Category Archives: Divine Mercy

On Contrition

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If you are a “chalice is half-full” kind of person, you might be able to find a silver lining in the Sacramental suppression that the Church has to endure thanks to, what one Prelate has called, the “dictatorship of the sanitary”.  With ready access to the Sacraments, there is always the danger of them becoming mere formalities.  It is, after all, hard to do things well when we do them regularly.  The optimist sees this as a way to overcome this temptation. 

Regular Confession is a good example of this.  There are many of us who go to Confession regularly, yet rarely see the kind of growth that we would expect from these regular encounters with Our Lord.  When access becomes limited, we are forced to examine both our desire and our real motives.  In the case of Confession that desire and motivation are one and the same thing—Contrition.

When the Confessionals were sealed, the faithful were instructed to make an act of perfect contrition and go to Confession when they could.  Thanks to bad Sacramental Theology and poor catechesis over the past half century, hardly anyone knows what that means, let alone how to do it.  That is why it behooves us to examine the topic of Contrition more closely in hopes that this great gift will grow in our hearts.

What is Contrition?

Contrition is the grief of soul brought about by the hatred of sins committed and marked by the resolution to avoid them in the future.  This “grief” is primarily effective, that is, it is an act of the will to leave our sins behind and run into the embrace of the Father.  It need not be affective to be true contrition, although often we will feel sorrow or even have tears.  This internal grief may express itself in words through prayers like the Act of Contrition, but no mere lip service will do.  Furthermore, true contrition is always a supernatural gift because it is based on a supernatural motive, namely a love of God.  Because it is based on this motive, it must also be universal in that it covers not just a sin, but all our sins.

The supernatural motive of love of God occurs in degrees.  We may love God for what He can give us or help us avoid.  This mercenary love is still love, even if it is imperfect.  Out of this love comes imperfect contrition or attrition.  This is a sorrow for sin based on the loss of heaven or the fear of hell.  What makes this imperfect is that it is still tinged with self-love.  When our love is completely focused on God and we experience sorrow for our sin then it will always be based the fact that we have offended God, independent of any benefits He might bestow upon us.  This is perfect contrition.  Although we might not be aware of it, we make this distinction every time we pray the tradition Act of Contrition when we “detest our sins because of Your just punishments [attrition] but most of all because You are all Good and deserving of all my love [perfect contrition].” 

We might be tempted to think that an act of Perfect Contrition is impossible.  But God does not command the impossible.  Instead He makes it possible through the gift of grace.  Perfect contrition, while outside of our natural grasp, may be bestowed upon us if we ask.  St. Charles Borromeo, no stranger to Sacramental crises brought on by pandemics, offered us what he called the “Three Visits” in order to prepare our souls for the gift of perfect contrition.  The first two visits, one to Heaven and one to Hell, are meant to stir up imperfect contrition.  We should meditate both on what we risk losing and what we are gaining so as to be sorry for our sins.  The third visit is to the foot of the Cross to look upon the sufferings of Jesus all brought about by your sins.  He says to stay there until you are sorry for the pain you have caused Our Lord.  In so doing you have made an act of Perfect Contrition.

“Perfect” contrition then might be a somewhat of a misnomer in that it makes it seem like you have to love God perfectly, rather than loving the God Who is perfect.  The Scholastics avoid the terms perfect and imperfect contrition and instead use contrition for the former and attrition for the latter.  This distinction helps us to grasp that contrition may occur in degrees, degrees that are proportional to our charity.  We need not be St. Mary Magdalene, whose sins were forgiven because “she loved much” and wiped Our Lord’s feet with her tears, but there can be no contrition without some degree of charity.  We need not be anxious if we struggle to make such acts, but only ask God to bestow upon us that great gift.

Contrition and Confession

If an act of contrition then forgives sins, even mortal sins, then what is the connection with Confession?  Contrition may have the same effect as Confession, but its effects are not independent of the Sacrament.  Contrition may be sorrow expressed, but Confession is sorrow received.  Even if we may an act of perfect contrition in response to mortal sin, we must still go to Confession before we can receive the Eucharist.  Perfect contrition then is an extraordinary means of forgiveness provided that we avail ourselves of the ordinary means, Sacramental Confession. 

The advice to “make an act of perfect contrition until you can get to Confession” that has been given during the pandemic is very dangerous without all of the proper qualifications.  A person, no matter how hard they try, cannot make a perfect act of contrition without the necessary grace.  To act as if God always grants it immediately when it is asked for is to be guilty of presumption.  God may withhold such a gift for reasons only His loving Providence could explain.  This is why Canon Law protects the Faithful from Prelates who would withhold the Sacrament.  The Sacrament does not require that we have contrition; only attrition is needed to be valid.  As Fr. Alfred Wilson reminds us in his classic book Pardon and Peace, when we go to Confession, Christ has already confessed those sins.  He has sorrowed for them.  Your task is to supplement His perfect confession and contrition the best you can.

This connection with Christ’s confession and sorrow brings us to the whole point of contrition.  Perfect contrition comes from Christ Himself and thus is best understood as a participation in His sorrow.  This understanding is important because it takes any of the focus off us and our faults. leaves us standing squarely on the solid ground of His Mercy.  Genuine contrition is a habit then that grows out of this.

St. Therese on her death bed offers us the best example of this.  The sisters had gathered around her and were singing her praises.  She requested that they stop and instead to list her faults, not because she was worried about her humility, but because she wanted to have more reasons to praise God in His mercy.  She was quite literally filled with Contrition because she loved God.  Let us beg her intercession that during this time we might likewise receive and develop such a precious gift.

Suffering and Reparation

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In his 1928 Encyclical, Miserentissimus Redemptor, Pope Pius XI exhorted Catholics to consider their obligation to offer reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the many sins of mankind and to practice it fastidiously.  By in large his call was ignored then and has long since been forgotten.  With the Protestantization that has occurred within the Church in the last half century the notion that a Christian is obligated to offer reparation seems quite foreign, even bordering on blasphemous.  Our Proto-Catholic reasons that if Christ’s once for all sacrifice has been accepted, then there is no reason why a Christian would need to perform acts of reparation.  Nevertheless, the obligation remains so that now is the time to make this a regular practice for all Christians.

Any discussion of reparation will necessarily need to begin by conquering the already-mentioned objection, namely that Christ already offered all that was needed for sin.  The problem with this view is that it contains only a half-truth in that misunderstands what it means to say that Christ has redeemed us.  Most simply view Redemption as simply “getting to go to heaven”, but that is way to general.  Redemption truthfully means that Christ, through the infinite merits of His Divine Personality, came to repair His work that sin has ruined.  In short, Christ came to make reparation.  This work could have been done alone, but He instead willed to have accomplices in His work of reparation. 

Becoming Accomplices of Christ

Those accomplices are not just His Mother or the Apostles, but every Christian.  Every Christian is grafted onto Christ, not as individuals but as members of His Mystical Body, the same Body of which He is the Head.  What happens to the Head then likewise happens to the body.  If the Head performed acts of reparation, so too then must the body, for They are the Whole Christ.  This intimate union of Head and Body means that the members continue His acts of reparation.

This helps us to understand what is often viewed as a confusing statement by St. Paul, namely that he is “adding to what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col 1:24).  The lack is not in Christ as Head, but in His Mystical Body.  The Body must too be afflicted by participating in the acts of reparation of the Head.  Only then can the Head and Body be truly one.

We see then that reparation is obligatory because it creates a unity between Christ and Christians.  This obligation extends not just to Reparation itself, but also to the way it is made—by suffering.  It is the will of God that Reparation occur through suffering because Christ chose that as the proper means.  A true Christian, while he may fear suffering, must see it for what it truly is, Divine currency.  Christ’s suffering is the gold standard that gives value to the currency of suffering, but we must nevertheless spend it, or more accurately be spent by it, ourselves.  He has raised Christians to such an immense dignity that they become other Christ’s, not by being nice to other people, but by suffering with Him.  If we suffer with Him, then we shall reign with Him (2 Tim 2:12).  Suffering is the glue that holds the Mystical Body together.

What happens when this obligation is ignored or forgotten?  The answer is much unnecessary suffering, or, to put it more accurately, useless suffering.  Because suffering is the currency by which the obligation of Reparation is purchased, it is an inevitability.  But not just any suffering will do.  It is only suffering that is willingly accepted can buy Reparation.  This is why living in the unique time that we find ourselves, we must put all of this suffering to good use, namely Reparation.

When Christians fail to offer Reparation then things like the Coronavirus happen.  God never will give up on uniting us with His Son so that we can share in His glory.  He will even allow things like plagues to grip the world so that Christians might recapture their roles as Reparators.  That is why all of us should be focused on making acts of Reparation right now.  Everyone is going to be called on to make sacrifices in the coming weeks, but only those who submit to the Provident designs of God will make Reparation.  It does not require us to understand the whole plan, only to say “Thy will be done” each time we are called upon to suffer.  No one knows how long this will all last, but we can say that it will be shorter when Christians embrace the obligation of Reparation.

Why Divine Mercy Sunday?

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Within the Church’s liturgical calendar, there are two feasts which as so integral to Christian worship that the Church attaches an Octave to them.  To enter more fully into the mystery of the Incarnation, Christmas is not just celebrated as a single day, but the Church in her wisdom gives us eight full days to harvest the graces of that most solemn feast.  The octave is capped off with a celebration of the first fruits of the Incarnation, the Feast of Mary Mother of God on January 1st.   Along the same line, Easter is celebrated not once, but for eight consecutive days in order to bask in the glow of the Resurrected Lord and it is through a great gift from Jesus Himself that the Church also crowns and marks its first fruits of the Octave of Easter with the celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday.

One of the most common things that Our Lord spoke to St. Faustina about was His desire for a great feast of mercy as it is mentioned 14 times in her Diary of Divine Mercy in My Soul.  St. Faustina describes it most fully in entry 699:

My daughter, tell the whole world about My inconceivable mercy. I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. On that day the very depths of My tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the Fount of My Mercy. The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. On that day all the divine floodgates through which graces flow are opened. 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. Everything that exists has come forth from the very depths of My most tender mercy. Every soul in its relation to Me will contemplate My love and mercy throughout eternity. The Feast of Mercy emerged from My very depths of tenderness.  It is My desire that it be solemnly celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter. Mankind will not have

peace until it turns to the Fount of My Mercy.

We have talked about the significance of the “divine floodgates through which graces flow” being opened in a previous post, so we will not rehash that here.  Instead, in the spirit of opening those gates even further,  we will ask a seemingly small questions: Why was Jesus so insistent upon the day in which the Feast of Mercy was to be celebrated?

Why the Day Mattered to Our Lord

Returning to the parallel with the Church’s “other” octave an answer begins to emerge.  In Our Lord’s mind the crown of Easter is not us going to heaven, but His mercy.  In overcoming death and revealing Himself as “Lord and God” (John 20:28), He now reveals His greatest attribute.  For He tells St. Faustina to “[P]roclaim that mercy is the greatest attribute of God” and He wants this proclamation to be forever attached to the celebration of Easter.  It is His greatest attribute, because in the end, it will be the attribute that most manifests His glory to creatures.

Mercy is not just about forgiving sins, but it is much deeper than that.  It is a love that not only recognizes the goodness in the other but is the cause of it.  It is mercy that calls the sinner to repentance.  It is mercy that takes the repentant sinner out of his nothingness and raises Him to the dignity of an adopted son of God.  And it is mercy that enables the beloved disciples of Christ to remain as such.  Every saint in heaven, even the purest of them, knows Mercy was the reward for those who fear God (c.f. Lk 1:50).      

This connection between mercy and Easter was known from an early stage in the Church.  St. Augustine, in an Easter homily, calls the Sunday of the Octave of Easter “the summary of the days of mercy.”  But it is Pope St. John Paul II that made the connection most explicit during his homily for the canonization of St. Faustina on April 30, 2000.  By examining the readings for what up to that point had been called the Second Sunday of Easter, he said that it was “important then that we accept the whole message that comes to us from the word of God on this Second Sunday of Easter, which from now on throughout the Church will be called ‘Divine Mercy Sunday.’”  The Pope looked at the readings, especially John’s account of the first and second encounter of the Risen Jesus with the Apostles in the Upper Room and saw in it a summary of mercy. 

When the Risen Christ encountered the Apostles for the first time in the Upper Room He didn’t just greet them, but because His word is performative, He gave them the gift of peace.  Then He immediately gave them the capacity to spread that same gift to others by empowering them to forgive sins.  In His next encounter He showed them His most Sacred Heart, the same Heart that was pierced by a lance and from which blood and water flowed forth.  It is as if St. Thomas reached into the side of Jesus and brought forth the rays that we see in the sacred image.  When He touched Our Lord’s heart, he believed and proclaimed “My Lord and my God.”  Those of us who have not seen and still believe cry out “O Blood and Water which gushed forth from the heart of Jesus, I trust in You!”

Summing Up the Devotion

We find the whole message of Divine Mercy summed up in the solemnity.  Not only are the “blood and water which gushed forth as a fount of mercy for us” brought to mind, but in entering into the last time the Apostles were in the Upper Room with Jesus we find that the words “Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and the Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your Most Beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ” are also true.  The celebration makes the link between Divine Mercy and the Eucharist explicit.  For the Mass is the place where Christ empowered the Church to truly say those words so that each of us makes a real offering to the Father.  The entire Eucharistic Prayer can be summed up “for the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”   This connection between Divine Mercy and the Eucharist are what ultimately make it such a powerful and true devotion, whether or not Jesus has revealed it or not. 

Private Revelations play the part of the prophets of Israel.  Their message is not something new, but instead are given as counter messages to the signs of the times.  And the times are reading that for modern man peace has become elusive.  So, in the midst of two great wars, Our Lord appeared to St. Faustina with a simple message: “Mankind will not find peace until it turns trustfully to divine mercy.”  And so it is that Divine Mercy Sunday is ultimately Christ’s recipe for peace in the modern world.

Believing in Purgatory

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There was time, especially during the Late Middle Ages, when Purgatory was an intrinsic element within popular Christian piety.  The popularity of Indulgences and their subsequent abuse went hand in hand.  Not so any longer.  Purgatory seems to belong to a superstitious past, part and parcel of a piety of fear.  A doctrine more than a belief, it is more like a Catholic punchline to a joke tinged with false humility.  Why it became this is a long and complicated story, but why it shouldn’t have, or more to the point, why we should make this doctrine one of our core beliefs in the here and now, is worth reflecting upon.

God always anticipates various attacks upon belief by raising up saints to counter them.  Very often these saints appear before the attack.  In this regard, Purgatory is no different for God inspired St. Catherine of Genoa, who died just before the start of the Protestant Revolution, to be the Prophetess of Purgatory.  The saint was given a vision of Purgatory and the tremendous suffering of its inhabitants.  But rather than focus on their pains, St. Catherine instead was struck by the joy of the suffering souls.  Rather than feeding the piety of fear, she places Purgatory in its proper context.

The Mindset of the Holy Souls

The fires of Purgatory are the flames of Divine love.  All that is not pure is being burned away in the fire of Christ’s love.  This of course is very painful, but everyone there knows that it is necessary.  In fact, the members of the Church Suffering “can remember nothing of themselves or others, whether good or evil, which might increase the pain they ordinarily endure; they are so completely satisfied with what God has ordained for them, that He should be doing all that pleases Him, and in the way it pleases Him, that they are incapable of thinking of themselves even in the midst of their greatest sufferings.”

While their pain is great, they find it nearly impossible to focus on it.  That is because all the ways in which they loved themselves more than they loved God is being purified.  They can only focus on what God is doing in them and they are “completely satisfied” with it.  They trust that moment by moment, no matter how acute their suffering is, they are approaching the fulfillment of all their desires.  So they choose to focus only on that and not the pain.  They have learned the lesson that would have served them well during their earthly sojourns, the same lesson the saint wants us to learn now as well: that each and every suffering we experience is a gift of Divine love meant to purify us.  We simply need to trust that is what God is doing and will to focus on that.  All too often we see suffering as an end, where God sees it as a means to our purification.  If we can take our eyes off ourselves long enough, then this becomes easy to grasp and it actually makes suffering easier.  This is the power of the Cross and we should never empty it of its power.

But it is not just a matter of trust.  The Holy Souls also see the sufferings as necessary.  They realize that even if it wasn’t purifying them, they still deserve it.  This is a lesson for us as well.  All too often we cannot see how a particular suffering is sanctifying us until later.  Our perseverance wavers.  This is because we don’t grasp that we deserve the punishment.  And this doesn’t mean just the big things like sickness, the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a job, but the little contradictions that we wrestle with every day.  The annoying habits of coworkers, our children and our spouses, the ones that we grumble against regularly, were sent to us by God to sanctify us.  But we must will them as such and therefore bear with them, knowing that they are necessary.  We must be convinced that not only do we need them, but we also deserve them.  The souls in Purgatory are satisfied because they are paying their debt to Divine justice.

The Joy of the Holy Souls

Many people think the belief in Purgatory in merely fear based.  But St. Catherine wants us to know it is the exact opposite.  “I do not believe it would be possible to find any joy comparable to that of a soul in purgatory, except the joy of the blessed in paradise—

a joy which goes on increasing day by day, as God more and more flows in upon the soul, which He does abundantly in proportion as every hindrance to His entrance is

consumed away.”  Rather than Purgatory being backed up to the Gates of Hell, it is the Mudroom of Heaven.  The souls there, even though they suffer, they still experience an unimaginable joy because they know that suffering is the gravitational force of Paradise.  Each moment they are approaching God’s orbit and they are increasingly joyful.  They are so joyful, in fact, that their joys, according to St. Catherine, are second only to the blessed saints in heaven.

The saint is revealing to us the secret of being joyful amid suffering—to see each suffering, big or small, as producing in us “an eternal weight of glory” drawing us ever closer to our deepest desire.  She wants us to be aware of the plight of the suffering souls so that we will in charity do all we can to alleviate their suffering, but she mainly speaks so that we will have the courage to embrace our Purgatory now.  This is the difference between a doctrine and a belief.  Purgatory is more than an idea, because ideas have consequences.  The consequence is that we learn from the actions of the suffering souls to joyfully accept all our sufferings now, knowing that they are necessary, not in any generic sense, but as coming from the purifying fire of Divine love.

 

God’s Choice?

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As criticism continues to mount against Pope Francis amidst this time of ecclesiastical turmoil, a growing number of peacemakers have emerged, who, in an attempt to diffuse the situation, are quick to offer the reminder that “he was chosen by the Holy Spirit.”  One can certainly appreciate the attempt to maintain unity.  Especially because the Pope is the most visible sign of Catholic unity.  But this path to peace is a theological dead end.  The Pope is not “chosen by the Holy Spirit”, at least in the sense that the peacemaker means it.  Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI was once asked whether the Holy Spirit is responsible for the election of a pope to which he replied:

I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope. . . . I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined…There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!

In his usual pedagogical succinctness, the Pope Emeritus gives us several important reminders, not only on the election of the Pope, but also on the nature of the Church, especially in times of crises such as we are currently facing.

The Holy Spirit and the Conclave

As Benedict is quick to point out, one need only study history to see that this hypothesis is highly questionable.  History is rife with scoundrels who came to occupy the Chair of Peter.  It is always a good idea to study Church history and remind ourselves of this, especially because most of us have lived under the reign of popes who became saints.  It is only with great intellectual dexterity that we could admit that the Holy Spirit “picked” both these saints and someone like, say, Pope Alexander VI.

One might object that, even if it is a highly informed one, Cardinal Ratzinger was just offering an opinion (“I would say so…”).  The tradition of the Church would suggest otherwise.  Lex orandi, lex credenda—as we worship, so we believe.  The Church, among her various liturgies, has a Mass for the Election of the Pope.   The Church Universal prays that the Conclave will be docile to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  This implies that they can also operate under the promptings of mixture of other spirits as well.

Free will of the Cardinal electorate then is operative and “anyone” can be chosen.   Yet we are also treading on the horizon of free will and Divine Providence.   The man chosen to be Pope will be God’s choice, but only in the sense that the papal election, like all things, falls under God’s Providence.  We may be certain that the Holy Spirit directly wills the election of a given man as Supreme Pontiff, but through the mystery of Providence will allow another to take his place.

Our Lord told St. Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church.  What He meant by this was that no matter what, the Church would not fail.  The Barque of Peter may take on water, but it will never sink.  The Holy Spirit will allow the Church to take on water, but will always keep her afloat.  That is the extent of His protection.

This however is not the end of the story because of God’s Providence.  Regardless of whether it is a good Pope or bad, the Church will always get the Pope it needs.  Providence dictates that God will always provide the People of God with what they need.

Reading the Times

There may be a mutiny on the Barque of Peter and the Holy Spirit will pick a strong captain to lead a counter-mutiny, stopping the flow of the water.  Or, He may allow another man who joins the mutiny and ignores the water that continues to flow onto the boat.  Eventually all the compartments are flooded, washing the mutineers overboard.  The end result is the same, the corruption has been washed away and the Church was given exactly what she needed.

In a very real sense then the Pope is always God’s choice but only as an instrument.  As a type of the Church, Israel shows us this.  History continually moved in the direction towards the coming of the Messiah, the only question was whether the king and the people would cooperate.  Israel would flourish, grow fat, play the harlot, be chastised, and continue through the remnant.  This pattern is revealed so that we will come to recognize and expect it in the Church.  Either way history will continue to move towards the Second Coming.

In turbulent times this ought to serve as a great comfort.  The infestation of corruption in the Church is finally coming to a head and God is going to root it out.  He will use Pope Francis as his instrument.  The only question seems to be which type of captain Pope Francis will be.  Either way these scandals should not push us towards despair, but should instill hope into us.  God will not be mocked for sure, but neither will He ever abandon His people. He is always on the lookout for co-redeemers—those people who will pick up the Cross with Jesus and lay down their lives for the Church.  Only acts of reparation will repair the Church and each of us has an obligation to do this.  Every man must come on deck, stem the mutiny and start bailing water or risk being carried overboard.  “Penance, penance, penance!” the Angel of Portugal told us through the children of Fatima.  The time is at hand.  Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

St. Catherine of Siena and the Latest Church Scandal

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For anyone who thought that the clergy sexual abuse scandal was something that was left in the past, the recent revelations regarding former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick have shown that the cancer has metastasized.  Round two promises to be uglier than round one, especially since the former Cardinal’s actions were widely known throughout the American Church and beyond.  The laity could be excused for harboring a feeling of déjà vu, especially given the overall weariness with feeling like sheep without a shepherd.  They might even be excused for looking for looking for ways to take matters into their own hands; might that is until they read the writings of one of the Doctors of the Church.

St. Catherine and the Dialogue on the Clergy

Best known for her ecstatic dictation of a dialogue with God the Father, St. Catherine of Siena lived in an era marked by clerical corruption.  In fact, she was instrumental in reforming the Church by executing some of the very things the Father dictated to her.  There are large sections in her Dialogue in which God tells Catherine what must be done about sinful clergy.  These words, rooted deeply in the Gospel message are particularly relevant for lay people today and merit special attention given the state of the Church today.

The Father begins His dialogue with Catherine reminding her of the great dignity of priests and prelates regardless of their personal sin.  He tells her that “it is impossible to have a greater dignity than theirs” because He has made them “My Christs” (Dialogue, 113).  This dignity attaches to the office and thus cannot be wiped away no matter how often the clergy attempts to deface it through personal sin.  He is well aware that with this dignity comes a great responsibility and that “by sinning they are abusing the souls of their neighbors” and will one day have to answer for it; “Their dignity in being My ministers will no save them from My punishment…they will be punished more severly than all the other because they have received more from My kindness.  Having sinned so miserably they are deserving of greater punishment” (121).  But from the perspective of the laity there is always a certain dignity such that “To Me redounds every assault they make on My ministers.”  He goes on to say that “a person can do no worse violence than to assume the right to punish My ministers” (116).  What the Father is reminding us is that it is the Church’s role to punish the sinful clergy and not the laity (unless appointed by the Church to do so).  This applies even when the Church seems to ignore it or turns a blind eye.  This, as we shall see in a moment, does not mean the laity need to act like sheep led to the slaughter but that they have an active role in bringing about justice.

This role is revealed to Catherine by the Father when He begins “to show her the wretchedness of their [the sinful clergy] lives” (121).  First He describes how the sin is made manifest in their unwillingness to correct others.  The ministers “let My members grow rotten for want of correction…because of fear of losing their rank and position or because they themselves are living in the same or greater sins.”  It is as if they are blind leaders of the blind (117).

The Sins of the Clergy

And what, besides human respect, are these “same or greater sins”?  The Father “reveals these miserable sins of theirs,” the “stench which displeases not only Me…but the devils as well.”  These sins are the sins which are so hateful to Me that for this sin alone five cities (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar) were struck down by My divine judgment.  For My divine justice could no longer tolerate it, so despicable to Me is this abominable sin…So you see, dearest daughter, how abominable this sin is to Me in any person. Now imagine how much more hateful it is in those I have called to live celibately” (124).

These words may have been spoken in the 14th Century, but they are as relevant today as they were then.  The parallels to our situation today are uncanny so that through St. Catherine God the Father has left us a blueprint for how the laity ought to respond .  Catherine grasps that these sins are revealed by Providential design.  The Father says, “Sometimes I reveal these miserable sins of theirs to My servants (just as I did to you) so that they may be even more concerned for their salvation and hold them out to Me with greater compassion, praying for them with sorrow for their sins and the insult they are to Me ”(124).  God the Father wants the laity to bring these sinful clerics before Him in merciful prayer so that He might be further glorified in His mercy.  Of this response, many of our contemporaries have already spoken.  But Catherine knows the Father is asking for more from us when she pleads, “O eternal Father, be merciful to Me and to these creatures of yours!  Otherwise take the soul from my body, for I do not think I can stand it anymore. Or give me some respite by showing me where I and  Your other servants can find refuge so that this leprosy will not be able to harm us or deprive us of our bodily and spiritual purity” (124).  She begs the Father how it is that she might escape this leprosy that is infecting the Body.  The Father tells her, “charity will make you put up with your neighbors with true patience by enduring pain, torment, and weariness no matter what their source. In this way you will flee and escape the leprosy” (124). In short, the Father is asking St. Catherine and each one of us not only for prayer, but for penance.  He is calling upon the laity in a very specific way “to fill up in their flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, which is the Church” (Col 1:24).

From within the context of the renewed universal call to holiness, God has providentially arranged for the outward show of sanctity of the Church to depend in a very particular way on the laity.  In an age infected with clericalism this is a most important message.  If the laity are truly to be God’s other “Christs” as well, then they must continue His mission of reparation.  This trial by fire is a clarion call in an ecclesial environment that has shunned penance for generations.  Now the future of the Church depends upon it.  The Holy Spirit may have promised it would not fail, but a renewed laity can make it thrive.  That renewal begins with lives dedicated to penance and reparation.  St. Catherine of Siena, pray for us!

The Unforgivable Sin

Bible, Conscience, Divine Mercy, Holy Spirit, Last Things, Mercy, Sin, Spiritual Life, , , ,

If Jesus does not both shock and disturb when He speaks to us through the Scriptures, then we aren’t taking Him seriously enough.  Take as an example this Sunday’s Gospel when Jesus, Mercy Incarnate, returns to Galilee and accuses the scribes of doing the seemingly impossible—committing a sin that will not be forgiven.  “Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin” (Mk 3:28-29).  These words ought to shake us, especially in an age of exaggerated mercy.  While Jesus leaves us clues as to the nature of this unpardonable sin, He does not really come out and tell us what it is.  Therefore, there can be great spiritual benefit in investigating this question more deeply.

St Thomas Aquinas found this to be a question of particular importance as well and includes it among the questions dealing with sins against faith.  Standing on the shoulders of his saintly predecessors, the Angelic Doctor says that there are three traditional ways in which this has been interpreted.

The First Two Interpretations

The first is the literal meaning based on the context in which Christ said it.  To utter a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (or God in general) is to ascribe to the devil that which comes by the power of God.  The best historical example of this is the Golden Calf in which an Egyptian god (which St. Augustine says was actually a demon) is said to have led Israel out of Egypt.  So clear was the action of God in rescuing them that the Israelites could not have acted out either weakness or ignorance.  Therefore there is no excuse in receiving punishment and the sin is unpardonable.  Returning to the passage however, Jesus is not condemning the Scribes per se, but instead issuing a warning.  Because Our Lord had yet to reveal His divinity, they acted out of ignorance, an ignorance He reminds the Father of from the Cross (c.f. Lk 23:34).

This is related to the second interpretation that Aquinas mentions.  He says it is a sin against the Holy Spirit specifically because it is a sin of malice.  Because power is appropriated to the Father, to sin against the Father is a sin of weakness.  Likewise, because wisdom is appropriated to the Son Who is the Word, ignorance is a sin against the Son.  And because goodness is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, then a sin against the Holy Spirit is a sin of malice.  With full consent and full knowledge, a sin against the Holy Spirit is a sin of malice, that is in essence saying “evil be my good.”  This particular sin is the eternal sin because it removes all of those things from us that might be a cure.  It creates a hardening of the heart like Pharaoh in which the grace of conversion cannot penetrate.

As a fruitful tangent, the doctrine of appropriation in which we ascribe to specific persons of the Trinity that which in truth is an action of all three is not only a way in which we learn more about the life within the Trinity, but also a way to develop a relationship with each of the Persons individually.  When we need strength we should pray directly to the Father, wisdom to the Son and power over evil the Holy Spirit.  This habit of prayer and personal relationship keeps us falling into the trap of believing the doctrine of the Trinity while not really believing in the Trinity.

A Third Interpretation

The third interpretation that Aquinas mentions is also the most favored today, although often in an overly simplistic way.  Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit can be viewed as final impenitence.  In this interpretation, the blasphemy occurs not necessarily in word, but in thought or deed.  It is against the Holy Spirit because it acts contrary to the forgiveness of sins which is the work of the Holy Spirit (c.f. Jn 20:22).  It is also the favored interpretation of the Great Mercy Pope, St. John Paul II.  In his encyclical on the Holy Spirit, Dominum et Vivificantem he says that “the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit consists precisely in the radical refusal to accept this forgiveness, of which he is the intimate giver and which presupposes the genuine conversion which he brings about in the conscience” (DV, 46).

Standing on the shoulders of these saintly giants then, why is this most widely accepted answer overly simplistic?  Because there are two ways in which final impenitence can manifest itself.  First there is the obvious stubborn refusal even on one’s death bed, call it an impenitence of the will, to repent.  But there is a second, and for many of us more dangerous way, and that is through what we might call an impenitence of fact.  Although many of us envision our deaths being something we can plan for, the truth is that many of us die suddenly without much warning at all.  That means our temporal impenitence can become final impenitence.

This final impenitence in fact is not necessarily brought about by a hardness of heart, but we become victims to Aquinas’ insight that the sin “unforgivable by its very nature, insofar as it excludes the elements through which the forgiveness of sin takes place.”

In short, we simply a refusal to examine ourselves well and are blocked by presumption.  Fear of the Lord, through which we seek the forgiveness of sins is a certain (healthy) anxiety by which we recognize that in truth we are fugitives from hell and that it is only God’s mercy that saves us.  This is healthy not because we are morbid, but because each time we accuse ourselves of a sin, we are humbled and God is glorified in His mercy.  Each time we stir up sorrow for our sins, God is glorified in His mercy.  And ultimately this is why, no matter how we interpret the passage, we should take Our Lord’s warning to heart: to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is to refuse God the glory of His mercy.

Praying with the Dead

Divine Mercy, Heaven, Last Things, Mercy, Passion of Christ, Prayer, Purgatory, Resurrection, Suffering, Theology, , ,

In a previous post, the supreme importance of avoiding personally canonizing those who have died was highlighted.  The “holy souls” in Purgatory depend greatly upon our prayers in order that they may be loosed from the lingering effects of their sins after their death.  Many of us grasp this and, out of charity, regularly offer prayers for the dead.  But there is a flip side to this coin—nearly every saint who has been canonized in the last two centuries was recognized because people began asking for their intercession.  In other words, rather than primarily praying for them, people began praying to them.  It seems that we must then exercise judgment as to whether the person is in Purgatory or in Heaven, the very thing I said not to do.  Stuck in a spiritual no-man’s land, we tend towards neither praying for them or to them.  The problem becomes theological rather than governed by the logic of love.  The rich relationship of the Communion of Saints becomes a sterile doctrine and our personal faith falters with it.  All of this seems unavoidable unless we can find a way around this spiritual dilemma.

A single paragraph in the Catechism, quoting an indulged prayer from Pope Leo XIII, helps part the clouds of obscurity.  The Catechism says:

“In full consciousness of this communion of the whole Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the Church in its pilgrim members, from the very earliest days of the Christian religion, has honored with great respect the memory of the dead; and ‘because it is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins’ she offers her suffrages for them.’ Our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective.” (CCC 959, emphasis added).

In summary, it is our prayers for the dead that not only help them, but also make their intercession for us effective.  What this tells us is that the holy souls in Purgatory, as members of the Church, have the power to intercede for the members of the Church Militant.  But this power comes in some way through our prayers for them.  How this works is obviously a mystery, but that it works is immediately relevant to the discussion at hand.  It gives us an immediate plan of action that will enable us to do both—pray for them and pray for their intercession.

Covering Our Bases

For some of us, this still has a Russian roulette type feel to it—like we are simply trying to cover our bases.  This only serves to make it more mechanical and less personal, the very antithesis of what prayer should be.  But this stems from a certain anxiety that our prayers may actually be wasted.  After all, if the person is in heaven and you are praying for their release from Purgatory, then your prayers have been wasted.

All of our prayer draws its power from the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ.  In other words, our prayer is caught up in the Eternal Now of Our Lord’s act of redemption where time and eternity met.  This means our prayer, although uttered in time, enters into the timelessness of God.  God knows “when” you will pray and He can apply the merits of those prayers as He sees fit.  More to the point, even if the soul of our departed loved one is in heaven, it is still your prayer here and now that got them there.  They may have even received the graces you interceded for just now while they were still on the earth.  Just as there are many natural causes that God uses to guide His providential plan, prayer too is a cause.  But because of its supernatural power, it operates outside of the natural constraints of time.

The Power of Prayer Over Time

Once we grasp this hidden power of prayer, we can see that our prayer, even if the soul has left Purgatory, is never wasted.  But it is still necessary because it is a power by which they have been or will be released.  It is also empowers them to intercede for the members of the Church Militant so that we should confidently ask for their intercession in our needs as well.  So our prayers for and to the dead are no different than they were while they were still living—praying both for them and asking them to pray for us.  Because “the prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail” (James 5:16), we should go to them with confidence for our needs.  This also carries with it a rich experience of the true nature of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ.  It is a supernatural reality that spans Heaven and Earth and in between (Purgatory).

As long as we are speaking of covering our bases, how do we explain the prayers for the dead who are actually in hell?  Aren’t these wasted?  By now the answer ought to be clear that God wastes none of our prayers.  Our prayers obviously cannot lift them out of hell, but they could be applied to the person prior to their death.  They may lead the person towards conversion prior to their death (there is a beautiful account of the conversion of a despairing soul on the door of death who receives a final grace in St. Faustina’s Dairy #1486).  Or, perhaps it “only” kept them from further sin and, in a sense, lightened their suffering in hell.  Not knowing anyone’s destiny, we should confidently pray based on the overwhelming power of God’s mercy.  By praying, we become instruments of that same mercy.

Owning Our Hypocrisy

Divine Mercy, God's Love, God's Will, Grace, Incarnation, Mercy, Sin, , ,

If a man was to read the gospels with a fresh mind, that is, without any pre-conceived notion of Who Jesus is and what He was trying to accomplish, he would quickly conclude that one of the worst sins was hypocrisy.  And in a certain sense, he would be right.  There is no group of sinners that Our Lord singles out more often than the hypocrites.  Knowing His profound distaste for this particular sin, it is not surprising that we, His followers, should vigilantly avoid it and keep any traces of it from creeping into our lives.  In many ways this should be one of the easiest sins to avoid because it is also one of the easiest sins to identify in ourselves.  We should know when we are posing to be something we are not.  But this may be oversimplifying the case because it has a subtle way of insinuating itself into our spiritual lives and spreading like a weed.  Therefore, it is fruitful for us to examine this vice more closely.

If lying is to signify by words something different from what is in one’s mind, then dissimulation is a form of lying in which the outward deed does not correspond to the inner intention.  To the topic at hand, hypocrisy is a type of dissimulation when a “sinner simulates the person of a just man” (ST II-II q.111, a 2).  Like all offenses against the truth, when practiced enough, one forgets the truth and begins to believe the untruth.  One starts seeing himself as just.  This was why Our Lord was so harsh with the Pharisees—they had become blinded to their hypocrisy and only by shining His light that the Truth could they be set them free.

Hypocrisy’s Deadly Roots

Rightly recognizing its capacity to kill our spiritual lives, we do all we can to avoid it.  The problem however is that we do too much, mostly because we have failed to make an important distinction.  St. Thomas doesn’t say that you must do everything with perfect intention in order to avoid hypocrisy.  That, unfortunately is the way most of us think of hypocrisy.  No, instead he says that hypocrisy consists in the intention of presenting ourselves as just.  An example might help see the distinction more clearly.  Two men enter an adoration chapel and prostrates themselves before the monstrance.   The first man does so in order to be seen by others and be thought a holy man.  His is an act, not of piety, but of hypocrisy.  The second man does so, not because he wants to adore Our Lord, but because he has always been taught that is what you are supposed to do with only a vague awareness of why.  This is far from being a perfect intention, but it is not hypocrisy.

This description helps to clarify why Our Lord spent so much time pointing hypocrisy out.  It can, and usually does, become a sin of those who have advanced a certain amount in their spiritual life.  At first, we have little interest in appearing to be religious and we may even have reason to hide it.  But as our friends change, our vanity can be directed towards our “spiritual” friends and hypocrisy creeps in.  A hypocrite has to see some value in faking it and thus it is a more “advanced” sin.  This makes Our Lord’s command to “go into your room and shut the door” (Mt 6:6) invaluable for avoiding hypocrisy.  We should perform acts of piety as if we have only an audience of One.

Counterfeit Hypocrisy

There is a further dimension of this that merits some explanation as well.  It is a fear of hypocrisy that keeps us from performing certain acts of piety.  This fear causes us to confuse the false piety of hypocrisy with weak acts of genuine piety.  We hold out until we can get fully behind what we are doing.  For example, a person sends you a novena to St. Joseph, asking you to pray it.  Deep down you believe novenas work, but you feel like you mostly would be going through the motions doing it.  If only your faith was a little stronger than you would do it.  Therefore, to avoid “feeling” like a hypocrite you don’t do it.

It should be clear that to do the novena would not be hypocritical, but what is not clear is that you will never get to the point where your faith is “a little stronger” without doing acts that are weaker.  Faith and the accompanying virtue of piety are habits in our soul and only grow when they are exercised.  By starting with the weak, imperfect acts, they eventually grow to full bloom.  This is not merely going through the motions, but instead adding a little more fervor, a little stronger intention, each time we do them.  With each repeated act, God does His part by strengthening these virtues further because He will not be outdone in generosity.  Before long you not only develop a devotion to St. Joseph, but the Communion of Saints becomes not just a sterile dogma, but a living reality in your life.  This cannot happen however without those first weak baby steps.  “I believe Lord, help my unbelief!”

 

The Boredom of Heaven

Culture, Divine Mercy, Heaven, Last Things

Perhaps it is because I am bald, but I cringe at the theological hair splitting that often goes on in the Church.  It is not just “professional” theologians that are guilty of this, but priests and ordinary lay folks as well.  Don’t get me wrong— I think making distinctions, defining your terms and the like are very important to coming to understand the truth.  But it is when the split hair itself becomes the answer that I feel the shiver in my spine.  There are two questions that immediately come to mind.  I will save the second for another time, but in today’s post I would like to look at the first—“how can a loving God send people to hell?”

To ask it is almost to reflexively answer it—“God does not send anyone to hell.  People choose hell.”  In most cases that is sufficient for the prosecution to rest.  But the better prepared interlocutor will demand a cross-examination.  In the parable of the sheep and the goats it certainly seems as if the wicked are being sent by God to “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Mt 25:41).  Even though it may not fit with the image of God we are trying to portray, the fact of the matter is that there are simply too many references to divine judgment to avoid the conclusion that God sends some people to hell.  There must be a more tactful answer.

Now, I have made the reader cringe.  God becomes not Father but harsh Judge, the exact image you are trying to overcome with your hair splitting answer.  The reflexive answer to the question really only serves to perpetuate two common misconceptions about heaven; misconceptions that are often stumbling blocks to our desire for Heaven.

Heaven May Not Be What You Think It Is

The first delusion embedded in both the question and the answer is that Heaven is a reward for being good and hell a punishment for being bad.  But that is not true.  Heaven is the (super)natural consequence of being holy.  Sure, everyone in Heaven is good, but only because they are holy.  No amount of goodness can make us holy, even though holiness makes us good.  The author to the Letter to the Hebrews says “without holiness no one will see God” (Heb 12:14).

One of the reasons why someone like Aristotle could only get so far in his thinking about God was that he could not conceive of a way for the gods and men to be friends.  Friendship can only occur between equals and since there was a great chasm between the two, while men might placate the gods, they could never enjoy their friendship.  What Aristotle didn’t consider is that the real God was Love and desired nothing more than to be friends with each man.  To make that happen, He would first become equals with us so that we might become equals with Him.

God makes us equals with Himself by filling us with the Divine life, what St. Peter calls becoming “partakers of the Divine nature” (2 Pt 1:4).  Catholics call it sanctifying grace or the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Whatever you call it, it is the only thing which makes friendship with God possible.  We really must be “like God,” but only on His terms and not our own.

The problem with the answer is that it only feeds the “faith vs works” controversy.  Holiness is bigger than either faith or works.  It is accepting the invitation of friendship with God and then having that friendship grow.  This is why the authors of the New Testament repeatedly stress the necessity of Baptism and all the great missionary saints like St. Peter Claver saw it as their mission to enflame a desire for baptism in the natives (or in the case of St. Peter Claver, slaves) and then baptize them.  Baptism is the only sure way we know of to become friends with God.

Heaven, then properly understood, is the culmination of a lifetime friendship with God.  This leads us to the second delusion veiled in the question and answer and that is the tendency to see Heaven as the place where you finally get everything you ever wanted.  But Heaven is the place where you get the One Thing you really wanted—God.  Heaven is only heaven because God is there.  It is not a collection of the best things of earth.  There may be many other things there, but it is only God that matters.  All of the other things that are there are there simply to increase the enjoyment of Him.

Hell is hell because God is not there.  It may have many other things, but once God is removed their emptiness becomes apparent.  That is why the pain of loss, that is rejection of the free invitation to friendship, is considered to be the greatest pain of hell.  There is a diabolical corollary to the divine maxim “seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you”—“seek ye first all these things and the Kingdom of God will be forfeit unto  you.”

Medieval art often presented Heaven with cherubs playing harps on clouds.  For those operating under our two embedded assumptions this image of Heaven is not awe-full, but awfully boring.  While it remains just an artistic representation, these images contain a truth that Heaven is about being with God and nothing else.  For those who are interested in that sort of thing then the experience will be far beyond what we could possibly image (c.f. 1 Cor 2:9).  But for the worldly man it would seem boring.  He would soon get weary of heaven because he would continue to hear only about one subject which he has no real interest in hearing about.

Increasing the Desire for Heaven

This is one of the reasons Catholics have a decided advantage thanks to the Mass.  Mass really is training for Heaven.  It is Heaven with a Sacramental veil over it.  If you love the Mass then you will love heaven.  If you don’t love the Mass, then get to work on growing in love with it.  Pray for this singular grace and persevere in that prayer.  As Blessed John Henry Newman says, “‘Enter into the joy of thy Lord’ will sit with us the same way ‘Let us pray’ does now.”

Although the conclusion might not seem obvious at first based on what we have said, it is most certain that God “sends” people to hell because hell is not really the worst thing that can happen to someone.  The worst thing that can happen to a man who is not holy is to go to heaven.  Newman said, “Heaven would be hell to an irreligious man.”  Heaven is a place of happiness only for someone who is holy.  Otherwise it would be a place of eternal torment.  God is “a consuming fire” that burns hotter than the fires of hell.  Only those who have been clothed with grace can withstand and enjoy the heat of His Presence.  The thicker the cloak, the closer one gets.  That is why God does not cease to be merciful even to those in hell.  Returning to Newman once more: “even supposing a man of unholy life were allowed to enter heaven, he would not be happy there; so that it would be no mercy to permit him to enter.”

King Jesus and Queen Mary

Divine Mercy, Grace, Heaven, Mary, , , , ,

Although the Church does not officially celebrate an Octave proceeding from the Solemnity of the Assumption, the timing of the liturgical celebration of the Queenship of Mary eight days later sets up what could still be viewed as an “Octave in spirit.”  The timing is especially apt because her coronation completes the picture first presented to us in the Assumption.  Quite literally, it crowns everything that we know about Mary and, even more importantly, about her Son, Jesus Christ.  It is in the spirit of entering more fully into these two Marian celebration that it is particularly helpful to reflect specifically on her role as Queen.

The Church often finds herself in a defensive stance when it comes to proclaiming the truth about Mary.  This posture mostly follows from a belief, even if only unconscious, that Our Lady’s greatness diminishes Christ’s greatness.  We grow anxious that we might love Mary too much and thus take away from Jesus.  But everything that we believe about Mary flows from the fact that she was predestined to be the Mother of God.  God never calls a person without also giving that person the necessary natural and supernatural endowments to carry out their mission.  Mary’s plentitude of grace comes from God because of her role as the Mother of God.  Her union with her Son was not just mystical but natural and His dependence upon her made her cooperation in His work of redemption wholly unique.

Mary’s Role as Mother of God and Its Consequences

There are consequences that follow from her role as Mother of God.  Related to our particular reflection, she was the mother of the One Whom God would give “the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Lk 1:32-33).  In short, she is the Mother of the King of Kings.

St. Gabriel’s message confirms what we already find in many other places in Scripture, namely that the Davidic kingdom provides a blueprint for the Kingdom of God.  And like the other the other near-East kingdoms of the time, the Mother of the king or the Gebirah in the Davidic kingdom played a pivotal role in the management of that kingdom.

This unique role of the Gebirah has been studied and written about extensively (I especially recommend Dr. Edward Sri’s book called Queen Mother), so I won’t duplicate those efforts here (**see footnote).  Instead, I will point out two passages that are particularly illustrative.  Both involve David’s wife Bathsheba, the mother of future King Solomon.  Early in the First Book of Kings (1:6) when an aging David is coming to the end of his reign, she enters the royal chamber in a posture of obeisance and offered homage to the king.  While acknowledging her, he pays her no particular honor.  Fast forward a chapter (1Kings 2:19ff ) and we find that once Solomon becomes king she enters the royal chamber and the narrative finds him bowing before her, having a throne brought in and placed at his right hand.  She intercedes on behalf of Adonijah and the king says he cannot refuse her.

The juxtaposition of these two passages confirms for us two things and help us to see more clearly what role Queen Mary, as the Gebirah, plays in the fulfilled Davidic Kingdom.  First, Bathsheba has no authority as wife of the king, but once her son becomes king, she is given a throne.  Without her son on the throne, she has no authority so that her authority depends upon his royal authority.  Likewise, all that we say about Mary’s Queenship flows only from Christ’s authority.  She has only a share in His authority.  But as is always the case with the Church’s Marian beliefs, take away from Mary and you diminish Christ.  Mary’s exaltation puts flesh, literally and figuritvely, on what we believe about Christ.  Without those beliefs, the teachings about Christ gravitate towards abstraction.  If  you take away her queenship, you will be saying that Christ is not the true heir to the throne of David.  The throne of David always had a throne at the king’s right hand for the Queen Mother.

Second, the Queen Mother was no mere figurehead but had royal authority.  The king could not refuse her.  This helps us to shed light on what can otherwise seem like a rather odd interaction between Our Lord and Our Lady at Cana.  As Queen Mother, Our Lord could not refuse anything that His Mother asked even though His “hour had not yet come.”  She assumes He will do it, because she had such authority to “command” Him.

Why Mary Should Steal Your Heart

While this biblical proof-texting is necessary, we must always have the same goal in sight that Pope Pius XII had when he instituted the liturgical feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen in his encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam, namely, to “renew the praises of Our Heavenly Mother, and enkindle a more fervent devotion towards her, to the spiritual benefit of all mankind.”  The reasons for our devotion might satisfy our heads, but unless it also engages our hearts it will remain sterile facts.  The aforementioned Pontiff helps us begin the longest 18-inch journey by summarizing what we have already said and pointing out that “…as His associate in the redemption, in his struggle with His enemies and His final victory over them, has a share, though in a limited and analogous way, in His royal dignity. For from her union with Christ she attains a radiant eminence transcending that of any other creature; from her union with Christ she receives the royal right to dispose of the treasures of the Divine Redeemer’s Kingdom.”

Well-schooled in democratic logic, we reflexively dismiss monarchical terms and neglect their import.  We must not forget that we are citizens in the Kingdom of God, not in the Democratic Republic of the United States of Humanity and Divinity.  Christ is the benevolent King and seated at His right hand is the benevolent Queen.  You cannot have Christ as King without Mary as Queen.  You cannot honor Him while neglecting to honor her.  A man who pledged loyalty to the King while disrespecting the Queen would be labeled as a traitor.  Our devotion for Christ should overflow onto His Mother (which will always flow back on Him).  We must see her as both Queen and Mother.

A sure way to increase that devotion is to reflect upon the fact that Our Lady has a “royal right to dispose of the treasures of the Divine Redeemer’s Kingdom.”  The role of Advocate and Queen are practically synonymous—the Queen Mother in her royal office in the kingdom of David exercised her role primarily as an advocate, interceding for the people of the Kingdom.  In fact she did not share in any way in the royal judicial power.  Our Lady is never referred to as the Mother of Justice, but Mother of Mercy because her role is to distribute from the treasury of her Son.  When we realize that she has real power and real authority and that she exercises it as a Mother to each one of us, it is hard not to fall more deeply in love with Our Queen.

In a very real way, then, we see why the Queenship of Mary completes the Assumption.  Although her earthly life came to an end at the Assumption, her throne reminds us that her mission was really only just beginning.  She is the Advocate who always makes an offer that can’t be refused and our celebration of her Queenship must be a time of gratitude to God for so solicitous a Queen and to her for her constant intercession before God.

**For those interested in looking up some further passages supporting this see the succession narratives from 1 and 2 Kings, when each of the kings is mentioned, his mother is also mentioned with him emphasizing her important place beside the king.  The Queen Mother is alsodescried as having a crown (Jer 13:18), a throne (1 Kings 2:19) and is a member of the royal court (2 Kings 24:12-15).

 

 

Believing in Jesus

Divine Mercy, Scripture, Spiritual Life,

Every televised sporting event includes two things that are guaranteed to happen.  First, there will be beer commercials.  Second, at some point during the game, when panning the crowd, we will see a sign that says John 3:16.  It is perhaps the most recognizable verse in Sacred Scripture, “For God so loved the world that he gave his Only Begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”  It is in many ways a perfect summary of the Gospel containing both the importance and simplicity of the message.  Despite its simplicity, it has also become a source of confusion and contention for many Christians that centers around what it means to “believe in Him.”

As with many questions like this, it helps to begin with what it is not saying.  First, it is not saying that we believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.  Paraphrasing St. James, “even the demons believe that and tremble” (James 2:19).  Jesus’ true identity is something worthy of belief, but only in the sense that we believe other historical realities.  They either happened or they didn’t.  Jesus either really rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven or He didn’t.  This is not to believe in Him but to believe about Him.  This is not what Jesus had in mind in addressing Nicodemus.

This is also not a call to believe in Jesus the philosopher or ethics professor.  This is often the way the world views Jesus and we inadvertently adopt this view to defend Christianity.    This is simply to believe Him.  Our Lord is not asking Nicodemus to become one of His pupils or to follow His moral code.  The invitation is for something deeper and more personal.  Instead we must treat Christianity as, Pope Benedict XVI said in his first encyclical, “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.”

What Christianity Is

In this, the Pope Emeritus captures the true meaning of what Jesus is inviting Nicodemus, and by extension, us, to.  We do not believe in ideas, principles or philosophies.  We believe in another person.  In short Jesus is inviting us not to follow a way of life, but to enter into a love affair.  It is an invitation to trust.  Until we accept that this is the invitation, we will remain fixed in viewing our Christian life as a moral or philosophical journey.  Until we love Christ and not just Christianity we will not have the encounter we so deeply desire.

The doors of trust are opened when we come to realize that the “Word became flesh” for no other reason than because “God so loved the world,” that is every person in it.  It is no encounter with a man who died long ago and left us some teachings, but a man who is alive and waiting for me.  It is not a generic love for me, but a deeply personal love for me.  It is the assurance that Christ did not die for mankind, but that “I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me” (Gal 2:20).

Like all relationships founded on trust, once the trust is in place, we are willing to do whatever Christ tells us.  Notice how Nicodemus keeps returning to Jesus throughout John’s Gospel so that his trusts grows to the point that he even defends him before the Sanhedrin. Once I know that He has only my best interest at heart, once I know the lengths He has gone to prove this and the power He has over all that can harm me, I will do whatever He says, no matter how crazy it seems, I will do it.

Even the devil knows how foundational this trust is.  Deep down, all sin is a matter of not trusting God enough.  “Maybe he doesn’t really have my best interest at heart…”  As the Catechism says “Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command” (CCC 397).  Jesus, I trust in You!

Faith and Works

Call it “works flowing from faith” or whatever you like, but it is summarized in one word trust.  The whole faith vs works controversy that separates Christianity is simply semantics.  It is about trust.  “Trust,” Our Lord says, “that I can save you” and you will be saved.  Trust not, and you are already condemned.  There is no other way to be saved.

We can readily see that this confusion over the word believe is related much like the confusion over the word faith.  That is why the Church has always made the distinction between the act of faith and the content of faith.  The act of faith is the trust that we have in God.  The more we trust, the greater our trust becomes.  The content of faith is what we believe.  In both senses we will use the word faith.  We have faith in the Person and so the content of what He has revealed, i.e the Faith, is altogether reliable.

While the act of faith is primary (in the sense that it is first in time), the content of faith is indispensable.  The content of faith, that is things like the Creed, are the reasons why we believe.  They are motives of credibility.

In his biography on St. Francis of Assisi, GK Chesterton seems to capture the spirit of John 3:16 perfectly.  He writes of the world’s fascination with God’s Troubadour because of his love of nature and mankind, but his religion was always a stumbling block (especially the Stigmata).  Chesterton says the interpretive key for Francis is that “A man will not roll in the snow for a stream of tendency by which all things fulfil the law of their being.  He will not go without food in the name of something, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.  He will do things like this, or pretty like this, under quite a different impulse.  He will do these things when he is in love.”

The Great Feast of Mercy

Divine Mercy, ,

Among the vast spiritual treasures that Pope St. John Paul II left to the Church, Divine Mercy Sunday may be his greatest gift.  During his canonization homily of St. Faustina, he declared that the Sunday after Easter, the final day of the Octave of Easter, would be called Divine Mercy Sunday.  The timing was no accident.  Among the requests that Our Lord gave to St. Faustina, was His request that a Feast of Mercy be celebrated on the Sunday after Easter.  In the midst of the terrible “Century of Sin,” Our Lord desired to give the Church new channels for the outpouring of His grace—“where sin abounds, grace abounds the more” (Romans 5:20)—through devotion to Divine Mercy, and more specifically through the Feast of Mercy.  Our Lord told St. Faustina that “on the day of My feast, the Feast of Mercy, you will go through the world and bring fainting souls to the spring of My mercy.  I shall heal and strengthen them” (Diary, 206).

Divine Mercy and Private Revelation

First, a word about Private Revelation in general is necessary.  All too often we will look at certain devotions like Divine Mercy as something optional, that is, not binding on us in faith to believe as Catholics.  But this is an overly simplistic way of looking at them.  If the Church deems some apparitions and private revelations worthy of belief, then we should treat them as anything else that is sufficiently proved, namely that it is true.  In other words, we may not be bound in faith to believe these things but we are bound by reason and logic.

We should treat St. Faustina then as a great prophet of our age.  She brought no new doctrine or dogma, she added nothing to the deposit of faith.  What she did add is a blueprint for how the Gospel can be lived in our age.  Public revelation may have ceased at the death of the last Apostle, but prophecy did not—“where there is no prophecy, the people cast off restraint” (Proverbs 29:18).  Faustina, the prophet’s message?  A radical trust in the mercy of God.

Our Lord promised through the pen of St. Faustina “to heal and strengthen” fainting souls on the Feast of Mercy.  What was He promising?  Our Lord promised to “grant unimaginable graces to those souls who trust in My mercy” (Dairy, 687).  What are “the unimaginable graces” attached to Mercy Sunday?   “Whomever approaches the Fountain of Life on this day will be granted complete forgiveness of sins and punishment” (Diary, 300).

This is unimaginable indeed!  Those who approach the Fountain of Life, that is Our Lord in the Eucharist, will be granted complete forgiveness of sins and punishments.  It is as if the person is to receive the Baptismal grace again, a spiritual do-over.  Where sin abounds, grace abounds the more!

We can see that one of the obstacles then to celebrating the Feast of Mercy is that it is practically unbelievable.  The Father who is “rich in mercy” is a prodigal Father, pouring graces everywhere and anywhere.  But like the lost son in the parable, there are conditions on our part.  It is not a magic wand, but like all things depends on how well we prepare for the Feast.

How is it then that we, “the fainting souls”, can approach “the spring of Our Lord’s mercy”?  Jesus lays out the conditions to St. Faustina; the things that we must do to “be healed and strengthened.”

A Special Grace Won

The first we have already mentioned, that is to receive Communion on the day of the Feast of Mercy.  If the “unimaginable grace” attached to the Feast is one similar to the grace of Baptism, then it will be delivered through the Eucharist.  In other words, if Our Lord is to bestow a grace of a “second Baptism” He will do so through the Eucharist.  Receiving Our Lord in the Eucharist with that intention will only strengthen our own resolve to both desire and receive this extraordinary grace.

Provided we receive Our Lord worthily, that is in a state of grace, then we may receive this extraordinary grace.  Those who are conscious of mortal sin must first approach the Sacrament of Confession.  However, that is not the only reason why going to Confession prior to the Feast of Mercy is a good idea.  One of the graces of Confession is to receive true repentance for our sins, a condition of receiving the unimaginable grace.  Our imperfect contrition meeting Our Lord’s perfect contrition on the Cross through the Sacrament, brings with it the grace to have true repentance for our sins.  The better disposed we are to receive the grace of the Feast, the more likely we are to have it lead to true conversion and not a mere one time event.

Our Lord, repeatedly tells St. Faustina how important Confession is calling it the place where “the misery of the soul meets the God of mercy” (Diary, 1602).  Our Lord tells St. Faustina that “every time you go to Confession, immerse yourself entirely in My mercy with great trust, so that I many pour the bounty of My grace upon your soul.  When you approach the confessional, know this, that I myself am waiting there for you” (ibid).  The Confessional is the place where we encounter Our Lord, face to face and where we find the “fount of mercy.”

This extraordinary grace, seemingly too good to be true, can only be received by those who are willing to admit the possibility that God really is that merciful.  In other words, only those who have a radical trust in the mercy of Jesus can win this grace.  This is why Our Lord attaches this necessity—an absolute trust in Him—to its reception on the Feast of Mercy.

This is also why veneration of the image of Divine Mercy is also a key component of the Feast.  It is a visual reminder, with the Blood and Water flowing from the Sacred Heart that we always have access to God’s mercy by offering “the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your Only Begotten Son Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

With this great Feast of Mercy upon us, let us approach Our Lord’s throne of Mercy well prepared to receive all that Jesus wants to give us.  Jesus, I trust in You!

The Little Way and Purgatory

Divine Mercy, Saints

When the Church canonizes a Saint it is not only their witness of life that is being acknowledged, but the Church is also canonizing their teachings as well.  In other words, the Saints are recognized as credible witnesses in both deed and word.  This makes perfect sense when we admit that sanity breeds sanctity and sanctity breeds sanity.  The Saints show us how the unchanging Gospel is to be understood and lived in ever-changing times.  In this regard, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, whose feast day we celebrate tomorrow (Oct.1 ) is no different.  When he canonized her in 1925, Pope Pius XI said that “the Spirit of truth opened and made known to her what he usually hides from the wise and prudent and reveals to little ones; thus she enjoyed such knowledge of the things above… that she shows everyone else the sure way of salvation.”

When he declared her a Universal Doctor of the Church, Pope St. John Paul II said that her emphasis on the Gospel message of the Little Way gives her an “exceptional universality.”  Her Little Way is based on an equally radical trust in God’s goodness and her own nothingness.  She saw within herself a great desire for holiness that she insists God would not have placed there unless He planned to give it to her.  Her response was not so much to try harder, but to trust more that He would achieve His purposes in her.

The Little Way is really just the Gospel in a thinly veiled disguise.  The message is the same—trust.  It is a lack of trust in God that leads to the Fall.  “Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of.  All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness” (CCC 397).

Every sin reveals a lack of trust in God.  God, Who made us as creatures to be loved, knows best what makes us lovely.  We don’t entirely trust that what He tells us is actually what is best for us and so we try to do it our own way.  If we trusted Him, then we would do what He says.  Once that trust is restored however we are willing to do everything He says precisely because we know He has our best interest at heart.  No matter how vexing or how hard it appears, we will do it because our Father has told us it is what is best.

This perspective of sin’s relationship to the Divine Fatherhood was a favorite of John Paul II’s.   “Original sin attempts to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man only with a sense of the master-slave relationship” (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 228).  The Father’s solution is not simply to say “trust Me,” but shows us how trustworthy He is.  It is Our Lord’s radical trust in His Father that establishes the truth of God’s Fatherhood once and for all.

Little Flower

Based on her own radical trust, Thérèse offered herself as an oblation to God’s merciful love, composing a beautiful Act of Oblation as a Victim of Divine Love

In order that my life may be one Act of perfect Love, I offer myself as a Victim of Holocaust to Thy Merciful Love, imploring Thee to consume me unceasingly, and to allow the floods of infinite tenderness gathered up in Thee to overflow into my soul, that so I may become a very martyr of Thy Love, O my God! May this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear in Thy Presence, free me from this life at the last, and may my soul take its flight–without delay–into the eternal embrace of Thy Merciful Love!

This prayer is often a stumbling block to those who would put the Little Way into practice.  How can she offer herself as a victim of holocaust to Divine Love?  Why must this offering involve becoming a victim (i.e.suffering)?  As Theresa of Avila once said, “Lord if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them.”

To answer this we have to, like Thérèse, recognize our nothingness or littleness.  This is not so much about humility but an acknowledgment that we are fundamentally broken.  We entrust ourselves to the Divine Physician to heal us.  Like any good doctor we trust, we know that God will often first have to wound us in order to heal us (Job 5:18).  He will choose the least invasive procedure, but He will never be so cruel as to stop the surgery in the middle.

Could God heal us without first wounding us?  While I think we will all be surprised when we find out all the hidden ways God has healed us, the answer no, not completely.  This is because He wants to re-establish that relationship of trust.  To give us everything without us knowing the cost builds, not trust, but mistrust and jealousy.  This is especially true considering how He distributes His gifts unevenly among His children.  The only way to show Himself as Father is to truly father us—raising us as sons and daughters in Christ, disciplining us, and never allowing us to become spoiled.

There is nothing passive in the Little Way.  St. Thérèse offers herself as a living sacrifice, but she knows that like most living sacrifices they tend to crawl off the altar.  Trust takes effort because we are pre-disposed to the lack of trust that comes with our condition as fallen creatures.  Trust is difficult because there is always a voice telling us why we shouldn’t trust.  But small acts of trust bring about larger ones until we are capable of absolute trust.

In Thérèse’s mind there are practical implications of the Little Way; one of which seems shocking at first.  She thought those who practiced it could avoid Purgatory altogether.

Thérèse was deeply distressed by the resignation that most people had (and still have) that they will need Purgatory after death.  In a letter to Sr. Maria Philomena she said

You do not have enough trust. You have too much fear before the good God. I can assure you that He is grieved over this. You should not fear Purgatory because of the suffering there, but should instead ask that you not deserve to go there in order to please God, Who so reluctantly imposes this punishment. As soon as you try to please Him in everything and have an unshakable trust He purifies you every moment in His love and He lets no sin remain. And then you can be sure that you will not have to go to Purgatory.

Notice that she is not saying that Purgatory is unnecessary, but that it can be avoided.  She even says that God is grieved over souls going to Purgatory because they are kept from Him.  The Little Way preaches that God will give us all the means we need to be purified in this life.  To the extent that we trust He is at work, then it will be effective in us.  To the extent that we resist, we will need other means (up to an including Purgatory).  The soul that completely trusts in God knows He is at work and so they abandon themselves to His Providential care.  In other words, she says the infallible way to avoid Purgatory is to graciously receive it here on earth.

St. Thérèse was well aware of the profundity of her understanding of God’s love and her role in preaching the Little Way as a means of sanctification.  She begged God to give her a legion of “little souls” that were follow her.  “I beg You to cast Your Divine Glance upon a great number of little souls. I beg You to choose a legion of little Victims worthy of Your LOVE!”  Through her powerful intercession, may we make of ourselves an oblation to Divine Love.

To Forgive is Divine?

Divine Mercy

Last week, I wrote an essay on the importance of praying the Creed during Mass with greater intentionality.  This week, I would like to build upon this theme by reflecting upon one specific article of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe… in the Forgiveness of Sins.”

Recall that the notion of the Creed as Symbol or Symbolon was also discussed along with the importance of looking at each of the articles of the Creeds not as a bunch of different articles haphazardly put together, but as a whole that is organically linked.  With this understanding in mind one can readily understand why the belief in the Forgiveness of Sins follows from the belief in the Holy Spirit and the Holy Catholic Church.  In His first post-Resurrection appearance to the Apostles in the Upper Room, Jesus gives the Church the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins (c.f. John 20:22-23).  This same gift of the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins is also invoked in the formula of absolution during the rite of Confession—”God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”  This article then is tied up with the Sacrament of Confession as the ordinary means that God has put in place for the forgiveness of sins.

On the other hand though, it seems almost self-evident that Christians should believe in the Forgiveness of Sins, especially given all that is said in the Creed about the Incarnation.  One might begin to wonder why this should be included except perhaps to serve as a reminder of this often overlooked gift.  I am not just speaking of the gift of the Sacrament of Confession (we will cover that another time) but the overall gift of the forgiveness of sins.  I think most of us would rather have a different gift instead—the excusing of our sins.  We may not openly profess this in a Creed but our actions bear it out.  We have a really vicious habit of trying to make excuses for our faults rather than admitting them.  We would rather be excused than accept responsibility.  With a moment’s reflection however we can see that this is sheer insanity and yet another proof that sin makes us stupid.

Why do we spend so much energy and useless anxiety with making excuses when God gives forgiveness so readily?  Certainly if there are extenuating circumstances then God will be quick to excuse us for the role these played.  But ultimately the fact that we rationalize shows that we do not believe this doctrine.  Our Lord recognized that there would be a temptation to a lack of faith in this doctrine and so He repeatedly emphasized the “joy in Heaven” that comes when God exercises His mercy.  We should not seek to be absolved of responsibility but to be absolved of our poor use of responsibility.  In many ways excuse-making traps us in perpetual chains of victimhood, while seeking forgiveness frees us.  This desire for the freedom that only forgiveness offers cannot be stamped out regardless of how much we deny it and label it as “Catholic guilt.”  We can either exercise it in the manner that God intended—through the Sacrament of Confession—or by treating therapists as the new priests and thinking nothing of the “tell-all” interview on Oprah.  Either way, the desire has to be expressed.  So, who is the wise man building on rock?

armstrong and oprah

This idea that forgiveness brings freedom is no trivial point.  First it is freeing from the perspective of God’s forgiveness of us.  It is only when I readily admit my sins that grace begins to transform me.  To “firmly intend with the help of Your grace to sin no more” changes us.  God needs no laundry list of our sins—He already knows everything.  He wants us to see both our complicity and our total weakness so that He can grant to us the freedom we are truly seeking.  One of my favorite prayers of St. Philip Neri captures this perfectly: “Lord, look out for Philip today, he may betray you!”

The second dimension in which forgiveness leads to freedom is our own forgiveness of others. When someone is stuck in unforgiveness they unwittingly give power to the person whom they refuse to forgive. They harbor grudges and ill-will toward the other person and likely will not be satisfied even with their downfall. Nearly every Exorcist will tell you the same thing about unforgiveness—it is the number one way that the Devil keeps people in his clutches (especially through Oppression, Obsession and Possession). It may not be the way that he initially gains entry, but he is able to continually pick at the wound of unforgiveness and keep the person enslaved.

That our forgiveness of others is vitally important seems obvious from the teaching of Our Lord in the Lord’s Prayer and from the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Mt 18:21-35). But we must first make sure we understand what He is really saying before we can begin to understand how we can forgive. Jesus is not saying that God’s forgiveness somehow depends upon the manner in which we forgive others. In other words, our forgiveness is not the cause of God’s forgiveness, but the other way around. His forgiveness is the cause of our own. The reason why we pray this petition in the Lord’s Prayer is because we are seeking the awareness of God’s forgiveness in our own lives so that we forgive others. The same thing in the parable—the King first forgives the man, but then because of his unawareness of true depth of the forgiveness he has received, he fails to exercise it.

I find that most people struggle with unforgiveness because they do not understand what forgiveness means. Like forgiveness from God, forgiving others from our perspective cannot be confused with or substituted with excusing others. Christian forgiveness does not mean we are to become doormats. Jesus may have told us to “turn the other cheek” (Mt 5:39) but when He was struck by the High Priest’s servant He asked Him “Why did you strike Me?”(Jn 18:23). Christ may have forgiven the servant, but that does not mean He should simply take the abuse.

To understand forgiveness on a human level, we have to understand the goal. The goal is to restore the relationship back to the level of justice. Justice is a necessary part of love even if it not the most complete form of it. Often “loving our neighbor” simply means ensuring they are justly treated.

Recalling from St. Thomas that justice consists in “rendering to each his due,” we see that it is governed by a principle of reciprocity. This also means that we can treat someone justly while they may treat us unjustly. When we understand this, we can make the important distinction between forgiveness given and forgiveness sought (or received). Christ’s commandment is for us to forgive the other. What they do with that forgiveness is up to them. It can only be offered. But in order to be received they must attempt to restore what is due to us. A sincere apology is certainly a starting point but it usually involves more than that. In justice we have to set out to restore something of what was lost. Teaching children this part of forgiveness is very important from an early age. We do them a grave disservice by teaching them that saying “I am sorry” is always enough. They come to expect forgiveness as a right. It is better to teach them to ask, “will you forgive me?”

Forgiveness offered consists in willing the good of the other person and ensuring they are treated justly. What would it mean to forgive someone who murdered a family member? At a minimum forgiveness would consist in willing that they receive a just trial and fair punishment. It might even mean defending them against the death penalty since it would be an unjust penalty. Christian forgiveness would mean praying for their repentance and conversion so that God would be given His due. Forgiveness would not mean simply forgetting what they have done and pretending it didn’t happen.

If we should not merely “forgive and forget” then we should finish by discussing a key aspect of relationships and that is trust. Forgiveness does not mean that we should instantly operate on the same level of trust as before the offense. Forgiveness may be divine, but it does not absolve us from being prudent in our relationships. While Jesus may have said that Peter should forgive his brother a practically infinite number of times, He was not saying that Peter should set himself up allowing the same thing to happen over and over (Mt 18:21-22). If someone is not trustworthy then we should enter into relationships that require trust with them. This would be excusing and not forgiving.

Apostles of Mercy

Divine Mercy

Pope St. John Paul II has been referred to by many as the “Mercy Pope.”  When the Diary of St. Faustina, Divine Mercy in My Soul was banned by the Vatican because of a faulty translation, it was he who was then Archbishop of Krakow that initiated the process to remove any impediments to the spreading of the devotion to Divine Mercy.  As pope he canonized St. Faustina as the first saint of the Third Millennium and established Divine Mercy Sunday for the Universal Church.  Even Pope Benedict recognized this “Mercy Pope” when he pointed out in a homily that “Providence decided that he should die right on the eve of that day [Divine Mercy Sunday—April 2, 2005] in the arms of Divine Mercy” so that his first day in Heaven was Divine Mercy Sunday.  Clearly this was a man who God used to reveal His mercy is a unique way.  With the celebration this Sunday of God’s Divine Mercy, it is a good time to reflect on the Mercy of God and use this saint as our guide.

dm3

In his second encyclical, Dives in Misericordia, John Paul II wrote what would serve as the framework of his mercy apostolate. He offered an extended meditation on the Prodigal Son in order to remove our “prejudices about mercy [that] are mostly the result of appraising them only from the outside.”  His point is that we struggle to experience mercy and give mercy because we do not understand it.  We do not understand what we mean when we say that God is merciful and therefore what it means for us to be merciful.

In his commentary on the line from Ephesians 2:1, “God who is rich in mercy,” St Thomas says that God’s merciful love is the basis for the divine love of mankind.  He distinguishes between mercy and justice by pointing out  that when “a man’s love is caused from the goodness of the one he loves, then that man who loves does so out of justice but when loves causes the goodness in the beloved then it is a love springing from mercy. The love with which God loves us produces goodness in us; hence mercy is presented here as the root of the divine love.”  God’s love for us is what causes all that is good in us.  So mercy is not just primarily about forgiving our sins but a recognition that “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).  We all are beneficiaries of God’s mercy not just those who have sinned greatly.  All too often we offer pious platitudes to His mercy without ever consciously experiencing it.  Once we recall that it is His mercy that elevates us however we will see it everywhere in our lives.

This is the model for our own mercy towards others.  Mercy is not a lowering of myself to help those less fortunate than I.  This is one of the prejudices the Holy Pontiff warns us of:  “(W)e see in mercy above all a relationship of inequality between the one offering it and the one receiving it.”  Our acts of mercy ought to raise others up.  But true “mercy is based on the common experience of that good which is man, on the common experience of the dignity that is proper to him.”   It is a desire to help another restore their proper dignity.  This is the affective aspect of mercy that leads us to compassion.  But in order to properly be an instrument of God’s mercy then it must also be effective.  Effective mercy does something to relieve the needs of others.  Humanly speaking both aspects are needed—the man who performed great acts of “mercy” with no feeling would probably frigidly scare most people away.

John Paul II goes on to say that “mercy constitutes the fundamental content of the messianic message of Christ and the constitutive power of his mission. His disciples and followers understood and practiced mercy in the same way.”  What he means is that the early Church saw it as her mission to spread and make known God’s mercy.  They were to be Apostles of Mercy by living out the Beatitude “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Mt 5:7).  To remind all of us of this mandate, Jesus gave a similar message to St. Faustina  “I demand from you deeds of mercy, which are to arise out of love for Me. You are to show mercy to your neighbors always and everywhere. You must not shrink from this or try to excuse or absolve yourself from it.” (Diary 742).

Jesus has given us the Mercy Mandate and the Church has instructed us on how to realize it through the Corporal and Spiritual Acts of Mercy.  We must remember that they are done first of all with the intention of loving God.  This intention ought to animate everything that we do.  This is why we are infused with the virtue of charity in Baptism.  It gives us a share of God’s love for Himself and infuses into us the habit of loving like He does.  Like all habits it grows in strength each time we exercise it.  So when we love our neighbor for God’s sake, it is not some disinterested love that they merely benefit from.  Instead it enables us to love them more purely and to desire their good more intently.

Only by doing them with this spirit can they truly be acts of mercy; acts that aid in the restoration and remembrance of the great dignity of those we serve.  It is the love of God that awakens this sense.  The Canonized Pope goes on to makes it a point to mention how important the approach that we take in brining others to mercy.  He says that it is only when the prodigal’s “sense of lost dignity had matured” that he decided to return to his father.  This should serve as model of conversion and evangelization for us.  Christianity is not primarily a moral message but an encounter with the person of Jesus Christ, Mercy Incarnate.  Once someone has been restored to sonship, they will act like it.  But first they must know (or be reminded) of their great dignity as beloved of the Father.  This seems to me to be at the heart of the overall message of Pope Francis that many people recoil at.  It is not that the moral teachings aren’t true or are unimportant.  But they are not the Gospel.  They need to be preached, but preached as second things.  They are preached to those who have encountered Jesus and now turn to Him and ask “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life.”

I spoke recently with someone who was counseling someone against moving in with her boyfriend.  He said he was having difficulty reaching her because she was filled with the values of the world.  He asked for what arguments he should make.  Recalling what John Paul II said above, I told him to tell her “she is worth so much more than that.”  She deserves to be loved for who she is and not merely tried out as if she was a used car.  That is the first step that he is talking about.  The message is still clear—moving in with your boyfriend is wrong, but it is first a message reminding her of her dignity.  Like the prodigal son, it is the recollection of her dignity that will set her on the path of mercy.  Remembering whose daughter she is, she no longer desire to be a mere servant.