Saint Augustine's Burke Street, Sunday October 1, 2000
To celebrate Saint Faustina is to celebrate the great gift she passed on to the whole Church, the devotion of the Divine Mercy.
While studying in Rome, I lived for two years, 1984-86, in the Nepomucene College, the seminary at that time for students from what are now two nations, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The sisters who looked after us were Polish, members of Sister Faustina's congregation. So whenever I see images of this saint, I see the familiar habit of a community I know well, so remarkable for its prayer and hard work.
The experience of knowing the care and service of those Polish sisters, gives me some understanding of the kind of busy, hard-working, prayerful and well-ordered life led by Saint Faustina. But, as we know, it was a convent life, a hidden life. So often God's greatest plans are worked out in the hidden lives of his humblest ones, above all Our Blessed Lady herself.
The hidden life of Sister Faustina was the chosen time when Jesus revealed his mercy to us in a special way, the mercy desperately needed in the Twentieth Century, a century of blood, cruelty, tyranny and the disintegration of family life and personal integrity. Indeed that was the most violent century in human history, marked with the highest statistics for murder and the mass destruction of innocent lives, in the holocausts of war, racist exermination, nuclear destruction and abortion.
Saint Faustina died 1937, and here the Divine Mercy was granted to her personally, because she was spared the horrors of the Nazi conquest of Poland, two years later, September 1939, and the subsequent Soviet occupation and Communist tyranny that continued until the late 1980's. Our beloved Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, endured those terrible times, and he was the one chosen by God to raise Faustina to the altars of the Church, thus promoting the timely devotion to the Mercy of God throughout the whole world.
We recall that today is the feast of Saint Therese of Lisieux, whose hidden life bears many comparisons to that of Saint Faustina. Both endured great suffering and both were chosen vessels for our times, Saint Therese at the dawn of the modern era, Saint Faustina in its darkest hours. By example and word, both of these courageous women have inspired millions to a path of prayer for the mercy of God, especially praying for poor sinners. Let us reflect, therefore, on the mercy we seek in such prayers.
The Mercy of God is everlasting. "His mercy endures for ever" as we often say when reciting psalms at Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours. But what does that really mean?
God's Mercy is unchangeable. It abides. No matter what we do, how faithless, fickle or foolish we are, God is always merciful. God is the constant factor; we are the variable. Does this mean that God is soft, indulgent, permissive? Not at all. An indulgent parent is not merciful. Mercy is loving forgiveness in confronting a real wrong, a sin, a fall, a mistake. It evokes contrition; it encourages conversion. Moreover, like any parent, God loves us so much as to take risks, to allow us freedom. God loves us so much that He permits us to choose damnation. God respects our integrity and dignity and freedom as persons, and will never force us to come to heaven. Yet this loving God desires our salvation and offers us every opportunity to gain the grace of final perseverance, final conversion and salvation.
Today, from time to time, we may hear of God's "unconditional love". The hymn "Come as you are" is often sung and interpreted in these terms. Now if God's unconditional love is a description of the Divine Mercy, then we are on sound ground. I fear, however, that some are using "unconditional love" to push the heresy of universalism, the error that no one need repent, that everyone is going to heaven anyway. Jesus did not teach that, as we see clearly in today's challenging and tough Gospel. Jesus said "Come as you are" but he never said "Stay as you are."
Yet there is a great mystery in the Mercy of God. We can never fathom the Mercy of the Lord, or rule it out in even the most hopeless situations. This is captured so well in Father Faber's hymn.
There's a wideness in God's mercy
Like the wideness of the sea;
There's a kindness in his justice
Which is more than liberty
Then Father Faber takes this further, in the fourth verse:
For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of man's mind
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
But we make his love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify his strictness
With a zeal he will not own.
Those words may reflect Faber's Catholic reaction to the religious bigotry and rigidity of the Nineteenth Century, especially prevalent Calvinist attitudes. But people may argue that today we have moved to the opposite extreme, when we often hear of a vague indulgent God, who winks at everything we do. There are still Christians, nonetheless, who, reacting to this soft religion and a permissive society, insist on a very severe God who will send many millions to hell. The revival of fundamentalism reflects this harsh reaction.
But if the Mercy of God, as I have indicated, is not divine permissiveness, it is always mysterious compassionate. It is divine compassion at the plight of fallen humanity. It is God reaching out, the initiative of saving grace, amazing grace. "Not our love for God, but God's love for us." It forbids us to consign specific people to damnation. It calls us always to hope for the best, even when we know that exclusion from the Kingdom is a reality. It challenges us to bring our confused, doubting, suffering friends to Jesus in his Church - to evangelize. What greater motivation to evangelize could there be than the Divine Mercy?
"Mercy!" This is the word that could be set in letters of gold above the door of every Catholic church. In the wide arms of our Mother Church anyone can find the loving mercy of God. No sinner, even the worst, is turned away. No bruised or broken heart cannot be healed here. In this place the littlest ones are loved and valued and welcomed. Do we let others know of this healing love that awaits them in the Church?
"Mercy!" This is the word that we hear in the stillness of the confessional, the key to reconciling grace and forgiveness. The hand of a priest is outstretched. His prayer unbinds, frees, absolves: "God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself…" Do we tell others of this "pardon and peace" that awaits them here?
"Mercy!" This is the word that shines through the Precious Body and Blood of our Saviour, offered up for us, given to us, in the blessed Eucharist. The Bread of Angels is in the hands and mouths of sinful humans, and our unworthiness is drowned in the Mercy of God. Do we call others to satisfy all human hunger and thirst in Jesus, the living Bread of Life and Chalice of eternal salvation?
"Mercy!" This is the key that opens the Heart of our God.
To celebrate Saint Faustina is to celebrate the great gift she passed on to the whole Church, the devotion of the Divine Mercy.
While studying in Rome, I lived for two years, 1984-86, in the Nepomucene College, the seminary at that time for students from what are now two nations, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The sisters who looked after us were Polish, members of Sister Faustina's congregation. So whenever I see images of this saint, I see the familiar habit of a community I know well, so remarkable for its prayer and hard work.
The experience of knowing the care and service of those Polish sisters, gives me some understanding of the kind of busy, hard-working, prayerful and well-ordered life led by Saint Faustina. But, as we know, it was a convent life, a hidden life. So often God's greatest plans are worked out in the hidden lives of his humblest ones, above all Our Blessed Lady herself.
The hidden life of Sister Faustina was the chosen time when Jesus revealed his mercy to us in a special way, the mercy desperately needed in the Twentieth Century, a century of blood, cruelty, tyranny and the disintegration of family life and personal integrity. Indeed that was the most violent century in human history, marked with the highest statistics for murder and the mass destruction of innocent lives, in the holocausts of war, racist exermination, nuclear destruction and abortion.
Saint Faustina died 1937, and here the Divine Mercy was granted to her personally, because she was spared the horrors of the Nazi conquest of Poland, two years later, September 1939, and the subsequent Soviet occupation and Communist tyranny that continued until the late 1980's. Our beloved Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, endured those terrible times, and he was the one chosen by God to raise Faustina to the altars of the Church, thus promoting the timely devotion to the Mercy of God throughout the whole world.
We recall that today is the feast of Saint Therese of Lisieux, whose hidden life bears many comparisons to that of Saint Faustina. Both endured great suffering and both were chosen vessels for our times, Saint Therese at the dawn of the modern era, Saint Faustina in its darkest hours. By example and word, both of these courageous women have inspired millions to a path of prayer for the mercy of God, especially praying for poor sinners. Let us reflect, therefore, on the mercy we seek in such prayers.
The Mercy of God is everlasting. "His mercy endures for ever" as we often say when reciting psalms at Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours. But what does that really mean?
God's Mercy is unchangeable. It abides. No matter what we do, how faithless, fickle or foolish we are, God is always merciful. God is the constant factor; we are the variable. Does this mean that God is soft, indulgent, permissive? Not at all. An indulgent parent is not merciful. Mercy is loving forgiveness in confronting a real wrong, a sin, a fall, a mistake. It evokes contrition; it encourages conversion. Moreover, like any parent, God loves us so much as to take risks, to allow us freedom. God loves us so much that He permits us to choose damnation. God respects our integrity and dignity and freedom as persons, and will never force us to come to heaven. Yet this loving God desires our salvation and offers us every opportunity to gain the grace of final perseverance, final conversion and salvation.
Today, from time to time, we may hear of God's "unconditional love". The hymn "Come as you are" is often sung and interpreted in these terms. Now if God's unconditional love is a description of the Divine Mercy, then we are on sound ground. I fear, however, that some are using "unconditional love" to push the heresy of universalism, the error that no one need repent, that everyone is going to heaven anyway. Jesus did not teach that, as we see clearly in today's challenging and tough Gospel. Jesus said "Come as you are" but he never said "Stay as you are."
Yet there is a great mystery in the Mercy of God. We can never fathom the Mercy of the Lord, or rule it out in even the most hopeless situations. This is captured so well in Father Faber's hymn.
There's a wideness in God's mercy
Like the wideness of the sea;
There's a kindness in his justice
Which is more than liberty
Then Father Faber takes this further, in the fourth verse:
For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of man's mind
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
But we make his love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify his strictness
With a zeal he will not own.
Those words may reflect Faber's Catholic reaction to the religious bigotry and rigidity of the Nineteenth Century, especially prevalent Calvinist attitudes. But people may argue that today we have moved to the opposite extreme, when we often hear of a vague indulgent God, who winks at everything we do. There are still Christians, nonetheless, who, reacting to this soft religion and a permissive society, insist on a very severe God who will send many millions to hell. The revival of fundamentalism reflects this harsh reaction.
But if the Mercy of God, as I have indicated, is not divine permissiveness, it is always mysterious compassionate. It is divine compassion at the plight of fallen humanity. It is God reaching out, the initiative of saving grace, amazing grace. "Not our love for God, but God's love for us." It forbids us to consign specific people to damnation. It calls us always to hope for the best, even when we know that exclusion from the Kingdom is a reality. It challenges us to bring our confused, doubting, suffering friends to Jesus in his Church - to evangelize. What greater motivation to evangelize could there be than the Divine Mercy?
"Mercy!" This is the word that could be set in letters of gold above the door of every Catholic church. In the wide arms of our Mother Church anyone can find the loving mercy of God. No sinner, even the worst, is turned away. No bruised or broken heart cannot be healed here. In this place the littlest ones are loved and valued and welcomed. Do we let others know of this healing love that awaits them in the Church?
"Mercy!" This is the word that we hear in the stillness of the confessional, the key to reconciling grace and forgiveness. The hand of a priest is outstretched. His prayer unbinds, frees, absolves: "God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself…" Do we tell others of this "pardon and peace" that awaits them here?
"Mercy!" This is the word that shines through the Precious Body and Blood of our Saviour, offered up for us, given to us, in the blessed Eucharist. The Bread of Angels is in the hands and mouths of sinful humans, and our unworthiness is drowned in the Mercy of God. Do we call others to satisfy all human hunger and thirst in Jesus, the living Bread of Life and Chalice of eternal salvation?
"Mercy!" This is the key that opens the Heart of our God.
© Msgr. Peter Elliott 2001