A Crisis of Faith by Val Conlon

Today in Ireland many people whom I knew as solid Catholics most of my life, that is, in their own quite reserved way, they went to Mass every Sunday, said their prayers at night, supported the Church when it made a decision on political or social matters, and when push came to shove they stood up and supported the faith publicly when called upon.

They were the mature, intelligent, sensible, silent majority, of the Catholic Church. They were the strong backbone of the Church in Ireland. The Church then being, the Catholic people. This quite reserved, mature, intelligent, sensible, silent majority, has dwindled so much, it hardly exists at all today. Why has this happened? Why has the faith and God faded or become indifferent in so many of their lives. I have spoken to a number who agreed to talk about it.

It seems it has evolved in different ways but primarily a disappointment with the Church, the Church today being seen as the priests, the bishops and the Vatican. These people find it very difficult today to defend the Church or explain all that has happened to the skepticism of non believers. Most of them have also lost their once normal ritual of prayer. Many have got to the stage where they see the Church and the faith as the same thing, and worst of all, because they find the Church nor credible any more they also find the faith not credible any more.

A terrible legacy of this is that the young adults in the families of this mature, intelligent, sensible, silent majority are not becoming involved in the faith or the Church at all, and when you speak to them they don’t even want to ponder any of the issues involved, they are not remotely concerned because they have not been introduced to the teachings of Christ in any way, and all they know about the Church is what they read in the papers, and they don’t want any part of it. How sad is this. I have given my life to promoting what I believe in, with the great help of devotion to Jesus as Divine Mercy. God’s mercy being the cornerstone of nearly all faiths.

But I would not know how to attempt a dialogue or discussion on Divine Mercy with these people anymore. It would be like speaking a different language because their heads are not in that place anymore. Mind you these people are still the most moral Christian people you would hope to meet, christian with a small c, it being a universally accepted term for good decent fair minded people.

But we have to go beyond simply understanding the reasons for the fall off in the faith, to some way of coming up with the answer.

These families are the bedrock of decent society in Ireland and they must be brought back to practicing the faith, because the faith is really the bedrock on which all law order and decency depends. I believe the recent riots in England are a guide as to what society becomes without the family and religion in their lives.

The media don’t often report on the importance of religion, but in at least one report in a well known English daily newspaper they were making a loud statement. They produced one survey which showed that the majority of the young rioters were from one parent families, and all of them were unattached to any religious faith. It begs the question can the state maintain law and order where there are no basic moral values being taught to young people. And can the faith be alive outside the family unit? "Man is not meant to be alone" (Genesis 2:18)

There has to be a monumental effort on the part of the Church through the actions of the Vatican to get this mature, intelligent, sensible, silent majority back to their faith and to supporting the Church again. They should point out that although it is a small percentage, still no matter how many servants of the Church have failed, they are still only the servants who have lost their way, they are not the Church. The Church is the family of Jesus Christ, these people have failed the family, as individuals in many ordinary families, fail their family. And the young adults of this generation have to be introduced to the value of the family unit in society, both in schools and universities.

It has been proven that the only way to preserve a law abiding decent family society is through having a strong faith, which gives you strong moral values. What our Country and our Government and maybe the world has lost entirely is, it’s ability to understand the human condition, which is animal. An animal will devour anything that feeds it’s greed without compunction. The almighty gave the human animal a spirit, a soul and a conscience. The human will revert to the animal if it is not subservient to these three sacred elements which are not of the body, but of the spirit.

If man lived by these three elements there would be no need for regulators or regulation of state law’s of any sort. We just have to look at the experiences of belief and unbelief as they are shaped by today's culture. The focus should be on the level of good that faith and belief in God has given to society, rather than on the debase atheistic intellectual argument that society is so clued into today. We cannot prove the existence of God to anyone but we can prove the good that belief in God has done. I am convinced that the real answer to all the world’s problems lies here.

It can be so easily demonstrated how the loss of faith has conditioned the new context of modern living today. How belonging to a faith conditions fundamental attitudes to life and society, and how the faith conditions man to live his life with a set of moral values that govern his every action. The non believer or atheist has nothing to base his moral attitude to life on, and ordinary man made laws will not be enough to contain the many greed’s that exist in a world of people who don’t believe in God. Faith is more a matter of living life through the dictates of the spirit rather than the animal urges of the body. The spirit influences you to live by love, and not by reason on its own. This is an important if not obvious discovery.

The atheist is someone who has lost contact with his soul, his inner self. Any person who does not believe in God is an atheist and atheism isolates a person from human emotions guided by love. But we must be aware that there is an atheism concealed in all human animals, which is like a time bomb and can only be diffused by allowing the sacred elements infused by the almighty to determine our lives. If society continues as it is going, the new age we seem about to enter is the post human age, which threatens the transcendental mystery of the human being which can only be found in religion and spirituality Transcendental is something being beyond ordinary or common earthly experience, thought, or belief, that is the supernatural.

Original Article

Living Mercy Daily

The Pope reminded us that the very essence of the Good News is its message of hope and real optimism. He wrote “Optimism is the fruit of Christian hope and the result of its action on the Christian soul. It flows from the trust of man in Divine Providence. This optimism is evident in the kind of character that is restrained and modest, who recognizes what is the inherent weakness in man, and that which hinders his fight against evil”.
Let the example of the John Paul II make us desire to look at others as Jesus looks, to judge people and to love them as He does. Our strength must be in prayer, which helps us to resist pessimism and resignation. If you look at others through the heart of Jesus, your mind will detect only the good in people in spite of anything others might say about them.

Optimism and belief in the human condition can only be born out of forgiveness of those who have offended you in the past. The process of forgiveness is sometimes difficult the stronger our sensitivity is, and lack of understanding of the weakness in the human condition, can add to the difficulty of forgiveness. You must remember always that Christ understood and forgave your weakness, so you must learn to understand others weaknesses, which are part of the human condition, and then taking this into account, forgive them.

It is easy for us, sometimes too easy, to ask forgiveness for our indiscretion or mistake, but we may find it hard to forgive the same indiscretion in another. Therefore, when someone talks about forgiveness and asks for forgiveness, there should not be a condition that those who we are to forgive, and become reconciled with, should confess their guilt against us. Our forgiveness should be like Christ’s for us, unconditional.

Remember God forgave us unconditionally on the Cross. He did not ask us to admit our guilt first. Willingness to forgive those “who trespass against us” will be a sign and call to conversion and is also a measure of our mature faith and true self-esteem. That is why to forgive, also means to ask for forgiveness and to receive forgiveness. This is not a matter of courage or emotional indulgence, but it is a guarantee of liberation from evil, that leads straight to a deep, spiritual joy. “We resemble God most when we forgive our neighbours”. (Diary 1148)

To forgive we have to move in the right direction - to descend deep down into the bottom of our hearts. We need to meet with what hurts. We need to meet with our own failures, with the evil that is in us. Only then can we raise ourselves high, before the face of God and there with confidence in our heart, cry out for His mercy and help us forgive.

God does not want from us only what is good and decent, God wants us just as we are. He wants to wipe our tears and touch what is weak, poor and evil within us in order to heal and transform us. Thomas Merton once wrote: “Only the man who stood face to face with despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. He said, “Those who do not feel the need for God’s mercy, lose out, because they never look for it, and never therefore experience the beautiful warmth and strength of God’s mercy”.

So it is sometimes better to experience despair in order to experience God’s mercy, rather than to go through life with a feeling of self-satisfaction, never recognizing the need for forgiveness and mercy. Life without problems can literally be more hopeless than the one who lives on the shores of despair”.

Our prayer for God’s mercy often resembles an effort of begging God for mercy and yet God does not need to be begged to show us His Mercy. He simply is always merciful if we just ask. He loves to forgive, He loves to be Merciful. St. Faustina wrote in her Diary the words of Jesus, “With My mercy, I pursue sinners along all their paths, and My Heart rejoices when they return to Me. I forget the bitterness with which they fed My Heart and rejoice at their return”. (Diary 1728)

Even the most famous story in the history of mercy was man bargaining with God to save Sodom. It was really a long process to understand that the Almighty was not happy with the tragedy of Sodom, and that any compromise would give Him a reason to save the city. If the Sodomites had behaved like the people of Nineveh who were very deeply moved on hearing the teaching of Jonah they could have been saved.

Often, we are overcome with blindness because we do not see that He Himself wants to show mercy to us and that He is infinitely more sensitive than the most compassionate of men. Is it not God’s wisdom that triggers in us an attitude that makes the Father give us everything, even though we do not ask for it?

Life is a great adventure of constant discovery, during which time we discover new obstacles that present themselves every day. Could we overcome them continuously if we didn’t have this gift of God’s mercy to help us? How much do we owe Him? Our intelligence should tell us the answer, “everything”. Our heart should tell us how beautiful the love of God is, and which is with us at all times.

Thanks to all this love we experience a great adventure, which is life.  The Holy Spirit opens our eyes, so that we are able to see these signs of hope and love, just open your eyes to the Spirit.

Original Article

Crisis in our Life by Br. Marius

Crisis in our Life – The Divine Forge of Virtues by Fr. Marius ( a Divine Mercy Priest in the congregation founded by Saint Faustina)

An extract from a letter by Fr. Sopocko to the Sisters of Merciful Jesus during World War II

"I have spent a second week in isolation, where I have been contemplating and adoring Divine Mercy in action. At the same time, I have been passing through my whole fatherland immersed in bereavement. I am united with my countrymen all over the world, as the Mercy of God has been sculpturing in their souls the heroic virtue needed to redress and propitiation the infinite Goodness of God"

History of the World War II Letter

This extract is a beginning of the first letter which Blessed Fr. Michael Sopocko wrote to the congregation of the Sisters of Merciful Jesus. To understand its true depth and meaning, we need to look at the circumstances in which it was written in early 1942. Shortly after the Germans subdued the government authorities in Vilnius (Lithuania), the Gestapo arrested all the Catholic priests from Vilnius Seminary and the whole of Poland and Lithuania was occupied by ruthless totalitarian forces.

Father Sopocko barely managed to avoid being sent to one of the Nazi Labour Camps. Dressed as a villager, he left Vilnius City and spent almost three years in the monastery of the Sisters of St. Urszula in south Vilnius. He was a witness to the devastation of his country. He was in danger of being captured and executed at any time, since the Germans were looking for him. But, even in such inhumane and surreal conditions, he still wrote to his spiritual sisters, "I have been contemplating..."
The Mercy of God in Action

But what did Father Sopocko see? Dead bodies, mothers weeping for their children on the frontline and the lamentations of displaced persons? Yes, all these sights caused him tremendous suffering as he writes that he was united with his countrymen "in bereavement". But also, he goes deeper and sees a larger spiritual picture. He sees, in the horrendous hell of war, the Mercy of God in action. He sees that in the midst of the uncontrollable crisis of World War II, God's hand inspiring ordinary men and women to perform tremendous acts of valor and virtue. As Jesus taught us, there is no greater love than when a person lays down their life for their friends. During World War II, in spite of the malicious evil of the Nazis and their supporters, the soldiers of the Allied Forces were willing to sacrifice their life and happiness for the greater good and to insure freedom throughout the world.

Eyes of Faith and the Spirit of Prayer

To be able to live in such times and reach such conclusions, two things are needed: eyes of faith and a true spirit of prayer. Only those who are completely immersed in God, even during the worst events of history, can see the loving and merciful hand of God at work. The Hand of the Father which does not punish, but helps lost man to find a way back to the Truth, Beauty and Love.

Everything Comes from His Merciful Heart

Fr.Sopocko said: O, how we need these eyes of faith in our times. In our time 2012, we face another kind of horrendous crisis. An unbelievable moral crisis of values and identity, up to the economic and political. We need, first of all, to have no doubt that God is observing, but He cannot intervene against the 'Covenent of Free Will' of those who make choices and decisions that are wrong and immoral. He can only intervene if asked by an individual in their own life. He cannot intervene in the free will of others for that individual. By a special grace granted in the Divine Mercy revelations He promises to come into the lives of others, but He will not take away their free will.

Trials and the Wisdom of St. Faustina

St. Faustina also understood the value of the trials in her life and how these trials were gifts from God, to draw virtue from souls. In her Diary, she wrote, "In prayer I always find light and strength of spirit although there are moments so trying and hurtful, that it is sometimes difficult to imagine that these things can happen in a convent. Strangely, God sometimes allows them, but always in order to manifest or develop virtue in a soul. That is the reason for trials". (Diary 166)

This is the fundamental difference between those who live life through their faith and those who live life through human reasoning. It is exceptionally difficult to understand why God allows us to suffer, especially when that suffering is very serious. For example, why would He allow St. Faustina to suffer from Tuberculosis which eventually took her life? He granted her so many other miracles, but did not cure her of this fatal illness. We can see a similar pattern of suffering in the lives of other Catholic saints, where many of His most beloved saints suffered unbearable humiliations, illnesses and even tortures.

Why does God permit trials

As ordinary humans, we will never be able to fully understand why God permits these things, but we can see how often sufferings can lead to unexpected goodness. For example, the trial of sickness can make us more compassionate towards others. Is not the current economic crisis helping people to see the dangers of greed, and the lack of temperance and prudence in many humans today. The futility of placing your trust in the fickle social constructions of man? Is not the current crisis in the Church making the world a safer place for children? We know that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose". (Romans 8:28)

The Acceptance of Suffering

Of course, none of us want to suffer, but suffering is a part of earthly life. The acceptance of suffering as part of life actually greatly reduces the pain of suffering. As Catholics, we must also remember, that Jesus continues to suffer for our sakes and to save souls. His suffering has not yet ended so we should remember to unite our personal sufferings in life to His and offer them in the spirit of Devotion to Divine Mercy, for the salvation of souls.

Learning from St. Faustina’s Wisdom

Tragedies, sufferings and the consequences of the actions of evil men and women will always be with us as long as we live. But we must not give in to the comfort of despair or give up striving for a fairer, more Christian world. There will always be those who will refuse to live righteously but that does not mean that we should be influenced by them, or not fight back with sound arguments and proper just actions, inspired by our Catholic faith and wisdom. But because trials and sufferings will always be a part of our life, we must allow ourselves the wisdom that God permits our trials for His own reasons. We should examine the various trials currently in our life and ask ourselves "What virtue does God want me to learn from this trial?" When we raise the standard of our behaviour and start to live by Catholic virtues and wisdom, this will inspire not only us but also those around us.

Modern anti-Catholic commentators might consider our view of suffering to be incompatible with their scientific view of the world but this is why the gift of faith is so valuable. As Catholics, we have access to the truth about life on earth. If we try to live holy lives, we will see how our prayers can change life and how God's miracles, big and small, can fix what is impossible for us to fix. Prayer comforts us during our trials and the sure knowledge that God is with us guides our feet on the path of peace.

Like Fr. Sopocko, suffering during World War II, we must try to see the work of God in the world. We must grow in wisdom and faith and allow this wisdom to influence our behaviour and the decisions we make in life. We must allow this wisdom to remind us to embrace our personal sufferings and unite them with the sufferings of Jesus for the salvation of souls.
We should also look for ways to help people to carry their cross, especially if they are particularly weighted down during a difficult period of their life. For it is not the rejection of suffering that leads to the good life, but the acceptance of suffering and that extra special act of love to try to help others to cope with their suffering. These actions are the actions of a loving heart, the heart which God wants us to have, a heart that is pleasing to God. To have a heart which is pleasing to God is the ultimate goal of our existence and although there will always be a battle in our souls, the more regularly we turn to goodness and wisdom, the more ingrained these behaviours become in our life.


Only when we learn to love, and to live love, will we start to find true joy in life. It is why Jesus came into the world to teach us how to love. So, even though we wince at the thought of suffering, we should learn that suffering is the divine forge in which our souls are shaped.

Original Article

Confession is about the Future by Fr. John Harris

Catholics are Guilt Ridden

It is often said that we Catholics are guilt-ridden. It is said that the Church is obsessed with sex and most of this criticism is particularly focused on the Sacrament of Confession. People say that Confession is about raking-up the past and being stuck in one’s shame. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Secular Media Smearing People

It is the secular media and the spirit of the age that is obsessed with sex. The media can’t get enough bad news by raking-up politicians’ and celebrities’ past sins. The tabloid press has brought this investigative journalism to a new low. Photographers follow famous people around the world hoping to get pictures of them in compromising positions. People are never allowed to forget their feet of clay. There is no forgiveness, for one knows not the day nor the hour when someone will root out something you said or did in the past.

The Accuser of the Brethren

One of the titles of the devil in the New Testament is “the accuser of the brethren”. The devil is the one who accuses us of our past sins and never lets us forget them. His power is limited to being able to accuse us of them and remind us of them. He is powerless to help us deal with the sins of the past. The devil is the great operator of guilt-trips. The only way the devil has of dealing with sins, besides accusing us of them, is to say that everyone else is as bad as we are.

I came to give you life

None of this has anything to do with Christ and His Church. Christ came to set us free from the past and to give us His life. Jesus says in the Gospel of St. John, “I came that you may have life and have it to the full”. (John 10:10) Our Blessed Lord is only interested in the past to set us free from it. The Good News is about us being free of sin, not wallowing in it.

Ask Your Nosey Neighbour

An incident related in the Gospels describes how Jesus went to dinner one evening in the house of a Pharisee. A woman, a local sinner, came and cried at the feet of Jesus and He did not turn her away. The Pharisee complained that “if this Jesus was a truly holy man, he would know what kind of woman she is”. For Jesus to know that she was a sinner, all he had to do was ask a nosey neighbour. It was precisely because He is the Holy One of God that Jesus can see beyond the sin to the renewed life of grace that is open to everyone who comes to him in humility.

I Myself Am Waiting For You

It is because God is so good that He can show such wonderful mercy to us. Only God has the freedom to see beyond sin to peace and mercy. In the Diary, Jesus speaks beautifully to St. Faustina about confession. In the Diary (1602) Jesus calls confession “this fountain of My mercy”. He says to St. Faustina, “Every time you go to confession, immerse yourself entirely in My mercy, with great trust, so that I may pour the bounty of My grace upon your soul. When you approach the confessional, know this, that I myself am waiting there for you. I am only hidden by the priest, but I myself act in your soul. Here the misery of the soul meets the God of mercy. Tell souls that from this fount of mercy souls draw graces solely with the vessel of trust. If their trust is great, there is no limit to My generosity. The torrents of grace inundate humble souls”.

Leaving Our Sins Behind

One preacher I heard compared a penitent coming into confession to a slave weighed down with chains. The heavy weight of sin, selfishness, weakness and the mistakes of the past are a heavy burden for anyone to carry. Once the penitent confesses the sin with sorrow in all humility then the Lord comes and cuts the chains away and the forgiven soul is free to fly out of the confessional box. You are no longer in a cage made by your past and your sinfulness but free to fly with the freedom of the children of God. In confession you tell your sins, in order to leave them behind not to be reminded so you can keep carrying them.

The First Sacrament Given By the Risen Lord

The sacrament was given to the Church by Jesus Himself on the night of the Resurrection. On that first Easter night, Jesus said to the Apostles, “Receive the Holy Spirit, whatever sins you forgive they are forgiven”. This sacrament is the first sacrament given to the Church by the Risen Lord. This is the first way we begin to live the new life of Christ, by having our sins of the past forgiven and receiving the freedom to walk into the future.

Grace for our Personal Journey

The Sacrament of Confession is the one place in the whole world you know you are loved. No matter what you have done or said, no matter how bad things are, the Lord is there loving you. It is a personal love. One theologian said that the particular grace of the Sacrament of Reconciliation is that it is tailor-made. It is the grace you need on your personal journey. That is why personal confession is so necessary. “I am not loved in a group, but personally by God.” He takes my struggles seriously. He wants to help me to be free.

We Can’t Change the Past

None of us can carry the burden of our sins, we can’t change the past. None of us can wipe the past clean. The great joy is to know that we don’t have to. Christ Jesus has done it for us. In Christ we are relieved of this burden. Jesus carried the weight of all our sins when He carried the Cross. He has done it for us. He died to set us free. All we have to do is ask for his mercy and accept his new life.

Go to Confession Regularly

In his letter to the Irish Church Pope Benedict XVI encouraged us “to discover anew the Sacrament of Reconciliation and to avail yourselves more frequently of the transforming power of its grace”. This wonderful sacrament is about your future not about your past. Learn to walk in the freedom of your future and not to be enslaved by the sins of the past. Go to confession regularly.

Original Article

Conversion of Your Spirit by Val Conlon

Our Personal Journey through Life

In life, each of us is engaged in a personal journey to save our soul, but it cannot be just about ourselves, it has also to be with our fellow man. It is, in effect, a group journey; a pilgrimage we are all on together, and while on this pilgrimage, we are responsible, as followers of Christ (Christians), to help others on that journey,who are struggling either materially or spiritually, for one reason or another.

We, each and together, stand before God, journeying through life, working to become spirit-filled, and spirit-like, and truly Christian. Thus, allowing God to judge all of us as one, through our works and prayers, which we offer up in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world. In our spirit-filled moments, we try to be God’s compassionate creatures and we see with the eyes of the blessed, that we are truly one, and together, we are the image of God, who is one in us, so we must be one in Him.

Do Unto Others

The togetherness of humanity is vital for every Christian, for that is what Christian means. Yet, we know that many go through life focused only on self, on personal things, personal wealth, position, ego, or glory. There are many who think little or nothing about other people’s dilemmas, and ignore their responsibility as Christians to deal with what really matters in life. How will these selfish egotistical people, of which there are many, who call themselves Christian, feel in their last moments when they have to examine their conscience before God?

Man cannot afford to go through the journey of life with a heart that has shown nothing but selfishness and disregard for other human beings. A person who calls himself part of the Christian family, which is part of the oneness of humanity in the eyes of God, cannot be closed to other people’s struggles, other people’s poverty and other people’s misery.
The gifts God has given us

The question we must ask ourselves is, have we used the gifts given to us by God, to help others struggling on this journey, or by our indifference to others, neglected our Christian calling and failed to be part of the oneness of humanity as intended by the creator, for the salvation of the world?

The real poverty in life is not material poverty but poverty of spirit. The measure of a man in life is the measure of his compassion for others and this has an influence far beyond the one he helps, because the compassion of one man for another does not end there, as his actions always move the conscience of others to be compassionate in turn. In the final analysis, our life on earth will be judged by the richness of spirit we possessed, rather than the richness of material we accumulate.

God Plan to Forgive Us

The Catechism states that the Gospel is the revelation of God's Divine Mercy through Jesus Christ. The angel announced to St. Joseph, “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. (Matthew 1:21) The same is true of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Redemption. Jesus said, “This is My blood of the Covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26:19)

God created us through the virtue of compassion and love, but our salvation depends on our compassion and love towards others. To receive His mercy, we must show it to others. But that alone is not enough if we offend Him in other ways. We must admit our faults. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”. (1 John 1:8) We must always admit to our own sins, confess them, seek forgiveness and we will then receive affirmation and grace for our good works.

Conversion of our Spirit

As St Paul affirms, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more”. (Romans 5: 20) But to do its work, grace will first make us aware of our sins, so as to convert our hearts and bestow on us eternal life through Jesus Christ. Like a physician who probes the wound before treating it, God, by his Word and by his Spirit, casts a living light on our sins.
On our journey, we must also take part in spiritual works of mercy, helping people to come to God’s Divine Mercy. To help others to convert does not always mean converting from disbelief to belief. It can mean converting from a lukewarm inactive role in the faith to an active role, doing things by conviction rather than just by ritual.

Being Honest with Ourselves

Conversion requires first admitting to ourselves our sins. It means deep inner judgement of self and finding the Spirit in one’s inner most being. It then becomes the start of new grace within. You are bringing the Holy Spirit to life within yourself before attempting to bring it to others. Through this action you will receive the certainty of your redemption.
We must realise that sin is an offence against truth, reason and conscience. We must love God before anyone or anything else. Failure to love God first severely wounds the nature of man. It becomes a huge obstacle in the way of God's love for us and gradually turns our hearts away from him. However, at your darkest hour, love for Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross can become a source from which Divine Mercy pours forth and you are forgiven and saved.

Original Article

Insight into God's Love by Fr. Igor

A Worthless Person by Human Standards

One of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him. Jesus accepted and went to his home that evening. A woman from the town, who had lived a very sinful life, learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she went there with a jar of perfume.
After entering the house by force, she went straight to Jesus. As she knelt before Him weeping, her tears fell on His feet. She gently wiped His feet with her hair, kissed them repeatedly and then poured her perfume on them. When the Pharisee saw this, he thought, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who it is that is touching him and what kind of woman she is”. Then Jesus said to him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.” He responded, “Tell me teacher”.

A Lesson on Love and Mercy from the Messiah

“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred Denarii, (about $10000 US Dollars) and the other, fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.” “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

Then He turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7, 36-50)

Water, Kiss and Oil

In Israel at that time, there were three traditional greetings which were extended to every guest to show that they were welcome in your home. The first was to offer them water, to wash the dusty clay from their face, hands and feet. The second was to give them a kiss. The third was offer them oil to be placed on their head. The oil used by the Jews was either sweet oil or olive oil and it gave off a pleasant smell and made their hair more smooth and elegant. For the Pharisee to have not offered Jesus these customary gestures would be a direct insult of Jesus and a sign of the disrespectful nature of the Pharisee.

The Two People

This story shows how God responded to both persons in this story. He should have been angry with the Pharisee for insulting Him, yet He stayed and was willing to have dinner with Him. Maybe He understood that He was a symbol of conflict to a Jewish Pharisee. It is clear that the Pharisee was inviting Jesus to his house to question Him further. Jesus had His reasons to go to this Pharisee’s home.
The story also shows how God’s respond to the sinful woman. He did not get up and distance Himself from her when she approached Him, as the Pharisee expected Him to do. By not doing so, Jesus was scandalised and His credibility and authority was damaged in the minds of the Pharisee and his guests. But Jesus allowed her to show her love, and then He consoled her, told her that she sins were forgiven, her faith had saved her and that she should go in peace. The feeling of peace in this woman’s heart that evening must have been truly amazing.

God’s Love and Mercy is ALWAYS available

This parable teaches us that God’s love and mercy are always available to those who seek His mercy with a sincere, humble and loving heart, no matter what sins they have committed. God is always delighted to welcome us back and forgive even those who have offended Him greatly. But sometimes we can be afraid to approach God to ask Him for forgiveness. We can find it difficult to believe that God could forgive our sins. Even if our sins are so shameful that we feel like we couldn’t look Jesus in the face, but only cower before Him, crying on His feet, we must never believe that Jesus will not forgive us or that our act of trust in His mercy and goodness will be met by an angry and unforgiving God. We must believe that we will be treated like the woman in the Pharisees home.

Throughout the Diary of St. Faustina, Jesus is constantly telling St. Faustina to tell people to trust in His Mercy, Goodness and Love. He teaches her that no-one’s sins are a match for His mercy. But He knows that we will doubt so He constantly told St. Faustina to tell us to place all their trust in Him. This biblical story teaches us a lesson for our relationship with God, but it also applies to our human relationships.

Humans Respond to Love

In our human relationships, these truths also apply. A small amount of love and affection can bring people together, people who have been the greatest enemies for years. This parable wants to help us understand and believe that wherever there are damaged relationships, it can be reconciled, when one side is willing to show love, inspired by the beauty of God’s love, and that can be all that is necessary for love to be reciprocated by the other party.

As We Forgive Those

All reconciliation can be achieved through love. This is one of the main lessons this parable teaches us. It is the love within us that motivates us towards reconciliation with God and with those who have offended us. As Catholics, God expects us to make the effort to make peace with our enemies or to ask for forgiveness when necessary. He knows it is difficult, but it is an important aspect of our Catholic faith.

In the first prayer Jesus gave us, He made it a condition to be reconciled with Him, that we must “forgive those who trespass against us”. We must try to be reconciled with those who have offended us. Sometimes this is not possible, or maybe the other party might reject us, but if that happens, we can then forgive them in our hearts and pray from them.

To Love and to be Loved

There is no mystery to reconciliation. The spirit within us is always pushing us to be reconciled with those we need to make peace with. Reconciliation is part of the greatest force within us, which is to love. Love is not simply a part of our human makeup. It is a part of our spirit which is why it cannot be explained scientifically.

When we feel the need to be reconciled with God, or our fellow man, it means that we are feeling the need to return to a state of being ‘loving’. Sometimes, there are things that can separate people from one other or make them build walls, but deep within our spirit we all have a longing for peace and reconciliation.

Your Sins are Forgiven, Go in Peace

This parable teaches us that we have a natural hunger for peace and reconciliation that can only be fed by God’s love. It is through this eternal and unquenchable love, in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, that the soul encounters God. The confessional is a miraculous place in which the soul encounters the love of God, bestowed on it as an individual. It is a sacred place and a unique moment in the life of a soul. It is a moment in time where a human reconciles itself with the Almighty.

When the sinful woman was kneeling before Jesus crying because of her sins, she was going to confession. She was sorry for what she had done and Jesus knew it. We must remember this when we go to confession. Jesus knows that we are sorry for our sins, and we should imagine Him telling us too, “your faith has saved you, your sins are forgiven, go in peace”.

Original Article

God's Mercy Transforms Us, By Fr. Adrian Farrelly

What Do You Seek?

St. John’s Gospel describes the moment as Jesus was walking by the River Jordan and John the Baptist identified Him as the “Lamb of God”. After hearing this proclamation, two of John the Baptists disciples started walking after Jesus. He turned and asked, “What do you seek?” They wanted to see where He was staying, so Christ’s replied, “Come and you will see”. (John 1:38-39)
When Dominicans are received into the Order, during their Profession, the first question they are asked is, “What do you Seek?”. The reply is, “God’s Mercy and yours”. The Order wants to be confident that every Dominican truly believes in God’s mercy.

Preachers of the Truth

Every Dominican priest has the letters “O.P.” after their name, which means “Order of Preachers”. Dominicans are called to be Preachers of the Truth. For their preaching to be effective, we must search for the truth but it is God’s mercy which leads us to the truth. It is mercy that helps us to understand the teachings of Jesus and experience His love.As Dominicans, we place our lives at the mercy of God. We allow God’s mercy to form, lead and guide us. Mercy enables us to see the love of God and how we can be transformed by it. Mercy helps us to understand God’s love and how this love can be reflected, through us, when we show mercy to those we meet.

Everyday life transformed by God’s Mercy

Mercy is a fundamental part of Christian life. By understanding mercy, we are able to better understand the passionate love of Christ for each of us, even though we are sinners. Through mercy, we can see the teachings of Christ in a clearer way and become aware of the truth and see the way forward.

It is mercy that leads you to the truth. It helps us to see beyond the barriers that come between us and the love and mercy of Christ. Christ reveals the mercy of God to us. We allow Christ to manifest Himself to others, through us, when we are merciful.

Mercy Changes Us

Those who are devoted to Divine Mercy reflect on God’s Mercy and the role of His mercy in their life. With time, we come to realise what mercy does to us and for us. Mercy changes us and reforms us. It helps us to judge others in a different light, with forgiveness, tolerance and compassion. It helps us to see the mercy of God coming to us, through them. Before God, we are nothing. It is only through God’s mercy that we are who we are and have what we have.

St. Thomas Aquinas Explains God’s Mercy

Dominican teaching always acknowledges the importance of God’s mercy. One great Dominican theologian was St. Thomas Aquinas. He often spoke about the mercy of God and how we need His mercy to live our lives. He saw mercy as the greatest attribute of God. He affirmed, “God is never self-seeking, but acts only and always with selfless generosity, pouring out good gifts out of His abundance on His creatures. Showing mercy is therefore proper to God, in a special way, for it manifests His infinite perfection, and His infinite abundance and generosity”.

For St. Thomas, God’s mercy is in excess and above what we need. God’s mercy is bestowed on us in abundance. He further stated that “God acts mercifully...but by doing something more than justice; thus a man who pays another two hundred pieces of money, though owing him only one hundred, does nothing against justice, but acts liberally and mercifully. The case is the same with one who pardons an offence committed against him, for in remitting it, he may be said to bestow a gift”.

‘I seek God’s Mercy!’

As a Dominican, I remind myself every day what I asked for when I joined the Dominicans, namely “God’s Mercy”. St Faustina encouraged the people to pray every day for God’s mercy. It is the one thing we should all seek. Through God’s mercy, we will be saved and we can find peace and joy here on earth also.

Original Article

Lord, where are You going? by Fr. John Harris

Learning from the Past

There is a story in the memory of the Church which I believe can help us in our understanding of the crisis facing the Church today and the challenges facing us all at this moment. The story tells of how after the great fire of Rome in 64 AD, once Nero had begun persecuting the Christians, blaming them for the fire and the great loss of life, the Church in Rome advised St. Peter to leave the city and save himself.

As Peter was fleeing the city and making for the port of Ostia, he met the Lord Jesus. Jesus was going towards Rome, the opposite direction to Peter. When Peter said to Him, “Lord, where are You going?” or in Latin “Domine, Quo Vadis”, Jesus replied to Peter, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again”. The story recounts that at that very moment Peter turned on his heel and returned to Rome and as we know from the tradition of the Church he returned to face his own martyrdom and was crucified in the Roman circus at the Vatican and buried in the adjoining cemetery.

Change in Perspective

In a book I recently read, the same story was told but with a very significant change. The author had Jesus asking Peter, “Where are you going?” This changes the whole story, for now it is Peter who is deciding what to do. He is no longer following Jesus. The initiative is passed to Peter with Jesus trying to catch up with him.

We must all follow Christ

The author then asks the same question of our present-day Peter, Pope Benedict, “Where is he taking the Church?” It is as if it up to the Pope to decide how the Church can change and develop. The point of the story is that it is not the Pope who decides, but the whole Church must follow Christ. We are the ones to follow the Lord, even when He is asking a very great deal of us, even to suffer in our following of Him. Jesus founded the Church and continues, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, to guide it authoritatively through the ministry of the pope and bishops, as we read in Vatican II.

A Deep Trust in Jesus

This is the challenge before our eyes, to look at Christ, to know Him more deeply and to follow where He is leading. It is a call to a deep trust in Jesus and not in our own plans for us or for the Church. So often in the controversies which seem to be enveloping our Church in Ireland at this time, I hear a lot of arguments about peoples’ hurt egos, positions of influence and having their rights recognised, but I hear very little about Christ. I hear a lot of words but not a lot of faith.

Listen to the Word and Will of the Lord

When I listen to the fights on the radio or TV, I recall the words of Pope Benedict XVI on the day of his public Mass in St. Peter’s Square. He said, “My real programme of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by Him, so that He himself will lead the Church at this hour of our history”.

Follow Where He Leads

We must keep our focus on the Lord, as did St. Peter on the road to Ostia. The prayer inscribed at the foot of the Image of Divine Mercy, “Jesus I Trust in You”, the great prayer of the devotion, is the living out today of what happened to Peter. We meet Jesus in the midst of our own struggles and fears and we trust Him and follow where He leads, trusting that His mercy will see us safely through whatever is going on in our lives.

Do This For Me

So often in our prayers we can spend the time telling Jesus what He needs to do for us. We want Jesus to do our bidding rather than leaving all things in His hands. This is not the correct attitude of prayer for a Christian. This does not mean that we don’t tell Him what is on our minds; God loves us and wishes us to open our hearts and fears to Him, but to do so in a trusting way not in a way that wishes to force His hand.

Open our Hearts to Him

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us that God has willed in His providence that certain things will happen in response to our prayers, so it is very important that we make our requests to God, but our manner of approaching the Lord should be one of loving trust. We open our hearts to Him, knowing that He is all merciful and we trust that He will do what is best. Peter turned on his heel and returned to Rome, a sign of his loving trust in his living Saviour.

The Year of Faith

We are now celebrating a Year of Faith, a year when we are asked to put Jesus at the centre of our lives and to follow Him in trust. When the Pope asked us to read the catechism this year and to come to know our faith, he was not simply asking that we know the contents of the creed but that we come to know God, in the sacred humanity of Jesus, True God and True man.

The Same Faith as Peter

Our religion must never become an ideology, a stick to beat people with. The Church can never become a cult of the perfect, a collection of friends and allies; it is the community of those whose hearts Christ has conquered with His love. So this year let us live our faith, trusting in Jesus with the same faith that Peter showed on the road to Ostia. Let us be willing to follow Christ where He leads us and not to demand that He follow where we wander in pursuit of our own ideas and plans. During this year of faith let us learn to pray all the more deeply “Jesus I trust in you”.

Original - Article

God is with us when we are suffering, by Fr. John Harris

I remember standing outside an intensive care unit waiting to visit a two month old baby girl. Their family doctor come out to meet me and told me to go in, his eyes filled with tears. He said to me, “Father, I have tried everything. It’s up to you now. I can do no more”. But a priest can do more.

Supported by Jesus

People ask priests how we cope in such circumstances. The reason we manage is because we believe in the presence of Jesus. His presence is the “more” that we bring, though we are weak and sinful vessels. Our vocation as priests is to make Christ present. We do this most fully during the Holy Mass but also when we celebrate the other sacraments. When we raise our hands in blessing during Confession, it is Jesus who forgives through us. When we anoint the sick with holy oils, it is to make present the healing presence of Christ. We are fully aware that it is not us but Christ’s presence that brings peace, forgiveness and healing to this broken world.

Pope Francis and God’s Presence in the World

In his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith), Pope Francis reminds us that,
“Our culture has lost its sense of God’s tangible presence and activity in our world. We think that God is to be found in the beyond, on another level of reality, far removed from our everyday relationships. But if this were the case, if God could not act in the world, his love would not be truly powerful, truly real, and thus not even true, a love capable of delivering the bliss that it promises. It would make no difference at all whether we believed in him or not. Christians, on the contrary, profess their faith in God’s tangible and powerful love which really does act in history and determines its final destiny: a love that can be encountered, a love fully revealed in Christ’s passion, death and resurrection ”.

The Symbol of the Cross – Suffering and Redemption

Our Christian faith tells us that God is present with His merciful love in the good and bad moment of our lives. The great symbol of our Christian faith is the Cross. Calvary was not a nice and serene place. The Old Law said that the person hanging on a cross was to be seen as accursed by God. How could God be with anyone who is condemned? But this is precisely where Jesus is to be found.

God does not abandon us

People often think of God as being only in Heaven, with all the choirs of angels, with fluffy clouds and soft music. When sorrow comes their way, they feel abandoned by God and can even turn against God. However, the Cross tells us that we can also find God in the sadness of death, in the soul of the condemned man, in the midst of a crowd screaming for blood. This is where the True God is to be found. Our God does not turn His back on our suffering and pain, on loneliness and defeat. If God can be on Calvary, then He can be anywhere. Even in the midst of my messed up life, with my broken family, in the hospital ward and by the side of a grave, we can find God. The great truth of our Christian faith brings light into darkness by the presence of God.

God changes everything into Love

There are two particular places of great personal significance which I have been blessed to have visited many times in my life as a priest, Lourdes and Assisi. Both of these places speak of God’s presence changing everything. Both places, the Grotto in Lourdes and St. Francis Grave, were places that people associated with death and sin.

Lourdes and Assisi

Before Our Blessed Lady appeared in Lourdes, the Rock of Massabielle was a dump, where the infected rags from the local hospital were dumped and burned. It was also a place where people went for sinful sexual activities. The place where St. Francis is buried was originally a dump for the town of Assisi and the place where the gallows waited for its victims. Both were known as the places of death.

Now we know these places are two of the most blessed shrines in Europe, places where people go burdened by physical, moral and psychological sicknesses and where they find hope, mercy and peace. The stories of these two places bring us to the heart of the Christian message of hope and mercy. God can go to the strangest of places and transform them. We should not be surprised by this. The question was once asked, “can anything good come from Nazareth?” Goodness Himself came from Nazareth. The place isn’t important. It is the presence of God which transforms everything.

Calvary - Darkness to Light

When mercy comes to any situation, it changes everything. Calvary was a terrible place of violence and death, as it was on Good Friday. For anyone standing by the Cross that day, there was no mercy, no hope, only death and excruciating agony. But there was also another reality. The love and mercy of God was there, fulfilling His promise to humanity to redeem us so we could be with Him “in Paradise”. The willing acceptance by the Messiah, of death by Crucifixion, was a symbol which every human could understand. It is not the Cross, but the motive. The motive is love which emerges for a heart overflowing with love and mercy for everyone, no matter what sins they have committed. He died so that we could be saved from our sins, not just for the next life, but for this one also, as the virtuous life is the most pleasing and enjoyable way to live.

Calvary stands as a symbol for every place we find ourselves as sinful, broken and suffering human beings. There is no place that God will not go to bring mercy and new life. Whenever you find yourself on your own Calvary, never feel abandoned. Jesus is there. Mercy is there with you. Call to Him in faith. Say as did the man in the Gospel, “I have faith in your presence, help the little faith I have”. Look at the Crucifix and know that if God could have been there, then He is with you too.

Original Article

Confession - God Never Tires, by Fr. John Harris

How often do you hope it won’t be the same priest in case he might remember you? How often does the devil, the great discourager, tell you that you are wasting your time so give up going to confession? How often do you feel you are fighting a losing battle with sin in your life?

Struggling with Confession

We all have these same feelings, fears, doubts, discouragements and judgements. We become burdened with the weight of our sins and we feel it is useless to go to confession again with the same list of the same sins.

God Never Tires of Being Merciful

The first Sunday after his election, Pope Francis said, “We get tired of asking God for mercy, but God never tires of being merciful”. I think the Holy Father has pointed out a very real challenge for us all. Speaking both as a priest and a penitent, his words make great sense.

 

The Lord comes to take away our sins

The Pope knows how difficult it can be to live in the midst of the struggle with sin in one’s life. He knows that we can become terribly discouraged and fed up. This can be made even worse when we don’t accept the mercy of God for our past sins. I can remember going to confession once, and the priest said to me that I had carried all my old sins back into the box with me. Even though the Lord had forgiven all the sins of my past, yet I had held onto them, so that each week in confession, I kept repeating the old sins. He asked me, “Do you believe in the power of Jesus to forgive you your sins?” I said, “Yes”. Then he asked me why was I still clinging to them? The Lord comes to take away our sins and very often we don’t allow Him to do that. We go after them again and carry them with us as old companions on the road. When we don’t allow the Lord to take away our sins, we can become even more tired of asking for mercy.

Our tiredness of asking for mercy

The Pope is asking us to reflect upon our tiredness of asking for mercy. He wants us to focus on God and His mercy. He wants us to see confession as a sacrament of love rather than a torture chamber we fear. Too often we look at the Sacrament of Reconciliation only from our own point of view, when all the time we are being asked in the life of the Church to see things from God’s point of view. We only see our sins and not our loving Father waiting for us.

The love of Jesus Christ lasts forever

Recently, before publicly going to confession himself, Pope Francis said, “The love of Jesus Christ lasts forever. It has no end because it is the very life of God. This love conquers sin and gives the strength to rise and begin again, for through forgiveness, the heart is renewed and rejuvenated. We all know it: our Father never tires of loving and his eyes never grow weary of watching the road to his home to see if the son who left and was lost is returning. We can speak of God’s hope: our Father expects us always, he doesn't just leave the door open to us, but he awaits us. He is engaged in the waiting for his children.”

Sinners can't earn Mercy

These words remind me of words spoken by Saint Pope John Paul II, “We must not think that it is the sinner, through his or her own independent journey of conversion, who earns mercy. On the contrary, it is the mercy that impels the penitent along the path of conversion. Left to ourselves we can do nothing. Before being man’s journey to God, confession is God’s arrival at the person’s home”.

I confess to Almighty God

I have been reflecting lately on the fact that when we come together to pray at the Holy Mass, the first thing we do is to publicly admit that we are sinners. We say “I confess to Almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts, and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do” and we blame no one else for this situation expect ourselves for we say that we have done all this through “my own fault”, indeed through “my own grievous fault”. We can only so publicly admit that we are sinners because we believe in mercy.

If we didn't believe in mercy then, like most of the world, we would either take pride in our sins or deny they were sins. Without mercy, our sins would indeed crush us. But praised be to God, we know that there is infinite mercy with God. That is why we must never get tired of asking for mercy. Mercy is our only hope of becoming people who can live in the freedom of the children of God, free to love as we ourselves are loved by our merciful Father.

In the likeness of God

We can only love each other when we relish the mercy of God in our own lives. As the Pope reminds us, “From the heart of the person renewed in the likeness of God comes good behaviour: to speak always the truth and avoid all deceit; not to steal, but rather to share all you have with others, especially those in need; not to give in to anger, resentment and revenge, but to be meek, magnanimous and ready to forgive; not to gossip which ruins the good name of people, but to look more at the good side of everyone. It is a matter of clothing oneself in the new man, with these new attitudes.”

Never tire of asking for mercy

Never tire of asking for mercy, never become discouraged in your fight against sin and selfishness. The Lord is victorious over all the forces of darkness and sin. He is our hope and our mercy. Rejoice in God’s mercy and ask for it more and more each day.

Original Article

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone

“Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” (Pope Benedict XVI)

This profound sentence from Pope Benedict tells us that a Christian is someone who has met the Risen Lord and whose hearts have been conquered with His love. When you claim to be a Christian, you are saying that Jesus is not simply someone who lived over 2000 years ago, but that He lives and you have met Him.

From St. Faustina’s Diary, we have learnt how she met Jesus so many times. We have read about the extraordinary meetings with Christ in the lives of the holiest saints, like Padre Pio.

But what about us in our daily struggles with sin? We can often feel that if we could only become exceptionally holy, then we might be worthy to meet the Lord. However, there is a more obvious way to meet the Lord. We meet Jesus because we are sinners in need of His healing mercy. Our sins and weaknesses can be vehicles through which we meet the Risen Lord in His infinite love and mercy.

One morning, the Scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who had been “caught” in adultery to the Temple where Jesus. The Law of Moses stated clearly that a woman caught committing adultery should be stoned to death. They wanted to test Him. If He went against the Law, then they could destroy His reputation with the Jewish people.

One thing is clear from St. John’s account was that the woman was only a tactical ploy in the war against Jesus. But, for this woman, it was very real. Her private sin had now become a public scandal, and she was about to be stoned to death by an angry mob of violent, manipulative men. She must have had no hope, knowing she was guilty.

When they presented the case to Jesus, she had no defense. It was an open and shut case. As she stood before Jesus, He did not ask any questions. He accepted that she was guilty. Then He did a strange thing. He knelt down and started to write on the ground with his finger. They kept on questioning Him but He did not answer. Then He stood up and said to them, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. One by one they left, leaving her alone with Jesus.

The woman must have been in a total state of shock. She was about to suffer the most horrific death, but Jesus had defeated her enemies. What must she have felt when she heard Jesus say, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.” How did she feel as she walked out of the Temple on her way home? It must have felt like a dream.
I have often wondered if that woman, years later, as she reflected on her life, was grateful for getting caught committing adultery? This moment in her life brought her to Jesus where she experienced His love and mercy. Often is it our sins and weaknesses that bring us to Jesus.

We are tempted to think that if we were very good, if we kept all the commandments, if we never said or did anything sinful then God could love us. We want to stand and look at God in the eye and accept His love because we deserve it. But we can never meet God on equal footing. We can never be so good and perfect that we feel secure before God on our own terms. We will always stand before Him in need of His love and mercy.

It is precisely because we are in need of God’s love and mercy that we can meet Christ. The Scribes and Pharisees were in the presence of Christ but they were not open to Him and, in that sense, they never truly met Him. They did not need His love and mercy therefore they never encountered Him. However the woman caught in adultery, because she was a sinner, needed Christ to be merciful and loving and thus she met Him.

Very often our sins can be like the Scribes and the Pharisees, screaming that we be condemned, demanding that we be denounced by God. But our sins can also be the very things that bring us into the forgiving presence of Christ. Our sins rather than keeping us from Christ, can be the very excuses we have to come before the Lord and seek His presence in our lives.

Such a moment of totally immersing ourselves into the mercy of God comes when we go to Confession. This holy sacrament is the only place in the world where we know we are loved. No matter what we have said or done, all those things we are ashamed of, things we would hate other people to know, when we say them in the sacrament we know that we will be forgiven and set free. We leave the confessional knowing that we are loved.

When you prepare to go to Confession, immerse yourself in that love which is the living presence of Christ coming to you to set you free. Jesus suffered on Calvary and rose from the dead in order to make God’s love for you a reality in your life’s journey. The Church herself, the provider of the sacraments, is here for you, so that you can meet Christ and have your heart conquered by his love. Rather than our sins being reasons for us to flee from Jesus, let them be the very things that carry us to the loving mercy of Christ.

Original Article by by Fr. John Harris

"They Have No Wine" by Fr. John Harris

In her Diary, St. Faustina recorded the details of a vision she had of Our Blessed Lady and the Child Jesus at the Shrine of Ostra Brama in Vilnius, Lithuania on November 15, 1935.
Extract from the Diary about this vision:

“On the evening of the last day of the Novena at Ostra Brama, after the singing of the litany, one of the priests exposed the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrance. When he placed it on the altar, I immediately saw the Infant Jesus, stretching out His little arms, first of all toward His Mother, who at that time had taken on a living appearance. When the Mother of God was speaking to me, Jesus stretched out His tiny hands toward the congregation. The Blessed Mother was telling me to accept all that God asked of me like a little child, without questioning; otherwise it would not be pleasing to God. At that moment, the Infant Jesus vanished, and the Mother of God was again lifeless, and her picture was the same as it had been before”. (Diary 529)

When the vision ended, the young nun said to the Lord, "Do with me as You please; I am ready for everything, but You, O Lord, must not abandon me even for a moment" (Diary 529).

Wedding Feast of Cana

This vision of St. Faustina reminds us of the moment between Mary and Jesus at the wedding feast in Cana when Mary says, “They have no wine”. The reaction of Our Blessed Lord takes us by surprise when He says, "Why do you involve me? My hour has not yet come." (John 2:4) The Gospel tells us she simply went to the servants and said, "Do whatever He tells you". This is exactly what she told St. Faustina in the vision in 1935.

The Love of Our Lady

This story shows the sensitivity and strength of Our Lady and her love and compassion for people. It would have been deeply humiliating for the married couple and their families to run out of wine. She did not demand, but she knew He wouldn’t say ‘no’, not out of fear, but out of love. It also shows her faith that she knew that nothing was impossible to Him. (Like any good mother, she just suggested!) It is as if she is saying, "I trust in you". Her whole life was one of openness to God's activity. Mary is the woman who always said “yes” to God. For Mary, prayer is not telling God what to do but an attitude of loving trust in His goodness.

She wants us to trust in her son

Mary wants us all to know that this is the true nature of the heart of her Son. She knows that it’s only when we meet Him and learn to trust in Him that great things can happen in our lives. No matter what is going on, what disasters may be threatening us or what fears we may hold, we can turn to her and she will intercede for us with Him. Of course, Our Lady would never take advantage Him, but I am certain, that if Our Lady sees a need in our life, she will ask Jesus to help, even if requires a profound miracle.

Out of sync with God’s Plans

The miracle of the wedding feast of Cana was an act of love and mercy. But it was out of sync with God’s plans. Jesus was concerned about this, otherwise He would not have said, “My hour has not yet come”. But it just goes to show the depth of God’s love, that He was willing to change His plans to help this couple with something as insignificant as extra wine at a wedding.

Beginning of His Mission

Once Jesus preformed this miracle, He began His works of mercy and they would not stop until the greatest work of mercy, His Passion on the Cross. At the foot of the Cross, she will be with Him again. But this time, He has a request for her and she will not refuse Him either.

We can trust Him

There is no better way of getting to know her Son than by trusting in Him. We can trust Him because He is mercy. When His mercy touches our lives, and at times our very troubled lives, He can transform them beyond all recognition. He turns our water into His wine.

Dirty Water Jars

We must remember that the water-jars held water that was used by the Jews for cleaning the dust off their hands and feet. No one would ever think of drinking from them. It is symbolic of His mercy as He transforms a situation of grime and dirt into the celebration of His goodness and generosity.

So, it is for us, when we do as Mary tells us, and meet Him in our trust. He can transform situations which we may be ashamed of, despairing of but with the touch of His presence make them into celebrations of His wonderful goodness and generosity. Only He can do such a wonderful thing and Mary knows this.

He will not let us down

We are the servants at the wedding feast in Cana. When Our Lady tells us “Do whatever He tells you”, we must trust that He will not let us down. In the Devotion to Divine Mercy, Jesus has asked us to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy to help Him to save souls, so we must do what He tells us and He will wash clean the souls of countless sinners and change them into holy, joy-filled people.

Original Article 

When you ask for Mercy by Fr. John Harris

When we pray for mercy what exactly are we praying for?

This may seem like a strange question but it is possibly one of the most important questions being asked and argued about in the Church at this time. Does mercy change us or allow us to stay as we are?

For some people, mercy seems to act like a white-wash, covering up all sin and not actually changing the situation of our lives. An understanding of mercy, which allows a person to become at peace with sin, is far from the mercy shown by Jesus, because His true concern is for our true happiness.

To put this more clearly, let us take the example of Jesus in the scene with the woman caught in adultery. This woman had been “caught” in the act of adultery and the Pharisees bring her to Jesus to judge her. As we know, Jesus shows her great mercy. He does not demand that the law be fully observed. She was not stoned to death. In this way, Jesus can be said to act beyond justice.

But, in His act of mercy, He tells her to go back to her husband and not commit such a sin again. He restored her to a just relationship with her husband by forgiving her sin, showing great mercy and allowing her the freedom to do the right thing.

Jesus would not have been merciful if He had forgiven her the sin and told her it was okay to go on committing adultery. Mercy releases us from sin and allows us to live in friendship with God. Mercy does not make sin acceptable.

Mercy is not a white-washing over of sin, but a true forgiveness which allows one to return to live a holy life. Mercy restores us to holiness. It doesn’t simply turn a blind eye and pretend everything is okay. God loves us too much not to take us seriously.

Mercy must always put us in a true relationship with God and others. One can never work against justice if one is to be truly happy but one can act beyond justice by allowing forgiveness to open us up to move beyond the present situation of sin and selfishness. This is precisely the space opened up by Divine Mercy. An unjust act is never merciful because mercy wishes the best for the other. A false consolation that allows someone to say that it is a lesser evil is not mercy at all if the person is not freed from the sinful situation.

Whatever you do in mercy must be done in love for the other and only act for the good of the other. God shows mercy to us through love alone, inasmuch as He loves us as belonging to Him.

The sinner is loved, but the good that God intends, has as its purpose, the conversion of the sinner from sin, making sure that the sinner does not remain in sin, since that would be an evil.

Divine Mercy is directly reunited with justice, and thus it has nothing to do with any sort of tolerance with respect to the sin, rather it is about seeking the conversion of the sinner. This conversion may take time as one has to come to terms with turning from sin and living now in the freedom of the children of God.

God tolerates sin with a view to a greater good. God tolerates the fact that sin is committed in the view of the future repentance of the sinner whom He loves. Mercy springs from love for the person who is a sinner in order to cure the sinner of the sickness of infidelity or sinfulness that afflicts us all and prevents us from living in communion with God.

This is something quite different from consenting to the continuation of living in a sinful situation without an interior transformation by means of grace, as though God covered our sins without converting the heart by cleansing it. A kind of mercy that left us in our sinful condition would not be true mercy but a pretend mercy, a false compassion which leaves us in sin. True mercy always seeks conversion and the purification of heart so that the one time sinner can now begin to truly become a friend of God. We know when we are sinners and all the pretence doesn’t bring us any peace. Only mercy which forgives and gives us the chance to be truly good allows us to live in peace.

St. Pope John Paul II once wrote “According to Catholic doctrine, no mercy, neither divine nor human, entails consent to the evil or tolerance of the evil. Mercy is always connected with the moment that leads from evil to good. Where there is mercy, evil surrenders. When the evil persists, there is no mercy.”

Divine Mercy is God’s offer to us to come close to Him. It is a real offer which invites us to a conversion of life, a definite break with sin and a peace of knowing and living in communion with God. This relationship is not a pretend relationship in which we have to hide anything. God’s offer of mercy opens us to a peaceful and honest way of living. When one meets the Lord’s mercy, our lives change. Our acceptance of mercy involves us trusting our lives to Jesus and our willingness to obey Him. When we pray for true mercy, we ask the Lord to forgive us our sins and weaknesses and to give us the grace to live in communion with Him in sincerity and truth.

Original Article - Divine Mercy .org 

Divine Mercy in Action - The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive, by Fr. Brian Doyle OP

We want to be in control

To be in control of our lives is something that we all desire. Indeed, we all spend time planning for the future and trying to ensure that we will have an enjoyable, secure and prosperous life. When we are not in control of a given situation, we tend to become anxious and worried. These can be trivial things such as being late for an appointment, or more serious matters such as the health and welfare of those we love. However, life is naturally unpredictable and it is impossible to be prepared for all eventualities. This can leave us feeling vulnerable and helpless if we rely only upon ourselves.

 

Jesus, Don’t You Care?

It is clear from the Gospels that the Apostles were no different from us and also had a tendency to panic when they felt things were out of their control. One account, in Mark 4:35-41, tells of a furious storm which arose one evening as the disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee with Jesus. The waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern but He was asleep. The disciples, overcome with fear, woke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, don't You care if we perish?” But Jesus rebuked the wind and the waves and commanded them to be still. He then said to His disciples, "Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?" 

 

In Troubled Waters

 The boat in this Gospel passage can be seen to represent each one of our lives. There may be times when we feel helpless, lost, in danger, or abandoned by God and want to cry out, 

“Lord, do You not care if I perish?” We may wonder why God does not seem to be helping us with our problems, or why He hasn’t healed us of our illnesses. It may seem that God is not listening or that He doesn’t love us. 

 

Trust, Even During Your Storm

 This is a temptation we all face at some stage in life. But Jesus allows these tests of our faith to help us to trust more and more in Him and to strengthen our love for Him. He wants to assure us that He is always with us even though we may not always feel His presence. The Lord may seem to be asleep in our lives sometimes but He does not want us to be afraid. He asks us to believe that He is always at our side and will never leave us. His Church may be battered by the storms of persecution but He will never abandon it nor let the powers of evil be victorious.

Original Article - Divine Mercy Apostolate

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector by Fr.Cornelius

 Our Merciful Saviour, Jesus Christ, came into the world to establish His Kingdom filled with Mercy, Compassion, Joy, Justice, Peace and Love, the Kingdom of Paradise.

To deepen our faith and foster holiness of life among us, He used parables to make known to us the mysteries of God’s Kingdom.

We discover that parables are simple in appearance but they deal with fascinating topics. Parables make the uncertain and complex topics easy to understand.

In the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, according to Luke 18:9-14, Jesus made known to us the nature of the forgiving Love, Mercy and Compassion of God which to a certain degree is not easy to comprehend. We find in the parable that God’s heart is tender, large and open to accommodate even the greatest sinners who call on Him for mercy and redemption. We find in the parable a God who offers His gift of compassion and mercy to those who acknowledge their vulnerability, sinfulness and emptiness.

In humility we are challenged to acknowledge our sins and ask for God’s Mercy and Compassion. That is exactly what the Tax Collector did in the gospel parable. The Tax Collector acknowledged his unworthiness and cried out in sorrow: “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner”. Jesus said the Tax Collector went home at right with God. He was justified and saved. His relationship with God was deepened.

The Pharisee had no need for God and His mercy. He went home empty and without salvation. It all reveals our need for God and humility. It reveals our relationship with God. The parable also gives us food for thought about ourselves: in the seemingly endless demands of our daily activities, are we able to find enough time to respond adequately and calmly to God’s love and Compassion? Do we recognise our limitations and need for God?

Original Article - Divine Mercy.Org

1827 Today, my soul is preparing for Holy Communion as for a wedding feast,

wherein all the participants are resplendent with unspeakable beauty. And I, too, have been invited to this banquet, but I do not see that beauty within myself, only an abyss of misery. And, although I do not feel worthy of sitting down to table, I will however slip under the table, at the feet of Jesus, and will beg for the crumbs that fall from the table. Knowing Your mercy, I therefore approach You, Jesus, for sooner will I run out of misery than will the compassion of Your Heart exhaust itself. That is why during this day I will keep arousing trust in The Divine Mercy. 399 1828 16. + Today, the Majesty of God is surrounding me. There is no way that I can help myself to prepare better. I am thoroughly enwrapped in God. My soul is being inflamed by His love. I only know that I love and am loved. That is enough for me. I am trying my best to be faithful throughout the day to the holy Spirit and to fulfill His demands. I am trying my best for interior silence in order to be able to hear His voice……

1823 Today, my soul is preparing for the coming of my Savior, who is goodness and love itself.

Temptations and distractions torment me and do not let me prepare for the coming of the Lord. Therefore I desire even more ardently to receive You, Lord, because I know that when You come, You will rescue me from these torments. And if it is Your will that I should suffer, well then, fortify me for the struggle. 398 Jesus, Savior, who have deigned (10) to come into my heart, drive away these distractions which are keeping me from talking to You. Jesus answered me, I want you to become like a knight experienced in battle, who can give orders to others amid the exploding shells. In the same way, My child, you should know how to master yourself amid the greatest difficulties, and let nothing drive you away from Me, not even your falls. 

1810 Today, I prepare for the Coming of the King.

What am I, and who are You, O Lord, King of eternal glory? O my heart, are you aware of who is coming to you today? Yes, I know, but – strangely – I am not able to grasp it. Oh, if He were just a king, but He is the King of kings, the Lord of lords. Before Him, all power and dominion tremble. He is coming to my heart today. But I hear Him approaching. I go out to meet Him and invite Him. When He entered the dwelling of my heart, it was filled with such reverence that it fainted with fear, falling at His feet. Jesus gives her His hand and graciously permits her to take her place beside Him. He reassures her, saying, See, I have left My heavenly throne to become united with you. What you see is just a tiny part and already your soul swoons with love. How amazed will your heart be when you see Me in all My glory. 1811 But I want to tell you that eternal life must begin already here on earth through Holy Communion. Each Holy Communion makes you more capable of communing with God throughout eternity. And so, my King, I do not ask You for anything although I know that (6) You can give me everything. I ask You for one thing only: remain forever the King of my heart; that is enough for me. 1812 Today I am renewing my act of submission to my King, by faithfulness to interior inspirations. 1813 5. + Today, I am not forcing myself to make any special preparation. I cannot think of anything, though I feel many things. I long for the time when God will come to my heart. I throw myself in His arms and tell Him about my inability and my misery. I pour out all the pain of my heart, for not being able to love Him as much as I want. I arouse within myself acts of faith, hope and charity and live on that throughout the day. 

1801 One day during Holy Mass, the Lord gave me a deeper knowledge of His holiness and His majesty,

and at the same time I saw my own misery. This knowledge made me happy, and my soul drowned itself completely in his mercy. I felt enormously (141) happy. 392 1802 On the following day, I had a clear awareness of the following words: “You see, God is so holy, and you are sinful. Do not approach Him, and go to Confession every day.” And indeed, whatever I thought of seemed to me to be a sin. But I did not omit going to Holy Communion, and I resolved to go to Confession at the prescribed time, as I had no clear impediment. But when the day for confession came, I prepared a whole mass of those sins of which I was to accuse myself. However, in the confessional, God allowed me to accuse myself of only two imperfections, despite my efforts to make a confession according to what I had prepared. When I left the confessional, the Lord said to me, My daughter, all those sins you intended to confess are not sins in My eyes; (142) that is why I took away your ability to tell them. I understood that Satan, wanting to disturb my peace, has been giving me exaggerated thoughts. O Savior, how great is Your goodness! 1803 One day, when I was preparing for Holy Communion and noticed that I had nothing to offer Him, I fell at His feet, calling down all His mercy upon my poor soul: “May Your grace, which flows down upon me from Your Compassionate Heart, strengthen me for the struggle and sufferings, that I may remain faithful to You. And, although I am such misery, I do not fear You, because I know Your mercy well. Nothing will frighten me away from You, O God, because everything is so much less (143) than what I know [Your mercy to be] – I see that clearly.” [Here ends the sixth and last notebook]

1797 Today, the Lord came to me and said, My daughter, help Me to save souls.

 You will go to a dying sinner, and you will continue to recite the chaplet, and in this way you will obtain for him trust in My mercy, for he is already in despair. 1798 Suddenly, I found myself in a strange cottage where an elderly man was dying amidst great torments. All about the bed was a multitude of demons and the family, who were crying. When I began to pray, the spirits of darkness fled, with hissing and threats directed at me. The soul became calm and, filled with trust, rested in the Lord. At the same moment, I found myself again in my own room. How this happens…. I do not know. + 1799 (140) J.M.J. I feel that there is a power which is defending me and protecting me from the blows of the enemy. It guards and defends me. I feel it very distinctly; it is as if I am being shielded by the shadow of his wings. 1800 My Jesus, You alone are good. Even if my heart were to make every effort to write of Your goodness, at least in part, I could not do so – this is beyond all our comprehension.