One of the things I had not gotten around to during Lent was blog about Divine Mercy. I had intended to write about that around Good Friday to the week past Easter, but didn’t.
To do so then would have been very appropriate, as that time is a wonderful example of God’s Mercy towards us. Jesus, the Incarnate God, dying for our sins so that we may receive eternal life. Now THAT’S mercy.
However, now is also an appropriate time as we are nearing Pentecost, the time when the Church was formally born with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and believer gathered with them. The Church is an ever present sign of God’s Mercy and forgiveness, and a vessel for enabling ourselves to always get back up again when we mess up. We sin, we fall, we confess, we strive to do better.
There are numerous examples of Divine Mercy in Sacred Scripture. But when it is mentioned the term refers to the messages (or “interior locutions”) of Jesus to a young Polish nun in the 1930’s named Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska. These are an accepted part of Catholicism, although not binding upon the faithful. Apparitions like those at Lourdes and Fatima and messages such as those received by Sr. Faustina (now Saint Faustina) do not add anything new to God’s Revelation to humanity. They are merely signs that the Good Shepherd is doing His work and is reminding us of certain necessary things. Quite often apparitions and locutions occur during critical moments in human history, indicating that the Lord’s “sheep” are going astray and He is coming after them.
Jesus’ messages to St. Faustina concern God’s immense love for people and His boundless “ocean of Mercy” to which we are all entitled. No matter how dirtied we are by the sins of our past, when we dip into the ocean of Mercy we are scrubbed clean. God’s mercy is available to us for the asking, and is the source of immeasurable graces.
The devotion and practice of Divine Mercy is critical, I think, to anyone in recovery. It fixes our brokenness and mends our wounded souls. It teaches us that God is a loving Father, that Jesus is our brother and the Holy Spirit our infallible guide.
Down along the left sidebar of this blog there are a number of major links regarding Divine Mercy, click on them at your leisure to learn more. I hope to write about Divine Mercy over the years, both drawing on St. Faustina’s Diary (in which she recorded Jesus’ messages) and from Sacred Scripture.
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