I’m going to talk a little bit about Pope Francis because of his recent death, and also because one of the greatest gifts that Pope Francis gave me was the Year of Mercy. Does anybody remember the Year of Mercy? It was in 2015, and it went from 2015 to 2016.
We are celebrating a Jubilee right now, the year 2025. Every 25 years the church celebrates a Jubilee, but in 2015, he made a special Jubilee, and it was this Year of Mercy.
When I was in the seminary, I was given at least three or four copies of Sister Faustina’s diary. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the diary. It’s a big red book, about 700 pages. We had a lot of reading to do and one of my professors even joked, he said, “This, assignment is for your 3:00 AM reading.” I thought I don’t have time to read 700 pages. Then when I was ordained, I got another copy for an ordination gift, and I still didn’t take the hint. I was ordained in 2007, and it wasn’t until the Year of Mercy 2015, that I read Sister Faustina’s diary. Ever since then I have been so devoted to Divine Mercy and just wanting to share the absolute Love and Mercy that Jesus wants to pour out upon all of us, not only today, but every day at 3:00 PM.
Here is what He said to Faustina to tell My priests:
My daughter, speak to priests about this inconceivable mercy of Mine. The flames of mercy are burning within Me — clamoring to be spent; I want to keep pouring them out upon souls; souls just don’t want to believe in My goodness. That’s the first thing. Kowalska, Saint Maria Faustina. Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul (pp. 103-104). Marian Press. Kindle Edition.
Second: Out of love for you all, I will avert any punishments which are rightly meted out by My Father’s justice. My daughter, I have inclined My heart to your requests. Your assignment and duty here on earth is to beg for mercy for (40) the whole world. No soul will be justified until it turns with confidence to My mercy, and this is why the first Sunday after Easter is to be the Feast of Mercy. On that day, priests are to tell everyone about My great and unfathomable mercy. I am making you [my priests] the administrator of My mercy. Tell the confessor that the Image is to be on view in the church and not within the enclosure in that convent. By means of this Image I shall be granting many graces to souls; so, let every soul have access to it. Kowalska, Saint Maria Faustina. Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul (p. 218-219). Marian Press. Kindle Edition.
By the way, we do always have this in our Chapel as well.
Third, out of the five points I am going to make about priests.
I desire that priests proclaim this great mercy of Mine towards souls of sinners. Let the sinner not be afraid to approach Me.
I think a lot of people say, ‘I don’t need a priest to go to Confession”. I think the reason they say that is sometimes there’s fear. There’s a fear of placing ourselves before another and speaking about something that has always been in the darkness and bringing that out into the light.
But Jesus says, Let the sinner not be afraid to approach Me. The flames of mercy are burning in Me — clamoring to be spent; I want to pour them out upon these souls.
She said that Jesus complained to her in these words: The distrust of a chosen soul causes Me even greater pain; despite My inexhaustible love for them, they do not trust Me. Even My death is not enough for them. Woe to the soul that abuses these [gifts]. Kowalska, Saint Maria Faustina. Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul (p. 46). Marian Press. Kindle Edition.
The thing that tears at His heart most is when we don’t trust Him. All He asks of us in this life is nothing simpler than trust. That’s why in every image she asked it would be inscribed with, “Jesus, I trust in you”. No matter what, no matter how grave our sin is, no matter how trapped we feel in our sin, no matter how weighed down we feel, can we trust Him? Jesus, I trust in you.
He said: The distrust of a chosen soul causes Me even greater pain, despite my inexhaustible love for them. They do not trust me. Even my death was not enough for them.
The fourth point is: the Lord said to Faustina, 1521 The Lord said to me, My daughter, do not tire of proclaiming My mercy. In this way you will refresh this Heart of Mine, which burns with a flame of pity for sinners. Tell My priests that hardened sinners will repent on hearing their words when they speak about My unfathomable mercy, about the compassion I have for them in My Heart.
Think about this. Hardened sinners. We are all here because we are sinners desiring His mercy. This is the first Sunday after Easter and I think Easter Sunday is when we receive into our church people that really only come on Christmas and Easter. I haven’t figured out how yet, but I realized that this Divine Mercy Sunday is for them. So, thinking about next year, how can we invite people to come to confession on Divine Mercy Sunday? Because even the hardest Sinner will repent.
To priests who proclaim and extol My mercy, I will give wondrous power; I will anoint their words and touch the hearts of those to whom they will speak. Kowalska, Saint Maria Faustina. Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul (p. 462). Marian Press. Kindle Edition.
So, He will touch your heart today.
Finally, the fifth point: She said that she heard these words from Jesus:
687 Once, as I was going down the hall to the kitchen, I heard these words in my soul: Say unceasingly the chaplet that I have taught you. Whoever will recite it will receive great mercy at the hour of death. Priests will recommend it to sinners as their last hope of salvation. Even if there were a sinner most hardened, if he were to recite this chaplet only once, he would receive grace from My infinite mercy. I desire that the whole world know My infinite mercy. I desire to grant unimaginable graces to those souls who trust in My mercy. Kowalska, Saint Maria Faustina. Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul (p. 250). Marian Press. Kindle Edition.
If we could just get people once in their life to pray this Divine Mercy Chaplet, they would receive the mercy of God.
How do we observe Divine Mercy Sunday? There are seven points:
- Celebrate Mass and receive Communion on Easter, which we all have.
- Sincerely repent of all of our sins; to acknowledge our sins and sincerely desire to turn away.
- Complete trust in Jesus. We may have a sin that we’re struggling with, and we haven’t been able to get rid of it. Can we at least completely trust in Jesus?
- Go to confession. If you went within the last eight days of the octave, that’s good if you want to go after, I will still be hearing Confessions, and you can also come next Saturday as well. Anytime between seven days before and seven days after.
What I like to tell people is that there are two things I want everyone to know about Confession:
- Do not be afraid to confess. Even your darkest sin. If there is anything in your life that you are just terrified to speak out loud, do so in Confession. Because once you do, you’re placing your trust in Jesus, you’re bringing out of the dark and into His wonderful life. So don’t be afraid to bring anything, even the deepest sin. I would encourage all of us, even if you have been to Confession, the more we look back on our lives and realize our sins, a lot of times the sins are deeper than we realized and don’t be afraid to do a moral examination of your life. Really think, have I really confessed that deep sin in my life, if you’re scrupulous, don’t do this. It is really good for us to really meditate on that.
- There is no unforgivable sin. I think sometimes we might think that our God could never forgive this. There is no unforgivable sin. The deepest darkest sin you have, bring it to Confession and there’s no unforgivable sin.
- Receive Communion on the Feast of Divine Mercy. Hopefully you receive communion last night or today.
- Venerate the image of Divine Mercy.
- The hardest one of all. Be merciful to others. Through our actions, words and prayers on behalf . . . I’ll talk about that in in a moment here and why that’s so important.
- As I mentioned, 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.
Jesus told Faustina to paint this image and then he explained, These two rays issued forth from the depths of My tender mercy when My agonized Heart was opened by a lance on the Cross. Happy is the one who will dwell in their shelter, for the just hand of God shall not lay hold of him (299). By means of this image I shall grant many graces to souls. It is to be a reminder of the demands of My mercy, because even the strongest faith is of no avail without works. (742).
Hopefully you have an image on the pamphlet that you have with you, but it’s great to have an image of the Divine Mercy in your home as well. And then finally, At three o’clock, implore My mercy, especially for sinners; and, if only for a brief moment, immerse yourself in My Passion, particularly in My abandonment at the moment of agony. This is the hour of great mercy. In this hour, I will refuse nothing to the soul that makes a request of Me in virtue of My Passion (Diary, 1320).
As we come and recite the Divine Mercy Chaplet at 3:00 pm, bring your prayer, your request to Him. Whatever it is, He will grant an amazing grace today.
Briefly, I just want to talk about Pope Francis. Pope Francis was ambiguous about some things in the faith, and that could create a challenge. There was one thing he was never ambiguous about and that is the mercy of God. And I think that’s the greatest gift that he has given to us to help us know that that is the one thing that we’re always supposed to trust is the mercy of God.
In that Year for Mercy, he wrote a papal bull. A bull is a letter by a pope with their stamp on it. He said, Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy. These words might well sum up the mystery of the Christian faith. Mercy has become living and visible in Jesus of Nazareth, reaching its culmination in him. The Father, “rich in mercy” (Ephesians 2:4), after having revealed his name to Moses as “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6), has never ceased to show, in various ways throughout history, his divine nature.
When faced with the gravity of sin, God responds with the fullness of mercy. So, the more we face the gravity of our sins, the more we will experience His mercy. Mercy will always be greater than any sin, and no one can place limits on the love of God who is ever ready to forgive.
It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that this mercy is a visceral love coming forth. It gushes forth from the very depths naturally, full of tenderness and compassion, indulgence and mercy. As we hear in Psalm 136: His mercy endures forever.
Pope Francis’s motto was taken from a homily by Saint Bede the Venerable about Jesus calling the tax collector. The motto is miserando atque eligendo. And that motto is ‘having mercy and choosing him, he says, “follow me.”’
[Jesus therefore sees the tax collector, and since he sees by having mercy and by choosing, he says to him, ‘follow me’.]
This has particular significance in the life and spirituality of the Pope. In fact, on the feast of Saint Matthew in 1953, the young Jorge Bergoglio experienced, at the age of 17, in a very special way the loving presence that God had in his life. He had gone to Confession, and he felt his heart touched with the sense of the descent of the mercy of God, who with the gaze of tender love called him at that moment to religious life and he would enter the Jesuits.
The Holy Father has been a Pope of Mercy and that’s the greatest gift that he gave to us. The reason I love Divine Mercy so much [as you all know I love Confession so much] but it is a time to really focus in our lives once a year, intensely begging for the mercy of God. The more that we beg, the more that He will grant us His mercy.
There’s another phrase by Saint Augustine, and the phrase is Misericordia et Misera [it sounds very similar] but the phrase means Mercy Meets Misery. Sin causes us misery and the deeper we sin, the more miserable we are. This phrase comes from St. Augustine, and he is recounting the story of Jesus meeting with the woman who was caught in adultery (cf. Jn 8:1-11). He said, “it would be difficult to imagine a more beautiful or apt way of expressing the mystery of God’s love when it touches the sinner”. Imagine, the two of them are alone. Everybody dropped their stones, and they’ve walked away. Jesus says, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. It’s just the two of them. Mercy, Jesus, meeting the woman in her misery. This helps us see that God is with us in our sinfulness and in our misery. 16.31
Today, Jesus tells St. Faustina, I am sending you with my mercy to the people of the whole world. I do not want to punish aching mankind. He sees that we’re aching, and His desire is not to punish but I desire to heal it, pressing it to my merciful heart (Diary, 1588). He says to her, You are the secretary of My Mercy; [then she wrote 700 pages of it] I have chosen you for that office in this and the next life. (Diary, 1605). So, she continues to be a saint and it is what we believe, that the Saints are still interceding to make known to souls the great mercy that I have for them, and to teach them to trust in the bottomless depth of My mercy. (Diary, 1567).
There is no misery, Jesus says to Faustina. There could be a match for My mercy. Misery meets mercy. Jesus says to Sister Faustina, when we ask for his mercy, be like a beggar who does not back away when he gets more alms but offers thanks the more fervently. You too, should not back away that you’re not worthy of receiving graces when I give them to you. I know that you are unworthy. He knows, but rejoice all the more and take as many (129) treasures from My heart as you can carry, for then you will please Me more. And I’ll tell you one thing – take these graces not only for yourself, but also for others. You can do that today. You can take these graces not only for yourself, but also for others. Encourage the souls with whom you come in contact to trust in My infinite Mercy. Oh, how I love those souls who have complete confidence in Me – I will do everything for them. He wants to do it for you.
1578: The graces of My mercy are drawn by the means of ONE VESSEL ONLY. So, Jesus says here is the only way I’m going to give this grace of my mercy to. What’s the one vessel? TRUST. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive. He’s just asking us to trust Him, to trust Him today.
He says to her, (1485) Do not be afraid of your Savior, O sinful soul. I make the first move to come to you, for I know that by yourself you are unable to come to Me. Child, do not run away from your Father; be willing to talk openly with your God of mercy who wants to speak words of pardon and lavish His graces upon you. …My mercy is greater than your sins, and those of the entire world. Think of the horrible world that we live in and all the sin. His mercy is greater than all.
After communion, Jesus came to her one time. And told her how much he desires to come to come to human hearts. He said, I desire to unite myself with human souls; My great delight is to unite myself with these souls. Know, My daughter, that when I come to a human heart in Holy Communion, My hands are full all kinds of graces which I want to give to the soul. But souls do not even pay attention to Me; they leave Me to Myself and busy themselves with other things. Oh, how sad I am that souls do not recognize love! They treat me as a dead object.
If we don’t realize what He’s giving to us in Communion, if we don’t take great delight to open our hearts and to receive Him instead of treating him like a dead object…
Finally, before we pray the Chaplet, she is coming towards the end of her life. She feels very weak, she is suffering, and she receives Holy Communion. After Communion she says, I saw the Lord just I had seen Him during Adoration. The Lord’s gaze pierced my soul through and through, and not even the least speck of dust escaped his notice. I said to Jesus, “Jesus, I thought you were going to take me.” Jesus answered, “My will has not yet been fully accomplished in you.” She was suffering greatly at the end of her life. She thought He was going to come and take her, and he didn’t. Why? Because my will has not been fully accomplished in you.
Maybe you know someone that’s dying, and you don’t know why God is still keeping them alive despite their suffering. And who knows, that might happen to any of us one day. But if He keeps us alive, it is because He has not yet been fulfilling what He desires to accomplish in us.
He says to her, You will still remain on earth for not too long. I am well pleased with your trust, but your love should be more ardent. (138) He is saying this to a saint, your love must be more ardent. I am well pleased with your trust, but your love must be ardent. Pure love gives the soul strength at the very moment of dying. When I was dying on the cross. I was not thinking about Myself. Who is he thinking about on the cross? Poor sinners, and I prayed for them to My Father. I want your last moments to be completely similar to mine on the cross. There is but one price at which souls are brought, and that is suffering united to My suffering on the cross. Pure love understands these words; carnal love will never understand them.
Think about that as we just celebrated the Triduum and Good Friday. He’s telling us the last thing He thought on the cross about before He died was his love for sinners. He wants nothing but to show us His mercy. And then the more that we receive that mercy, the more that we will become merciful to others.
One of the greatest sins that I think is easy for all of us to struggle with is judgment. One of the parables that is brought up is the Parable of the master who forgives his servant’s debt. There’s one servant that has a great debt to the master and the master forgives him of it. He says, “Don’t worry about it, you don’t have to pay it back. We’re all good. “As he is walking away from this encounter with the master, he comes across one of his servants who owed him just a little bit, a couple bucks. He takes that servant and strangles him, beats him and abuses him. Jesus says, “How would the master treat that servant when he finds out what he has done?” Jesus, by being merciful to us, also demands that we be merciful to others.
I find that when I become judgmental, it’s probably time for me to go to Confession. There are probably things in my own heart that haven’t been forgiven.
We celebrate that on this Divine Mercy Sunday. As we receive His mercy, He wants you to be a minister of mercy to everyone that you encounter. Especially if you’re suffering and you feel like you’re on the cross, be a minister of mercy. No matter what you’re met with, no matter what anger or impatience or intolerance or abuse. Meet that person with mercy.
