Sermon about Divine Mercy

Introduction

In many parishes in the world, there is a picture of the Divine Mercy; the devotion to Divine Mercy is well promoted by the Novus Ordo clergy, even Pope Francis made the year 2016 be the year of Mercy. So, quite often the faithful ask us, SSPX priests, about it: is the Devotion to Divine Mercy good? Can we follow it?

Referring myself to the notes of a confrere who studied thoroughly this topic, I would like to answer these questions.

Sr Faustyna, her diary, her spiritual director

The impulse of the devotion to Divine Mercy was given by Sr Faustyna Kowalska, a polish nun. She was born in 1905 in a Catholic family in Poland and was named Helena. When she was 7 years old, she felt already the call of God to religious life. Her scholar education was very poor: only three years of Primary school. In 1925, she was admitted in the monastery of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy dedicated to works of charity towards the poor, and she became Sr Faustyna. She was a hard-working nun, obedient to her Superiors and confessors, striving to practice well all the virtues. If some minor points related to her spiritual life still need to be clarified, nothing contrary to the Faith or good morals can be found in her life. She spoke of her private revelations and her devotion to the Divine Mercy only to her confessors and superiors. In 1938, at the age of 33, she died of tuberculosis. And it is only after her death that she became well-known.

Sr Faustyna, under the command of her spiritual director, Rev Fr Sopocko, wrote down the messages of her private apparitions and also what pertained to her spiritual life. This is what we call Sr Faustyna’s diary. A typewritten copy of the diary was done in 1950 but with many and serious changes. In 1957, a bad Italian translation of that faulty copy was sent to the Vatican for checking. In 1959, the Holy Office, which is in Rome the department in charge of the Faith controlling the righteousness of publications, issued a condemnation of this diary. But in 1967, a new and faithful copy of the original diary was made, and consequently in 1978 the Holy Office lifted up the condemnation of 1959. The diary was then published in 1981 and spread in the world. However, no facsimile of the manuscript has ever been published and some questions about it are still to be resolved.

Fr Sopocko was Sr Faustyna’s spiritual director. He is well-known in Poland for his huge apostolic work. He was not at all a fool, following whatever Sr Faustyna would say, but he checked carefully as much as he could the authenticity of the apparitions and messages, up to have Sr Faustyna checked by a psychologist. Knowing perfectly that the foundation of our Faith is not private revelations, but Holy Scriptures and Catholic Tradition, Fr Sopocko wrote some theological studies on Divine Mercy, initiating then what we call now the “Misericordiology”. He founded also a new congregation called the Sisters of Merciful Jesus, and became an active promoter of the devotion to Divine Mercy. Let us see now the doctrine behind this devotion.

Divine Mercy

Mercy in Latin is said “misericordia” and it means “miserable heart”. Mercy is the compassion or sadness which makes us feel “miserable” because of witnessing the sufferings of another person, and that compassion prompts us to help that person, as we can. There are then two elements in mercy: the compassion or sadness which we feel, and the help which we give to the other. Note that to be merciful implies to be greater and more powerful than the one who is in misery, if not it would be impossible to help him.

You certainly remember the famous hymn to Charity written by St Paul to the Corinthians: St Paul insists that if we don’t have charity our best actions are nothing, that charity is the greatest of all virtues. Charity is what unites us to God and therefore absolutely speaking, it is the most important virtue. But on the particular point of view of our relationship with our neighbour, mercy is the greatest virtue because it is the love of our neighbour at its best, like its superabundance, making us help him to get out of his misery.

Now in the Bible, God proclaims hundreds of times that mercy is His, that He is merciful. For example: “Give ye glory to the Lord, for He is good: for His mercy endures for ever” (Num 16;34); “Thou art just, O Lord, and all thy judgments are just, and all thy ways mercy and truth and judgment” (Tobit 3;2); “All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth, to them that seek after his covenant” (Ps 24;10); St Paul mentions that God’s mercy is over all people: “God has concluded all in unbelief, that He may have mercy on all” (Rom 11;32). God is merciful towards us his creatures: not that He is saddened by our misery because nothing can affect God, but He acts to get us out of our misery and to introduce us in His Divine life and Happiness. God said through the Prophet Ezechiel: “Is it my will that a sinner should die, and not that he should be converted from his ways and live?” (Ez 18;23).

So, to profess God’s mercy implies on God’s side, to proclaim His superiority over us, His power to help us, His goodness to do good to us, His justice to draw us out of sin, His holiness to enable us to practice all virtues. And on our side, to proclaim God’s mercy is to acknowledge our own misery, our dependence and need of God, and also it is to profess our absolute trust that God will actually help us.

And this last point is very interesting: to God’s mercy towards us, to His inclination to help us, corresponds our trust in the efficiency of His help, and that trust is a source of spiritual joy: “I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation” (Ps 12;6), “Ye that fear the Lord hope in him, and mercy shall come to you for your delight” (Eccli 2;9), “Give praise O ye heavens and rejoice O earth, ye mountains give praise with jubilation, because the Lord has comforted his people and will have mercy on his poor ones” (Is 49;13). When we look at how quickly and widely the devotion to Divine Mercy spread in the world of today, we may be surprised. But actually, we should not: the world of today is a hopeless world, lacking supernatural hope. On one side, we see people full of foolish presumption claiming that they don’t need God, pretending to shape the world according to their own fancies and to find their happiness in the honors and pleasures of this world; on the other side we see many people filled with sadness, depression, fear, committing suicide because they see their life to be meaningless. The consideration of Divine mercy becomes then a light in the darkness, the source of huge hope smashing down the presumptuous and lifting up the desperate. Devotion to Divine Mercy seems very appropriate to our times.

Divine Mercy and Sacred Heart of Jesus

Now, how was the Divine Mercy manifested to us especially? In Our Lord Jesus Christ. “God so loved the world as to give his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed in Him may not perish, but have life everlasting” (Jn 3; 16). The Divine Mercy shines especially in the work of Redemption. Man, by his own fault, had sinned and fallen in the deepest spiritual and physical misery, unable to get out of it by himself; but God planned the redemption of mankind through Our Lord Jesus Christ, and that is why we name Jesus the Incarnate Divine Mercy.

When we read the Gospel, we notice how the poor, the sick, the needy and the sinners were calling on Our Lord: “Have mercy on me”, “Have mercy on us”… acknowledging their misery and being filled with the intense hope to be heard. And indeed, at these calls on His mercy, Our Lord Jesus could not close his Heart: every time He answered their requests, performing miracles for them. The ultimate act of Our Lord Jesus in the work of our Redemption, this work of mercy, has been to have His heart pierced with the lance. We cannot dissociate the idea of Divine mercy from the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Why then is there a difference between the images of the Sacred Heart and the images of the Divine Mercy? Simply because they represent the Sacred Heart of Jesus on two different aspects: to the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we especially associate His words to St Margaret Mary: “Behold the Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself, in order to testify Its love; and in return, I receive from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrilege, and by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in this Sacrament of Love”. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is for us especially a reminder to correspond to His love and to compensate for offenses committed against Him. The Divine Mercy picture attracts our attention on the action of the Sacred Heart promising to help us if we come to Him with humility and confidence.

Conclusion

Is the devotion to Divine Mercy good? Yes, it is good, rooted in the Bible and Tradition. Why then is it not promoted in our SSPX chapels? Because unfortunately the Modernists have seized this devotion, and deforming it, have made it be an instrument to promote their modernist ideas of universal salvation, of moral permissiveness, of sentimental and charismatic spirituality. Consequently, the devotion of the Divine Mercy has become in our days associated with these erroneous doctrines, and therefore to promote it carries the risk of confusion and misunderstanding. The SSPX applies the prudent principle indicated by Archbishop Lefebvre: to follow what was commonly practiced in the Church before the Vatican II Crisis and for whatever is recent and ambiguous, to wait for the end of this crisis and the clarifications of the Magisterium returned to Catholic Tradition. May you practise privately the devotion to Divine Mercy? Yes, you may, as long as you hold the Catholic, and not the modernist, teaching on Divine Mercy.