By Honor Blanco Cabie
ON April 8 this year, the Sunday after Easter, Catholics worldwide, including parishioners from predominantly Catholic Philippines, will observe once again the Feast of the Divine Mercy.
This is an observance in which followers are encouraged to offer forgiveness and reconciliation to all, based on visions seen and recorded from St. Faustina Kowalski. In 2000, it was decreed a solemnity, a high feast day, by Pope John Paul II.
Roman Catholics have since been required to attend worship, go to confession, and take Holy Communion.
According to theologians, the Message of the Divine Mercy that Sr. Faustina received from the Lord was not only directed toward her personal growth in faith but also toward the good of the people.
With the command of the Lord to paint an image according to the pattern that Sr. Faustina had seen, came also a request to have this image venerated, first in the Sisters’ chapel, and then throughout the world.
The same is true with the revelations of the Chaplet. The Lord requested that this Chaplet be said not only by Sr. Faustina, but by others: “Encourage souls to say the Chaplet that I have given you.”
These requests of the Lord given to Sr. Faustina between 1931 and 1938 can be considered the beginning of the Divine Mercy Message and Devotion in the new forms.
Through the efforts of Sr. Faustina’s spiritual directors, Fr. Michael Sopocko, and Fr. Joseph Andrasz, SJ, and others—including the Marians of the Immaculate Conception—this message began to spread throughout the world.
Theologians say the message revealed to Saint Faustina “is a powerful reminder of who God is and has been from the very beginning. This truth that God is in His very nature Love and Mercy Itself, is given to us by our Judeo-Christian faith and God’s self-revelation.
“The veil that has hidden the mystery of God from eternity was lifted by God Himself. In His goodness and love God chose to reveal Himself to us, His creatures, and to make known His eternal plan of salvation.
“This He had done partly through the Old Testament Patriarchs, Moses and the Prophets, and fully through His only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. In the person of Jesus Christ, conceived through power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, the unseen God was made visible.”
Jesus reveals God as Merciful Father
The Old Testament speaks frequently about God’s mercy. Yet, it was Jesus, who, through His words and actions, revealed to man in an extraordinary way that God is a loving Father, rich in mercy and abounding in great kindness and love.
In Jesus’ merciful love and care for the poor, the downtrodden, the sick and the sinful, and especially in His freely choosing to take upon Himself the punishment for man’s sins which ended with death on the Cross.
According to theologians, the message of God’s Love and Mercy is especially made known by the Gospels.
The good news revealed through Jesus Christ is that God’s love for each person knows no bounds, and no sin or infidelity, no matter how horrible, will separate man from God and His love when man turns to Him in confidence, and seeks his mercy.
God’s will is man’s salvation. He has done all on man’s behalf. But since He made man free, He invites man to choose Him and partake of His divine life, according to Bible experts.
Based on writings of Saint Faustina
Theologians say the message of The Divine Mercy is simple: “It is that God loves us—all of us. And, he wants us to recognize that His mercy is greater than our sins, so that we will call upon Him with trust, receive His mercy, and let it flow through us to others. Thus, all will come to share His joy.”
Some offered the first letters of the English alphabet to help the faithful remember much more easily the message:
A—Ask for His Mercy. God wants us to approach Him in prayer constantly, repenting of our sins and asking Him to pour His mercy out upon us and upon the whole world.
B—Be merciful. God wants us to receive His mercy and let it flow through us to others. He wants us to extend love and forgiveness to others just as He does to us.
C—Completely trust in Jesus. God wants us to know that the graces of His mercy are dependent upon our trust. The more we trust in Jesus, the more we will receive.
According to theologians, this message and devotion to Jesus as The Divine Mercy is based on the writings of St. Faustina Kowalski, an uneducated Polish nun who, in obedience to her spiritual director, wrote a diary of about 600 pages recording the revelations she received about God’s mercy.
Even before her death in 1938, the devotion to The Divine Mercy had begun to spread.
Pope John Paul II promoted Faustina’s message
Pope John Paul—now Saint John Paul II—had actively promoted the message of Saint Faustina.
In his 1980 encyclical on God’s mercy, Rich in Mercy, he developed a scriptural and doctrinal basis for the Catholic followers’ faith in the mercy of God.
By linking the revealed truth about God’s mercy to one of the most solemn Sundays after Easter itself, theologians say the Pope “illumined the fact that the liturgy already proclaimed the divine mercy (and) the truth has been embedded for two millennia in the worship of the Church. Once again we see an illustration of the ancient saying, ‘The law of faith is the law of prayer.’”
Mr. Cabie is a sodalist of Our Lady of Montserrat and a catechist of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine.
