On February 22, 1931 a young Polish nun, Sister Faustina of the Most Blessed Sacrament (Helen Kowalska), saw a vision of Jesus with rays of Mercy from the area of his heart. He told her to have an image painted to represent this vision and to sign it. “Jesus I trust in You”. In a diary that Sister Faustina kept, she recorded series of revelations from the Lord between 1931 – 38 concerning the availability of His limitless mercy to even the greatest sinners. Jesus revealed special ways for people to respond to his mercy in their lives, and he gave her several promises for those who would trust in his mercy and show mercy to others. By the time of Sister Faustina’s death in 1938, devotion to the Divine Mercy had already begun to spread throughout Eastern Europe. The process for Sister Faustina’s beatification was begun in 1966 and she was declared venerable on March 7, 1992. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Rome on April 18, 1993 and canonized by him on Sunday 30th April, 2000. Sister Faustina’s diary, written under obedience to the Lord and her spiritual director, is the main source of the message of Divine Mercy. The message points to the great need for mercy in our times. It reveals God’s mercy as the answer to our present human condition, to our misery.
Rev. George Kosicki in his illuminating book on Divine Mercy (Come To My Mercy) says that what God wants of us is to turn to Him with trust. To trust God is to rely on Him who is mercy itself, knowing that He is God, and that He loves us and cares for us. Our Lord calls out for sinners to come to His infinite mercy. Repeatedly His words to Saint Faustina emphasize that He is more generous toward sinners than toward the just and that His mercy is always available to us, no matter what we have done or what state we are in, even if our sins are as black as night and we are filled with fears and anxieties. Over and over again Our Lord stresses that He could never reject a repentant heart, never refuse an appeal to His mercy. Our Lord’s fathomless mercy for sinners can be seen from the following excerpts of His desires and promises which He communicated to Sr. Faustina: Let the greatest sinners place their trust in My mercy. I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if he makes an appeal to My compassion, but on the contrary, I justify him in My unfathomable and inscrutable mercy. Tell sinful souls not to be afraid to approach Me; speak to them of My great mercy (1396). The loss of each soul plunges Me into mortal sadness. You always console Me when you pray for sinners.
The prayer most pleasing to Me is prayer for the conversion of sinners. Know, My daughter, that this prayer is always heard and answered (1397). Write this for the benefit of distressed souls: when a soul sees and realizes the gravity of its sins, when the whole abyss of the misery into which it immersed itself is displayed before its eyes, let it not despair, but with trust let it throw itself into the arms of My mercy, as a child into the arms of its beloved mother. These souls have a right of priority to My compassionate Heart, they have first access to My mercy. Tell them that no soul that has called upon My mercy has been disappointed or brought to shame. I delight particularly in a soul which has placed its trust in My goodness (1541). The All Holy God detests the smallest sin. He cannot love a soul which is stained with sin; but when it repents, there is no limit to His generosity towards it. “My mercy embraces and justifies it …. My Heart rejoices when they return to Me. I forget the bitterness with which they fed my Heart and rejoice at their return.
Conditions of God’s Mercy
To obtain God’s mercy, the following conditions must be fulfilled: First, there must be repentance and conversion of heart. The greatest sin imaginable is not too great to be forgiven, if the sinner is truly repentant. “I desire not the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ez. 33:11). Even the worst of sinners God gives sufficient grace to repent and amend their ways. “If your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made white as wool” (Is. 1:18). While hardened sinners are never excluded from the grace of conversion, they can and at times do, resist God’s invitations and inspirations, clinging to their own will and ideas. The second requirement is to be merciful to others. God wants us to receive His mercy and let it flow through us to others. He wants us to extend love and forgiveness to others just as He does to us. While both the Old and New Testament reveal the limitless dimensions of God’s mercy, the New Testament goes beyond the old in its emphasis on mercy as a divine characteristic which men must share. If they are to be the recipient of mercy, they must practice mercy. There are as many ways of exercising works of mercy as there are human needs. However, tradition has arranged the most common works of mercy into two series of seven as follows: CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY: to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to give shelter to those who need it, to visit the sick, to minister to prisoners, and to bury the dead.
SPIRITUAL WORKS OF MERCY: to admonish the sinner, to instruct the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, to comfort the sorrowful, to bear wrongs patiently, to forgive all injuries, and to pray for the living and the dead. Our Blessed Lord, after explaining various ways in which merciful love responds to offenses and enemies, declares how we must be merciful to our fellow humans if we expect to receive divine mercy: “Do not judge, and you shall not be judged; do not condemn, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive and you shall be forgiven; give, and it shall be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall they pour into your lap. For the measure you measure with will be measured back to you” (Lk. 6:37, 38). Our Saviour laid down the same condition for mercy in the prayer He taught us: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Mt. 6:12). Those few words which we repeat often can bring us a more lenient or a more severe judgment according as we are willing or not willing to forgive others. “Judgment is without mercy to him who has not shown mercy” (Jas. 2:13). So it is not God who puts limits on His mercy, but rather we ourselves. The third condition for receiving divine mercy is to completely trust in Jesus. Trust in Jesus is the essence of the message of mercy. In repeated revelations to St. Faustina, Our Divine Saviour makes it clear that the fountain is His Heart, the water is His mercy, and the vessel is trust. I have opened My Heart as a living fountain of mercy. Let all souls draw life from it.
Let them approach this sea of mercy with great trust (Diary, 1520). On the cross, the fountain of My mercy was opened wide by the lance for all souls — no one have I excluded! (1182). I am offering people a vessel with which they are to keep coming for graces to the fountain of mercy. That vessel is this image with the signature: “Jesus, I trust in You” (327). The graces of My mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is — trust. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive (1578). …… The graces of My Mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is – trust. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive. Souls that trust boundlessly are a great comfort to Me…… I pour all the treasures of My graces into them (Diary 1578). Repeatedly, in His conversations with Sister Faustina, the Lord spoke of His merciful response to souls that trust in Him. “I desire to grant unimaginable graces”, He told her, “to those souls who trust in My Mercy …… Sooner wouldheaven and earth turn into nothingness than would My mercy not embrace a trusting soul” (Diary 687, 1777). Over and over again He stressed that He could never reject a repentant heart, never refuse an appeal to His Mercy.
Devotion to Divine Mercy
Having known the desires and promises of our Merciful Saviour, how do we practice devotion to His divine mercy? Here are the devotional practices revealed through Sister Faustina and given to us as “vessels of mercy” through which God’s love can be poured out upon us and upon the world: Through St. Faustina, the merciful Sav
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