Faustina Diary , :. What Jesus is offering to us here is a complete renewal of baptismal grace, a complete cleansing of the soul and washing it clean, renewing within us all the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit that we received at our baptism. Of course, it is certainly true that whenever we make a good Confession out of perfect contrition for sin and pure love for God, we can receive the same complete renewal of baptismal grace, the same complete cleansing of our souls that Jesus promised we could receive from Holy Communion on the Feast of Mercy.
The problem is: How many of us make our Confessions as an act of perfect contrition and pure love of God? Unless we are well on the road to sanctity, it is very rare that we are able to do this. Nevertheless, Jesus is so generous and merciful toward us that on Mercy Sunday, He has given us another way to attain the complete refreshment of our souls in grace.
If only we make a sincere confession in preparation for the Feast, and then receive Holy Communion on that day with trust in His divine mercy, we can receive the same complete spiritual renewal. He does not ask of us an act of perfect love of God, or perfect contrition on that day in order that we may receive such a gift.
All He asks is that we come to Him with trust Diary entry : "The graces of My mercy are drawn by the means of one vessel only, and that is - trust. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive. The renewal of baptismal grace that we receive from the Holy Communion on Mercy Sunday serves to strengthen us in all these virtues, but especially in our love for Jesus Christ, so that we begin to love Him for His own sake - for the glory of His name, the spread of His kingdom, and for the consolation of His Heart - and not just for ourselves, for our own benefit.
In short, by trust we open the door to Christ so that He can pour out upon us a whole ocean of graces on Mercy Sunday! Jesus left several instructions with St. Faustina concerning how this Feast of Mercy should be observed. As we have already seen, Jesus asked that the Feast be observed on the Sunday after Easter; He asked us to come to Him in Holy Communion on that day with complete trust in His mercy; He said that we should make a good Confession in preparation for this Feast St.
Faustina made her confession on the day before Mercy Sunday - see Diary entry Finally, we are to receive Holy Communion on the Feast day itself in order to receive the complete renewal of baptismal grace that He wants to pour into our hearts. Jesus also left three more instructions for St. Faustina that must not be forgotten. Diary entry "On that day, priests are to tell everyone about My great and unfathomable mercy. Hardened sinners will repent on hearing their words when they speak about My unfathomable mercy, about the compassion I have for them in My Heart.
The fact is that the traditional texts of the Missal for that Sunday already proclaim His Mercy loud and clear. For example, there is the gospel reading about Jesus appearing in the upper room on Easter Sunday night, bestowing a blessing of peace on His apostles, and giving them authority to forgive sins in His name.
In Diary entry , for example, Jesus said to St. Faustina: " I want the image to be solemnly blessed on the first Sunday after Easter, and I want it to be venerated publicly so that every soul may know about it. It should come as no surprise that Jesus wanted this image to be venerated on Divine Mercy Sunday. It depicts His merciful love for us both in His Passion in the Blood and Water flowing from His breast, as it did on Calvary and in the Resurrection - the whole Paschal mystery.
Also, in the inscription at the bottom of the image, we find a summary of the basic response that Jesus asks of each of us to His merciful love: "Jesus, I trust in You. Faustina that in preparation for the Feast of Mercy we need to be merciful to others, through our actions, words, and prayers. If we are not practicing the works of mercy in our lives, then our celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday would be a kind of blasphemy, rather than an offering pleasing to the Lord Mic :.
This requirement is simple enough to understand. Faustina much the same thing, in connection with the Feast of Mercy Diary , :. Not only are the works of mercy a good preparation for this feast day, they are also the fruit that the Lord intends to grow as a result of the graces poured out on this day.
The mercy we receive in our hearts on Divine Mercy Sunday is meant to be shared with others. The graces poured into our hearts by our merciful Lord are meant to flow through our hearts to our neighbors in need. In this way, Divine Mercy Sunday even enables us to show a kind of "mercy" to Jesus Himself: "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me Whether we are showing mercy to the materially poor, or to the spiritually poor, we are sharing divine mercy with those whose plight is ever close to the compassionate Heart of our Savior.
A God who is risen but remains distant does not fill our lives; an aloof God does not attract us, however just and holy he may be. How can we see him? Like the disciples: through his wounds. Gazing upon those wounds, the disciples understood the depth of his love. They understood that he had forgiven them, even though some had denied him and abandoned him.
This is the way. It is to realize that his heart beats for me, for you, for each one of us. Dear brothers and sisters, we can consider ourselves Christians, call ourselves Christians and speak about the many beautiful values of faith, but, like the disciples, we need to see Jesus by touching his love.
Only thus can we go to the heart of the faith and, like the disciples, find peace and joy cf. I would like to reflect on the adjective that Thomas repeats: my.
It is a possessive adjective. When we think about it, it might seem inappropriate to use it of God. How can God be mine? How can I make the Almighty mine? The truth is, by saying my , we do not profane God, but honour his mercy. Here we see how God presents himself as a jealous lover who calls himself your God.
Then, like Thomas, we no longer live as disciples, uncertain, devout but wavering. We too fall in love with the Lord! We must not be afraid of these words: to fall in love with the Lord. How can we savour this love? How can we touch today with our hand the mercy of Jesus? Again, the Gospel offers a clue, when it stresses that the very evening of Easter cf.
To experience love, we need to begin there: to let ourselves be forgiven. To let ourselves be forgiven. I ask myself, and each one of you: do I allow myself to be forgiven?
To experience that love, we need to begin there. But with God there is more. We turn to him not only for justice, but also for mercy and healing. God is the just judge but if divine justice is all there is, we're sunk because none of us is without sin, none of us would be left standing on judgment day.
We expect that perpetrators will have a very rough time on judgment day, given the unspeakable harm they have done, but we have done harm too — at least in other areas of sin — and so like them, our only hope is for mercy and that's what we pray for today on Divine Mercy Sunday.
The events in the first part of today's Gospel occurred on Easter Sunday evening. That morning everything was about proving Jesus' victory: the empty tomb, the angel's message and Jesus' first appearances. Then that evening we start to see what his triumph has won for us, namely: divine mercy available to us due to Jesus' victory over evil, through the gift of faith, which banishes doubt and fear, through the gift of his presence which brings healing, and through the gift of forgiveness, especially as received in the sacrament of reconciliation.
First Jesus frees his disciples from the fear that has them hiding behind locked doors for "fear of the Jews," or more accurately — since they themselves were Jews — for fear that the people who had killed Jesus just three days earlier would now come after them, his followers. And what does Jesus do? He enters the room miraculously, and says: "Peace be with you" —just like he can bring peace to us today, even those who still are deeply wounded by what was done in the past.
When he shows them his wounds, his hands and his side we see that it really is him and yet those wounds do not define him — evil did its worst on Good Friday, but it no longer has power over him. And then he breathes on them the Holy Spirit and sends these men who know his wounds and undoubtedly have their own wounds, to now go forth as wounded healers to continue his divine mission of mercy.
And what is the tool he gives them to bring this divine mercy to others? Both the ordinary — though costly — forgiveness we extend to each other informally and the sacramental forgiveness, which he institutes in today's Gospel saying: " Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.
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