In October 1936, St. Faustina wrote in her Diary, ‘Today, I heard these words, “The graces I grant you are not for you alone, but for a great number of other souls as well... And your heart is My constant dwelling place, despite the misery that you are. I unite Myself with you, take away your misery and give you My mercy. I perform works of mercy in every soul. The greater the sinner, the greater the right he has to My mercy. My mercy is confirmed in every work of My hands. He who trusts in My mercy will not perish, for all his affairs are Mine, and his enemies will be shattered at the base of My footstool”. (Diary 723)
I am sure all of you, like me, are sickened by the human suffering displayed on our T.V. screens every night. In one sad scene I saw a little child, her hands joined together, looking up to Heaven, crying out for Divine intervention.
Like Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and the thousands of other places before that, the dignity of innocent, God fearing people is always under attack in this world, by the relentless assaults of Satan. This is one of the ways that he hopes he can convince the world that there is no God.
Christ came into this world so that, by His humanity, He could pass on His Divine Mission, which is to reveal the truth and the Father to us, and through His death and Resurrection, unite us with our Father in Eternity. He told His Apostles, “No one has ever seen God; but His only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known” (John I: 18).
His Mission is constantly passed on to the world by privileged people who, because of their special calling, are able to give witness down through the generations. The message is also passed on by those who, living with Christ in their lives, give witness to Him, according to the last commandment of Christ, who told us “through repentance, there is forgiveness of all sins, and this should be preached to all mankind... by all who believe in the Father, You must be witnesses of these things” (Luke 24: 47-48).
These are the words of Christ, that all who believe in God must give witness to their faith. To give witness is to share with others what we have seen and heard and believe is true. Jesus commanded His disciples to do so, but all who believe in Him have the same mission. At the Last Supper Jesus said, that as He was one with the Father and so too should those who believe, be one with Him.
“I in you, and you in me, that we may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that it is the Father that has sent me... I have made Him known to the world , and I will continue to make Him known, so that the love with which He has loved me, may pass to all, who help to make Him known” (John 17: 23, 26).
There are many ways to evangalise in our modern world. One of the most effective ways is to give fellow Catholics pamphlets on our faith. If you give out the little leaflets on Divine Mercy Devotion, or leave one in a place such as a hospital, where Jesus will guide a lost soul to find it, this is the real meaning of one who lives in Christ, so as to make Him known to other souls. Everyday, people who do not yet know Jesus search for Him, even if they do not know they are, so leaving leaflets in Churches or hospitals, retreat centres or hospices is an excellent way to help Jesus to reach out to souls.
Always, when human dignity is threatened in the world, Christ reminds us with Divine Intervention of what is important in life. We may have no immediate defence against Satan if he threatens human dignity or even human life, but he can never take away the dignity of the human soul, or our eternal life, which is united to God. I am sure that anyone who dies in tragic circumstances, will receive God's Divine Mercy and be saved, because God's love could not allow it to be otherwise. Evil may reign for a short time, but God through His great love and mercy always intervenes.
One of God’s interventions was His message of Divine Mercy to St. Faustina, during a time of great suffering, when the world was in despair just prior to World War II. To know more about the Merciful Love of Jesus, we should read the Diary of St. Faustina, and know about the message from God and His Divine Mercy.
St. Faustina was an Apostle of God's Divine Mercy. She passed onto the world what she herself had witnessed. Christ made use of her so that He would find new Apostles, people who would remind the world of His Divine and Merciful Love. These Apostles are you and me, and this witness to God's mercy was never more needed and urgent than it is today.
In his Encyclical on Divine Mercy, Pope John Paul II writes, "The modern intellect, perhaps more so than the mind of past generations, appears to oppose a God of mercy, and also aspires to push the very idea of mercy to the periphery of life and cut it off from the human heart. The very word and concept of mercy seems to hinder man, who, through the previously unknown development of science and technology has, more than at any time in the past, become a ruler: Man tries to make the earth subject to him. This attempt to rule the earth, often not understood by man, as a real attempt by Satan to dominate the world with evil, and leave no room for mercy. This, then, is why the truth about God's Mercy is so necessary in to today's world.
The Pope went on to say, "The truth revealed in Christ is that God, who is the Father of Mercy allows us to see Him most near to man, when man suffers, when he is threatened at the very root of his human dignity and existence and because of this, many people and many communities, directed then by a inner sense of God, turn almost immediately to God's Divine Mercy, resulting in the saving of their soul”.
Therefore, as Catholics, we must firstly understand and then hopefully believe, that God is infinitely merciful and loving. We should pray for a greater understanding of this mystery, and when God 'speaks to us', we will understand that what we believe is real and our joy will be complete. The world in which we live, proposes that mercy for a sinner is wrong, and that severe punishment is the correct conclusion. Whereas crime must be punished and controlled by people of goodwill in our society, we must never be so righteous to think that God will not embrace every repentant sinner who seeks forgiveness and healing for his sins. The Devotion of Divine Mercy, at its core, desires that we understand and believe that God is merciful to repentant sinners and that we can absolutely trust in Him.
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