ is its strength.  But for a Christian to try to love without Christ, for a Christian to try to live without the Cross- love unsurrendered to God leads to disaster. As Pope Francis explained in his first mass with the Cardinals who elected Him:  "When we walk without the Cross, when one builds without the Cross, and when we confess Christ without the Cross, we are not the disciples of the Lord by the servants of the world."

Lent - praying from the heart

During Lent, we dedicate ourselves to prayer, fasting and alms-giving.   These practices are simple ways of expressing our gratitude to Jesus for what He has done for us.  This in fact is the very nature of penance.  Penance is love which responds to mercy - and this love is not content with words, thoughts and feelings.  This love needs to express itself in a prayer that cries from the heart, in sacrifice that really costs, and in little hidden acts of kindness that comfort those who most need it.

Why do we allow God to implicate us in the plights of others, especially during Lent?  God's love suffers the personal plight each of us.  He does this because He does not want us to suffer alone.  So He seeks us out in our suffering - the suffering that we have brought on ourselves and the suffering that others have brought on us.   He is concerned about our dignity and He is ready to do whatever it takes that we might be rectified and stand with Him who is Love Himself.  The extent to which He enters into our misery for this purpose is revealed on the Cross.  If we are to be His disciples, we must pick up our cross and follow Him.  This is how the Lord extends His saving mystery through space and time - He loves us so much He implicates us in this great work of His Love.

No matter how many times we fail, no matter how great our weaknesses, no matter how inadequate we are to the demands of love -- He is there with us, loving us, providing exactly what we need in the moment, and this because He really loves us that much.   How can we not respond by offering Him food and drink when we recognize Him in the disguise of those who hunger and thirst?  How can we not respond by forgoing a little comfort and convenience when He has already suffered so much discomfort and inconvenience for us?  How can we not respond by praying for those who need the love of God when He has never forgotten us in His love for the Father?

When prayer, sacrifice and generosity come together in thanksgiving to God for His goodness to us, deep places of the heart are purified and we rediscover the joy humanity was meant to know from the beginning.  Lent is all about this joy - a joy God's love allows us to know, the joy of being sons and daughters of God, the joy of heart so beautiful it would be wrong not to share it with those who need a little joy as well.

Would you like to hear this in audio file?  Click here. Courtesy of Kris McGregor of www.DiscerningHearts.com.

In an explanation of St. John of the Cross's teaching, I have offered some more thoughts on praying from the heart at Dan Burke's Roman Catholic Spiritual Direction.

Happy Divine Mercy Sunday!

The Feast of Divine Mercy, Divine Mercy Sunday, is a special grace.  Blessed John Paul II established this celebration on second Sunday of the Easter Octave.  Divine Mercy was so important in his ministry to the Church, he wrote an encyclical on it.  He also canonized St. Faustina Kowalska on this same feast.  She was the Polish mystic who promoted devotion to Divine Mercy just prior to World War II.  Blessed John Paul also died on the very eve of this feast day.  Last year, Pope Benedict beatified him on this day.

Calling to mind all these connections, it is easy to see why many consider Blessed John Paul II an apostle of Divine Mercy.  Prior to his death, John Paul II consecrated the Shrine to Divine Mercy in the Krakow neighborhood of Lagiewniki.  The Shrine is adjacent to the convent where St. Faustina died and it is not far from the labor camp where he worked during the war while secretly in formation for the priesthood.  In his homily consecrating the Shrine, the Pope of Mercy helps us see how the mystery of mercy in prayer converges on the power of the Holy Spirit and the Cross of Christ:

It is the Holy Spirit, the Comforter and the Spirit of Truth, who guides us along the ways of Divine Mercy. By convincing the world "concerning sin and righteousness and judgement" (Jn 16,8), he also makes known the fullness of salvation in Christ. This "convincing" concerning sin is doubly related to the Cross of Christ. On the one hand, the Holy Spirit enables us, through Christ's Cross, to acknowledge sin, every sin, in the full dimension of evil which it contains and inwardly conceals. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit permits us, again through the Christ's Cross, to see sin in the light of the mysterium pietatis, that is, of the merciful and forgiving love of God (cf. Dominum et Vivificantem, 32).  Consequently, this "convincing concerning sin" also becomes a conviction that sin can be laid aside and that man can be restored to his dignity as a son beloved of God. Indeed, the Cross "is the most profound condescension of God to man [...]. The Cross is like a touch of eternal love upon the most painful wounds of man's earthly existence" (Dives in Misericordia, 8).

Mercy and Advent

These days of Advent are about preparing a welcome for the Light of Christ who comes to us anew in ever more wonderful ways because of God's great love for us.   When He first came it was the poor, the lowly, the foreigner, and the outcasts of society who welcomed Him.  He in fact became all these things.  But what of the mighty, the proud and the rich?   To welcome Him is to say yes to love, especially love in difficult circumstances, when it really counts.  Mercy is love in the face of suffering and during Advent we prepare for Christmas through the mercy we show to one another.  This means we need to find ways to effectively love one another in the midst of suffering.  This can be inconvenient and even painful in all kinds of ways.  But Christ crucified is not convenient and his coming in our midst demands that we let go of our other priorities and allow Him to become our priority, especially when He is present in those most in need - the abandoned, the neglected, the despairing, the mourning, the depressed, those suffering all kinds of illnesses and disease, the hungry, the cold.  He is there with such as these and comes to us through them-- and being watchful of his coming, staying vigilant, and "making straight a highway for God" means that we must go into the highways and byways, seek out and love these whom God loves, so that his mercy might be revealed, so that He might be welcome among us again.

As a result of Christ's salvific work, man exists on earth with hope of eternal life and holiness.  And even though the victory over sin and death achieved by Christ in His cross and resurrection does not abolish temporal suffering from human life, nor free from suffering the whole historical dimension of human existence, it nevertheless throws a new light upon this dimension and upon every suffering: the light of salvation.  This is the Light of the Gospel, that is, of the Good News.  At the heart of this light is the truth expounded in conversation with Nicodemus: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son." 

Blessed John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris #15.

Being Merciful and the Holy Spirit

The Gifts of the Holy Spirit are understood in many beautiful and wonderful ways. For example, the gift of counsel has been understood to identify a movement of heart that gives a knowing certitude about what to do in a difficult situation. St. Thomas Aquinas sees a relationship between this gift of counsel and the beatitude declared by Christ "Blessed are the merciful, they shall receive mercy" (see ST II-II, q.52, a.4) One of the petitions of the Lord's Prayer also comes to mind on this point, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." What is the relationship between the prompting of the Holy Spirit  and the blessedness realized in being merciful?


To say that someone is merciful (misericordia) indicates one's heart has been pierced by the plight of another. It is an intimate and personal moment which reaches for the restoration of dignity in the one who suffers.  It is a sharing in one's own heart the misery suffered by someone in some way entrusted to us.  To affirm the dignity of another, I need to be able to enter into that person's heart with something that will address the misery, that thirst for love.   Otherwise, my act of mercy can only be an external kindness which never really addresses the actual plight of the person God has brought to me at this moment.

Only the Lord has the power and authority to enter the heart of another.  He created the heart - each heart - and so He is the only one who knows the way.   He is the Living Water which alone quenches the soul that thirsts for love.   If He stands at the door and knocks, entering the heart is what He won the right to do by his death on the Cross.   He who is Pure Love vanquished the powers of death and hell, piercing the heart of humanity because He allowed us, our misery, to pierce Him.  In this way, He suffered the misery and meaninglessness of each of us on the Cross. Because He yearns that we be restored to our dignity and that we be free of such burdens, with this power He is always knocking, He is always seeking the lost sheep, always running off to meet his lost son no matter how far away, always trying to bandage the neighbor He finds beat up on the side of the road. And we who are joined to Him by faith and members of his mystical body are the instruments through whom He works for this great purpose.

The gift of counsel and being merciful intersect before the plight of the neighbor God entrusts to me. When the Lord brings us a neighbor who is suffering, He also sends us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit prompts us with divine power and authority so that we might be an icon of Christ, so that the mystery of Christ might be extended to this suffering heart in this present moment, so that the Lord might deliver this particular loved one, neighbor, stranger or even enemy from the hell in which they are engulfed.

Indeed, the most dangerous of all moments is to stand before the suffering of another and to be paralyzed by our own indifference. It is a danger to our own humanity, a temptation to become inhumane. St. Thomas and other authoritative voices from our tradition seem to have understood that the Holy Spirit will not allow this to happen if we are open to his subtle movements in our hearts. Even when circumstances are so surprising and overwhelming that it is difficult to develop a good plan, the Holy Spirit gives us enough understanding and certitude about how to be merciful in such moments that we can act. With whatever effort we make, even if only feeble and reluctant, the power of Christ's salvific work not only opens up the possibility of being holy ourselves in ever new ways, but also gushes forth through us to refresh all those thirsting for living waters. How much more Christ can do when we act with the boldness of the sons and daughters of God!

Divine Mercy and habitare secum

The Christian life of prayer is rooted in the mercy of God.  There are such dark places in our lives, only with the mercy of the Lord can we face ourselves and deal with the reality of who we really are.   Living with yourself, this ideal began to be articulated around the time of St. Benedict, although it was a lived part of Christian spirituality from the very beginning.  It means not only confessing sin and doing penance for the evil that one has done or entertained, not only accepting one's weaknesses and limitations before God, but most especially habitare secum means being able to enter into the depths of one's own heart to humbly listen to the Lord who waits for us there.   

Christian prayer deals with the reality of the human heart.  The heart is the spring from which flows all that is good and evil about ourselves.   It is broken and wounded, laden with many sorrows, and yet still capable of finding joy in what is good.  It is an inner sanctuary where God speaks to us.  People who do not want to deal with themselves or deal with God do not like to go there.  They remain unfamiliar to themselves and unaware of what is driving them in life.   Yet, when God calls us to Himself and we begin to yearn to be with Him, entering into our hearts, accepting what is there and offering to the Lord is the best way to find Him.  

The reason why has to do with the theme of mercy Pope Benedict singled out in his homily at Sunday's beatification of John Paul II - mercy is the limit of evil.  John Paul II loved the theme of Divine Mercy - it was the mercy of God that helped him deal with the cruel brutality of World War II which was followed by decades of Soviet oppression.  John Paul was convinced that Divine Mercy is the limit of evil because the more he trusted in Jesus, the more mercy triumphed over evil.  Contemplating the face of Christ and clinging to the mercy of God was the secret not only of dealling with himself but also being merciful to others, even those who tried to kill him.  His confidence in Divine Mercy made John Paul II a compelling advocate for the dignity of the human person - it is why people were drawn to him all over the world.  They wanted to know the Mercy of God his life in Christ radiated.


Evil, the mystery of sin, dehumanizes - but Divine Mercy raises on high! Mercy is love that suffers the misery of another, the evil that afflicts someone's heart, so that the dignity of that person might be restored.   Christ embraced our misery on the Cross that we might know God's mercy.

How this applies to the heart is that the good and evil we find there are not co-equal dualistic principles.  Good has definitively triumphed over evil in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  When we turn to Him in faith, He gives us the power of his mercy and teaches us to realize the victory of good over evil in our lives.  He has already suffered our misery with us and is ever ready to meet us there - so that in Him all that is good, noble and true about us is rescued from the mystery of sin and raised up to new life.  

To learn to live with ourselves - this is to look at those places in our lives in which evil has a foothold and to offer these to God so that we can realize in ourselves how Divine Mercy is the limit of evil.  However deep the abyss of our misery - the abyss of mercy issuing forth form the wounds of Christ is inexhaustibly deeper.  The more we discover this limit to the evil in our own hearts, the more we can rejoice in the remarkable and astonishing presence of the Lord in our lives.  Rather than being driven by all kinds of brokenness we do not understand, we find ourselves able to live like St. Benedict, Bl. John Paul II and the other great saints - who through such interior deliberation discovered the secret of living with themselves before the face of God - habitare secum - is seeking the Mercy of the Lord.

Divine Mercy Sunday

What makes our prayer for mercy powerful, capable of changing not only our lives but the whole world?  From my childhood, Pope John Paul II helped me learn to be confident in prayer.  In particular, his efforts restoring the devotion to Divine Mercy proposed by Sr. Faustina Kowalska as well as his encyclical on Divine Mercy have helped me deal with personal suffering and begin to learn to be merciful to others.  The secret to confidence in prayer is union with Christ - He perfects our prayer.

For the last nine days, my family has gathered each evening to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy for ourselves and the whole world.  The prayers "Eternal Father, I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus" and "For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy" are deep and rich.  They dispose the soul to the logic of God's mercy, the logic of the Cross.  They also are Eucharistic - and help me think about the sacrificial and liturgical dimensions of our faith.  The death of Christ released his saving power into the world and his resurrection restores and raises up the dignity of humanity so that we might pray in a way the pleases God.  The power of Christian prayer is its union with the prayer of Christ, the Heavenly Man, whose prayers are always heard by the Father.

Christian prayer filled with the Holy Spirit is taken up by the Risen Lord from our hearts into His Heart where our human weakness is infused with divine power.  In  the sanctuary of his Heart, our prayer is transformed into something beautiful for God, something worth offering to the Father. This is because in His Heart all that is true, noble and good about humanity has been rescued from death and raised up above the heavens.  Our prayers find their place in this heavenly humanity of Jesus.  These prayers breathed in the believer by the Holy Spirit co-inhere in Him and His prayer co-inheres in them. In such prayer God is praised, and men and women are heard.  Elisabeth of the Trinity contemplated how this union of hearts with the Lord "thrills" the heart of the Father, and Faustina Kowalska understood how our prayers made pleasing and acceptable by the blood of Christ extend the splendors of his power and glory to the whole world.

For those who are celebrating the mercies of the Lord tomorrow,  for those joined either physically or spiritually with the beatification of John Paul II on this great Feast of Mercy, we are participating in a great spiritual revolution which the world needs today more than ever.  Our prayers are no mere exercise in sentimentality or mental hygiene. Joined to Christ, they have the power to change the world.  Our prayers ride on the waves of the divine mercy that flow from the heart of Christ.  Have confidence in the power of God and pray ardently - for He is the unfailing Fount of Mercy who counts on our prayer and our witness.  It is his plan to use our frail efforts, our humble prayer, to envelop the whole world in His power of love, especially those people and places that are most in need.  Hope in God ...He hopes even more in you.

The Passion of Word and Silence

This week we make pilgrimage with the Word made flesh to the Cross.  We walk with crowds who welcomed Him, souls who could not stay awake with Him, souls who betrayed Him, souls who denied him, souls who falsely accused Him, souls who mocked Him, souls who abused Him, souls who ignored Him, souls who condemned Him, souls who were too afraid to stand for Him, souls who ran from Him, souls who wept over Him, and souls who followed Him.  This week I remember that I have been, in different ways, all these souls - and it is time to ask the Lord for his grace, to get up and to follow Him on the Way.  This week, whoever we are, Christ crucified looks on us with love - his eyes searching for our eyes, his heart thirsting for ours.

It was the Beloved Disciple who stood at the foot of the Cross with the Mother of God's son - they stood in faith believing even in the face of the anti-thesis of all for which they had hoped.  It was there Christ entrusted one to the other - so that every Beloved disciple who takes her into his home learns the wisdom of this moment.   This is the moment where the immortal Word weds our mortal silence - embracing our death that we might finally live life to the full.  May the Lord draw us into this moment - the moment which discloses the immensity of his inexhaustible love.

The Mystery of the Cross

The Cross of Christ is the threshold where the broken heart of God embraces the broken heart of man.  There is no other way to God.  No technique, no method, can replace the Cross.  No amount of self-indulgence, insobriety or concern for worldly affairs can give us life like the moment of Golgatha.  In Christ crucified He shows us our sins against the vast horizons of his love.  If we allow these unimaginable horizons to pierce us to the heart, to draw us out of ourselves and into Him, then there is the most beautiful of all encounters.  This is a real heart to heart: we ponder the truth about ourselves in Him and God contemplates the truth about Himself in us.

Some say that they cannot find the Cross in their life.  They cannot find sacrifices to make.  If this is really true, I do not think it is, it means that there is a lack of love.  We can only truly love at our own expense.  Whenever we set out to do something beautiful for God, whenever we try to love to the end, we must go by the way of the Cross.  Only when we have spent ourselves for the Lord and for those He has entrusted to us do we begin to taste this mystery.  Here, the limits of our humanity meet the limitlessness of God.

The Mystery of Mercy and Penance

Pope John Paul II, soon to be recognized as among the Blessed, understood the importance of mercy and penance in the Christian life.  He understood mercy to be love which suffers the misery of the beloved in order to affirm the beloved's dignity.  Penance he explained in terms of a loving response for mercy received.  In his thought, mercy and penance as moments of intimacy between God and humanity coincide on the cross.

The Pilgrim Pope explores these ideas in his teachings by reflecting on Jesus' parable of the prodigal son.  In this parable, the sons (who are more concerned about things than persons) are contrasted with the father (who is more concerned for his sons than things).  The truth about justice is revealed in the implications this parable has regarding our response to mercy.  Justice is not enough for the human spirit.  Instead, in the order of mercy, justice serves our love for one another.  The handmade of mercy, it protects the conditions that true friendship, true family demands.  

The Beginning of Contrition
The son came to his senses.  A key moment in this parable is when the prodigal son realizes not only his impoverished plight but also sees that he has broken his relationship with his father.  His life project had become a failure and he had squandered his possessions and his dignity.  Mysteriously, because he has not completely forgotten his father's love, he has confidence, enough confidence to begin his journey home.  It is not that he presumes he is owed anything at all.  Instead, his heart has an insight into the heart of his father - he sees that truth a child always sees in a good father, a goodness that inspires confidence.  Knowing this, he does not doubt that there would still be a place for him in his father's home, if only as a servant.  In a certain way, this kind of confidence is like the beginning of contrition or true sorrow for our sin.  This kind of sorrow springs out of our humble confidence in the goodness of God.

Mercy
The father sees his son coming from a long way off and his heart is pierced by the plight of his son - and he runs to embrace him.  The story is told as if the father had been anxiously awaiting his son's return, as if he was even impatient that it had taken so long.  But this is exactly the character of merciful love -  it yearns, aches, sorrows over the beloved - especially because it cannot bear the thought that even for a moment the beloved would be deprived of dignity.  It is impatient to suffer anything that the dignity of the beloved might be restored.  In the case of the father, he would suffer being misunderstood, rejected and humiliated - but for love of both sons, he could not have it any other way.  Through Christ crucified, God the Father communicates this kind of suffering love to humanity - so that only by passing through the wounds of Christ may one cross the threshold of union with God.

Penance
The parable of Christ reveals a reality to which we must respond.  When we see the heart of God pierced by our plight, our hearts must not remain unmoved.  His sorrow must pierce us, too.  The only adequate value response to the suffering love of God is to embrace it in loving gratitude.  And we can only love at our own expense.  Sacrifice, intercession, renunciation, restitution, trials, perseverance, bearing with one another, suffering abandonment, betrayal, denial, persecution, rejection - all these are but a small return for the love the Father has given us through his Son - love crucified for our sakes.  

Sacrifice and Mercy - the Spiritual Mission of St. Faustina

Sr. Maria Faustina Kowalska died at the age of 33 in 1938 misunderstood by most of the religious sisters with whom she had lived her life.  They appreciated her kindness, hard work, and faithfulness to their rule of life, but many of her fellow religious also thought that she was delusional and tormented.  Indeed, she claimed to have received several revelations from the Lord, sometimes involving direct commands, all of which concerned his divine mercy.  She believed that she was entrusted with the mission of making the Lord's mercy known.   Through living a life of sacrificial love for the Lord, the absurdity of Sr. Faustina's claim has become an occasion of hope for the world.

To accomplish this mission, she was humbly faithful to the promptings of the Lord even in the midst of great suffering.  With great humility, developing confidence in the Lord and growing determination, she would act on what she believed the Lord asked of her only after she submitted to her confessor first, even if he misunderstood her - which was often at first.  She also worked under the authority of her religious superior.  She seemed to trust that the Lord would speak through those in rightful authority even more clearly than when He addressed her directly.  Not only was her message rejected initially, she would also suffer incredible spiritual trials where she felt like the Lord was angry with her, and in total darkness and tears doubted her own experience.  This would make her question whether she was in fact as crazy as everyone else thought her to be.

Jesus slowly helped her see these kinds of experiences, as intensely discouraging as they could be, as opportunities to love and trust Him even more.  She would offer to the Lord by a simple act of loving faith all - her doubts, the pain of not feeling the Lord's presence or love, even the fear that God had rejected her and was angry with her.  Even though she felt this way - she chose not to believe it, not to live out of these feelings, but to live by faith in the Lord alone.  She believed the Lord knew what she needed, that He would not allow her to deal with more than she could handle.  Her job was to trust in Him.  To experience these things but to continue to trust, love and be faithful in her daily duties, to patiently love even those who thought she was crazy - this was her sacrifice, a sacrifice of love that she could offer Jesus for all He had suffered for her.  It was a way for her to be in solidarity with all those who had lost or were losing their hope.  She understood them, felt one with them and was able to really pray for them.

This is what it means to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2).  This kind of faithful love is what we mean when we say "offer it up."    This humble attitude gave Jesus the space He needed to accomplish great things.  It is through our union with the Cross of Christ that mercy comes not only into our lives - but into the whole world. The Lord uses our trials to extend his his mercy.  Because of her faithfulness, the whole Church is blessed with a greater awareness of the inexhaustible mercy of God.

Mercy - love that suffers the misery of another to affirm his or her dignity - is one of the most beautiful ways a person can be like God.  This is the way of the Cross.  Divine Mercy is God suffering the plight of humanity, enduring with each person the incredible pain and sorrow that marks human existence.  Christian spirituality is an invitation to enter into this mystery of love by our small sacrifices.  We fast, we give alms, we pray that mercy might enter into our lives.  It is especially in small and hidden sacrifices like renouncing contention and hostility in our marriages and family life, or even lovingly bearing with each other and not taking offense in a confrontation.  Such sacrifices have real spiritual value.  They have the power to crack open the world, to lay vulnerable the heart, so that men and women, friends and family, even strangers and enemies might remember their dignity - that they are loved by God.

Because of the generous and humble sacrifices of St. Faustina in those chaotic years before World War II, one week after the great Easter Triduum, Catholics around the world now celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday.  In fact, this Divine Mercy Sunday, the Pope who canonized her will himself be declared blessed.  Their missions converge on this feast of mercy.  But what is Divine Mercy Sunday?  It is a day of prayer where we ask the Lord to renew our trust in his merciful love so that we might live it more fully in our lives.  It is a day we pray for those most in need of Divine Mercy - the despairing, the dying, the lonely, the suffering.  Our generosity with Christ, our readiness to make sacrifices out of love for Him this Lent, this humble effort to love Him in return for all He has suffered for us - this will make space in the world for His Mercy to be unleashed.

Boldly Entering the Heart of Another

Catherine de Hueck Doherty believed the Lord told her to boldly go into the hearts of others.  She could only do so if she committed herself to a life of mercy - which she did.   But she also needed most of all a gift from God which our tradition calls the Gift of Counsel, a gift given at baptism and confirmation, a gift renewed and deepened by prayer.  

We are normally told that the gift of counsel is when the Holy Spirit prompts us to do the right thing in a tricky situation.  True enough.  But St. Thomas understood this virtue as deeply related to mercy.  It is a gift that lets us see the plight of another, the misery that they suffer in their heart.  We need to be able to see this, to understand it a little, if we are to be merciful at all.  

In the mystical tradition, there are those who can even "read" the hearts of others.  Padre Pio had this gift - and I have heard accounts of Catherine de Hueck which suggest she was blest with this special charism as well.  They know secret sorrows that someone is trying to hide - and they speak the truth about them to help people face their situation with new courage.  But the gift of reading hearts, as extraordinary as it is, has its basis in this more common experience - the heart piercing prompting of the Holy Spirit which will not allow us to remain indifferent about the plight of another.  While this gift does not allow us usually to "read" what someone is trying to hide - it does help us to see things that people may not know they are communicating.  It operates in the order of mercy - for mercy's sake.  Bot h Padre Pio and the Baroness of Madonna House lived for mercy, followed the promptings of the Holy Spirit - because they lived lives of deep prayer.

Mercy is love that suffers the misery of another to affirm their dignity.  This is what the Father of the prodigal son did.  He saw his son's plight from a long way off, and his son's loss of dignity pierced him to the heart.  So he ran to his son to restore him to his household - to give him back a little of the dignity he lost.  From the outside, it looks like the father is allowing himself to be taken advantage of - but from the inside we have a son who trusts his father enough to try to return and a father who loves his son so much that no other return than his son's full return into the household is acceptable.  He repeats the action of going out to restore the dignity of his sons - twice.  Similarly, the samaritan who sees his beaten and nearly dead enemy as his neighbor.  His heart is pierced so deeply by his neighbor's plight, it is not enough for him to bring him into safe harbor.  He pays all his neighbor's debts, concerned for his complete restoration.  In both cases, the merciful lose themselves in the plight of the one they love - and their love looks squandered from the outside.  But with the gift of counsel - God helps us to see what is really going on, and when we see things from the Lord's perspective, when we accept his counsel, we cannot have it any other way.  His gift of counsel not only helps us choose what is right in a tricky situation - it helps us choose what is merciful, what helps restore our neighbor's dignity.