Divine Mercy and Saint Faustina
Today is Saint Faustina Day. She is a very big deal. Here is what Beliefnet puts on their Saint for Day site about her:
St. Mary Faustina's name is forever linked to the annual feast of the Divine Mercy (celebrated on the Second Sunday of Easter), the divine mercy chaplet and the divine mercy prayer recited each day by many people at 3 p.m.
Born in what is now west-central Poland (part of Germany before World War I), Helena was the third of 10 children. After age 16 she worked as a housekeeper in three cities before joining the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in 1925. She worked as a cook, gardener and porter in three of their houses.
In addition to carrying out her work faithfully, generously serving the needs of the sisters and the local people, she also had a deep interior life. This included receiving revelations from the Lord Jesus, messages that she recorded in her diary at the request of Christ and of her confessors.
At a time when some Catholics had an image of God as such a strict judge that they might be tempted to despair about the possibility of being forgiven, Jesus chose to emphasize his mercy and forgiveness for sins acknowledged and confessed. “I do not want to punish aching mankind,” he once told St. Mary Faustina, “but I desire to heal it, pressing it to my merciful heart” (Diary 1588). The two rays emanating from Christ's heart, she said, represent the blood and water poured out after Jesus' death (Gospel of John 19:34)
Because Sister Mary Faustina knew that the revelations she had already received did not constitute holiness itself, she wrote in her diary: “Neither graces, nor revelations, nor raptures, nor gifts granted to a soul make it perfect, but rather the intimate union of the soul with God. These gifts are merely ornaments of the soul, but constitute neither its essence nor its perfection. My sanctity and perfection consist in the close union of my will with the will of God” (Diary 1107).
Sister Mary Faustina died of tuberculosis in Krakow, Poland, on October 5, 1938. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 1993 and canonized her in 2000. Forgive me if you already know that.
Why did Jesus have to come remind us that he desires "Love Not Sacrifice" and that our obligation is to "Love Mercy and Walk Humbly" and this is part and parcel of the notion of "Walking Justly" (as the statue of the Prophet Micah in the basement of the my law school proclaims.)
Mercy. It means we don't get what we deserve as sinful frail humans, we get Love anyway, we get to be Redeemed, we get to be Protected and Provided for because this is the nature of God and the manifestation of his everlasting Love.
In Poland (then part of Germany) there was a confluence of church and state in regions as a strongly Catholic region of the country at the time Saint Faustina walked the planet. We enjoy in this country a "wall of separation" as Thomas Jefferson put it, or as the First Amendment to our Constitution expresses, a non-establishment of religion principle where no one religion gets to control the secular apparatuses of political and social persuasion.
An offense against the church was punishable by the State in many countries, a criminal offense even, that could be punished by the state police apparatus. I just finished a great book on Joan of Arc (by noted theologian Donald Spoto, get it) whose experience was the extreme manifestation of when the political corruption of a church corrupted by secular influences ends up deeming something "heresy" and using the secular police apparatus to punish it. In that case a trial full of bribery and political coercion complete with threats of blacklisting and banishment of clerical judges not toting the party line resulted in the burning at the Stake of an innocent- a Saint in fact, who clearly heard the voice of saints and God.
Tried and Fried by people who wanted to see the Burgundians allied with the English prevail during the 100 years war when England was trying to control all of France, and had essentially bought the clergy of the region.
I was reminded that there are some 613 rules or laws or commandments adhered to in the Jewish Faith. Jesus boiled it down to two essential master commands: LOVE the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and LOVE your neighbor as yourself, which flows from the first. Jesus, he reminded Saint Faustina is not about punishment. He is about LOVE.
He sets your sins as far from you as the East is from the West. He remembers them no more.
He gave everything he could to do this. He didn't just give his possessions away, he gave his entire earthly life away- he died, and resurrected himself.
The maddest that Jesus got at anyone on earth was toward the Pharisees, whom he called hypocrites, white washed tombs, vipers (snakes), etc. and those money changers at the Temple turning the place into a "Den of Thieves" with the commercial transactions deemed mandatory to achieve holiness with a cut going to the High Priests. He got the maddest at religious corruption. People perverting the message for their political or commercial advantage calling it Holiness. Even those people he didn't "punish." Jesus doesn't Punish on earth. Earth is the testing ground for what is to come after death. There will be an accounting- a separation of goats and sheep according to the deeds done. But Jesus doesn't call the police on anyone here on earth, he doesn't lock up anyone, he doesn't try to intimidate anyone for being a "heretic." He LOVES them, shows them Mercy. To the contrary, when the pious old men were ready to stone to death a woman caught in adultery he rescued her and showed her Mercy, encouraging her not to do it again.
Jesus didn't punish Mary Magdalene for having seven demons (who no doubt didn't behave themselves while inhabiting her) but he cast them out and rescued her from them. Jesus didn't punish the leper for being filthy and rotting, he cured ten of them, he didn't spit in the face of the blind man to punish him for his sins, he spit on him to open his eyes. Jesus doesn't punish.
The Sacred Heart is full of Mercy and Compassion.
When I was a child I nearly burned the house down. I wanted to make my mom and dad breakfast in bed before they woke up because my mom loved to do that for us. So I got up really early and tried to make scrambled eggs on the stove. The problem was that I was only 5 years old at the time and I didn't realize that you can not use Tupperware for frying eggs. So what I intended as a beautiful breakfast in bed with a daisy in a vase on a nice tray, ended up actually
a melted smoking mess of a tupperware egg fry all over the stove with the fire alarm blaring.
My parents didn't punish me. They hugged me. They were just so thankful that I and everyone was safe, not injured, because they saw that I didn't know what I was doing. I was only 5. I didn't have the insight to know how wrong it was to try to use a plastic tupperware dish for scrambling eggs on the stove. I didn't have the insight. Spiritually, Jesus knows we are his children. We are unconscious, blind, and clueless about Spiritual things and other things of the world that make enormous messes, even messes that can cause serious damage to our lives and the lives of others potentially. That is why we need to be humble- because we don't know what we are doing- as he said to those who looked on his Crucifixion. He knows we don't know what we are doing. That's why his heart is full of Mercy and Compassion.
So if we are to imitate Christ, we too have to be full of Mercy and Compassion. Jesus didn't punish. He loved strong. He loved us to death, and he is dying to love us. Anyway you look at it,
this Love is the great reformer with the lowest recidivism rate- because while punishment breeds resentment, Love just lifts us higher and higher, conforms our thoughts and deeds, compels us to do goodness and kindness and Mercy. So put away your Inquisitional heresy tabulators, your books of wrongs done against your dogma, your intimidation's ego compulsion need to prove yourself holier, and just be like Christ, full of Mercy and Compassion, doing kindness, goodness, healing, forgiveness and Mercy. And you will be truly like him.
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