By Sister Claudia Cherro, OSB
Last Sunday we celebrated the Feast of Divine Mercy, one of the most beautiful feasts we have in the Catholic Church. Jesus appeared many times to St. Faustina of Poland and told her he wished this Feast to be celebrated the Sunday after Easter. Jesus told St. Faustina of the immensity of His mercy.
Some of the messages Jesus gave her were the following:
“Tell aching mankind to snuggle close to My merciful Heart, and I will fill it with peace. Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet. My mercy is so great that no mind, be it of man or of angel, will be able to fathom it throughout all eternity.’’
“As for you, be always merciful toward other people, and especially toward sinners.”
“Oh, how painful it is to Me that souls so seldom unite themselves to Me in Holy Communion.”
“Tell souls where they are to look for solace; that is, in the Tribunal of Mercy (the confessional), in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. There the greatest miracles take place and are incessantly repeated.”
“When you go to confession, to this fountain of mercy, the Blood and Water which came forth from My Heart always flows down upon your soul. Here the misery of the soul meets the God of mercy. I Myself am waiting there for you. I am only hidden by the priest … I Myself act in your soul. Make your confession before Me. The person of the priest is, for Me, only a screen. … Open your soul in confession as you would Me and I will fill it with my light.”
The following is a true story that maybe some of you have heard. It took place in Poland. A relatively young priest is in a hospital, visiting some of his parishioners. He is walking down the hallway, and a nun stops him and says, “Father, can you go into this room? There’s a man on his deathbed. He’s been here for days. We’ve asked priests to go in, but he chases everyone away. He doesn’t want to talk about Jesus. But he’s dying. Could you please visit him?”
The priest goes in with some trepidation and introduces himself to the patient. The man erupts and starts cursing at him. He is so angry! “I don’t want anything to do with you. Get out of here!” The priest says, “Okay,” and goes out into the hall.
The nun is still there. She says, “Could you please go back in?” The priest replies, “He doesn’t want anything I have to offer.”
“Just give it another chance,” pleads the nun.
The priest reluctantly re-enters the room. He says to the man, “I’m not going to ask if you want to go to confession. I’m not going to ask if you want Holy Communion. But is it okay if I just sit here next to your bed and pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy?”
The old man replies, “I don’t care. Do whatever you want.”
The priest sits down and begins softly praying and repeating the words of the Chaplet:
“For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”
Suddenly the man bursts out, “Stop it!” Startled, the priest looks up and asks, “Why?”
“Because there is no mercy for me!”
“Why do you think there is no mercy for you?” asks the priest.
“It doesn’t matter,” responds the old man.
But the priest persists: “Why do you think there is no mercy for you?”
The man breaks down and says, “I’ll tell you. Twenty-five years ago, I was working for the railroad. My job was to lower the crossing guard arm when a train would come to prevent cars from going on the tracks. But one night I was drunk. I didn’t lower the crossing guard arm, and a couple and their three young children were on the tracks as a train came, and they were all instantly killed. That was my fault. There is no mercy for me.”
The priest just sits there staring at the rosary in his hands. Finally he asks, “Where was this?”
The man tells him the name of the Polish town. The priest looks up and says, “Twenty-five years ago, my mom and my dad were taking my little siblings on a trip. I couldn’t go with them. They were driving through that small town. For some reason the railroad crossing guard arm wasn’t lowered. As they were crossing the tracks, a train came and killed them all. I lost my whole family that night.”
The priest gazes intently into the man’s face, and he says, “My brother, God forgives you and I forgive you.” The man realizes that God’s mercy is for him. The man makes his confession and receives Holy Communion. Two days later he dies. Mercy wins.
After giving the man the Sacraments, the priest goes into the hallway in search of the nun. He can’t find her. The administration tells him, “We don’t employ any nuns at this hospital.” Puzzled, he leaves the hospital.
But the story doesn’t end there. Two years later he goes to the town of Vilnius, which is where Saint Faustina lived. He goes to the convent to say Mass for the nuns there. As he is walking down the hall, he sees a painting on the wall of a Sister and he says, “Oh, I know her, I met that nun a couple of years ago.”
“Oh no, Father, you did not,” replies one of the nuns. “That’s St. Faustina. She’s been dead since 1938.” The priest then realizes it was Saint Faustina who appeared to him told him to go into the patient’s room.
We know that this story is true because it was related by a religious Sister from Saint Faustina’s community who recounted that story during a Forty Hours Devotion at our own Saint Francis Parish in Brainerd, Minnesota.
So, what are the main messages of Jesus for us on this great Feast?
- Confession is not an option but a mandate, where the God of Mercy is waiting physically in the confessional with the priest. And He is the one listening to our confession and He is the one who is giving the absolution and forgiveness of our sins through the words and hands of the priest.
- That no matter how difficult it is, we must always be ready to extend mercy and forgiveness to everyone in our lives even to the wicked of the world.
- That just as in Francis Thompson’s poem Hound of Heaven (1890), Jesus pursues us and everyone, even the most vile and evil, offering his mercy even to the person’s last breath, so that there is a chance for their soul to be saved even at their dying breath, because God loves us all and wants us to be saved.
“For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world. Amen.”
HistoryIsResearch, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons