DIVINE MERCY: The Supreme Devotion.

                                                            --Fr. Conrad Saldanha

Oh no, one more devotion to the list! Are the Catholics to be pitied for the addition of another devotion to the long list of devotions they may have?  We have the various devotions to Our Lady, and then we have the devotion to the Saints, we have devotion to the Blood of Christ, the wounds of Christ and the popular Sacred Heart of Jesus.  The list seems to be endless and there is a constant addition of devotions to the Catholic repertory.   Yet the devotion to the Divine Mercy will always stand out as the supreme devotion.

The most popular devotion in the category preceding the Divine Mercy was the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It has always been popular and widely followed, accompanied with assurances of indulgences granted and special blessings for homes consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.   Many homes still have those huge images or frames with these two images occupying the prime place in a home.  The more ancient the house the bigger the image, some are really magnificent and lovely. Decorated and even embroidered to give it a noble look.     

There have been families and individuals who in keeping with the promises of our Lord to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque diligently keep the first Friday commitment to our Lord and make it a point to go for confession and participate in a first Friday Eucharistic adoration and mass.  The trend to preach about such devotions is less among the clergy, in keeping with the Post Vatican II attitude of many, who rarely venture to speak on this subject. The drift is still worse in India and more so in Mumbai where the Clergy is trained only to promote the SCC’s (small Christian Communities) as a priority without much credence given to the right kind of spirituality and devotion.   Hence you hear of objections to the addition of yet another devotion, especially by liturgists who think that this kind of devotion doesn’t fit in the scheme of things.  

While the devotion to the Sacred Heart is the most appealing devotion in keeping with the love element which arises from the heart of a person, it is nevertheless not enough in keeping with the ineffable mystery of God’s love and the limitedness of human love.  There is always the element of equating God’s love with human action and love.  Human love may imitate God’s love but it can never be the same as God’s love. It is similar but not the same.  It may have elements of compassion, mercy and sacrifice yet it transcends human comprehension (Eph. 3:19).  This very reason God sent his Son so that we may fully comprehend the depth of his love and thus be imitators of this love. 

We hear of situation when people experience deception in the area of love and get carried away by the little love they receive. They never will and may have never realized that they themselves are under an illusion of deception concerning love.  This very reason Jesus says; “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love” John 15:9.  This same love we carry in our devotion to God and then there is the aspect of boasting whereby one could always claim that I am the one loving God.  The Divine Mercy reminds us that it is we who are undeserving of God’s love and if we are loved by God and have the capacity and knowledge to love it is precisely because God in his great mercy has made it possible for us. If not for his merciful love then we would not have known God, nor would have sought him, nor carried on in the grace of Christ.   Hence the devotion to the Divine Mercy is devotion for our age which makes much of human achievements and accomplishments. 

This devotion is a reminder of the true status of a human being who is dust and to dust he has to return (the prayer of Ash Wednesday). The journey begins at the beginning of Lent and the accomplishment of this great grace of mercy is on Good Friday when he shed his precious blood to save and redeem us for God.  The preaching of the Gospel is the proclamation of this good news of Christ; the merciful love of God is now revealed to us in Christ Jesus and we can now become acceptable children of the living God through faith in Christ (cfr. Jn. 1:12). “By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). Hence from the Good Friday action we are lead on to the Easter resurrection and this continues in the great octave of Easter.

If the celebration of the passion, death and resurrection through the Eucharist is never a wrongful act in the Octave of Easter then how can the praying of the Chaplet; offering of the body and blood, soul and divinity be wrong in the Easter season?  We cannot have the resurrection apart from the great sacrificial offering just as you cannot have the fruits of the earth unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies. Rather, the meaning of resurrection is rendered useless without the recollection of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ.  If not, then at least the human mind seeking meaning to life has to go forth in that logical direction.  The resurrected Christ himself leads us in his post resurrection discourse and through his presence to that foundational base (Lk. 24:26,46).

No wonder Pope John Paul II calls St. Faustina, the saint of the new millennium.  The new millennium is the millennium of the laity. The sacrifice once offered by his priest Melchisedech, and then offered by the Levites. Subsequently through Christ the perfect sacrifice offered by the ordained priest is now offered in a new way by the laity in the new millennium through the Chaplet of divine mercy. It is the same offering the ordained priest offered on behalf of the church so that God’s mercy may shine forth in our midst, is now offered by the laity in verbal form to God and thus calling on his mercy that is able to save us.  Hence the Chaplet is also a Eucharistic offering and becomes an extension too of the Eucharist for the laity; the perfect prayer of the church always and everywhere and in all situations.  This truly is lay empowerment in the church of God.

No longer does the laity, who many a times have no say in the spiritual matters of the Church, have to worry much about the many sacrileges committed against the Eucharist by the ordained ministers, for leave that to God. As for the layman they can continue to offer the sacrifice of Christ with reverence, devotion and a clear conscience in the things that the Church permits them by virtue of this great devotion of the Divine Mercy Chaplet.  Similarly, crisis created by the scarcity of priests in many countries and the lack of masses for offerings are eliminated by the new offering by simple and humble lips.  This Chaplet of Mercy in no way fully replaces the complete efficacy of a meaningful Eucharistic service where Jesus is truly made present by the action of the Church as mandated by Christ.

Finally, the Devotion to the Sacred Heart can always leave room for boasting; as if it is our love towards God which makes us devotees of God. And pride can always take over with those who pit one devotion against another. Whereas the Divine Mercy devotion reminds us that it is not our devotion and our love for God that is of prime importance but it is his love for us first, by his great and merciful love, is what enables us and makes even our imperfect love acceptable to God.  In the last Chapter of John’s Gospel we have a beautiful example of God’s mercy when Jesus asks Simon Peter whether he loves him (Gk. Agape = spiritual and selfless) and Peter’s love reply is yes (Gk. Philein = friendship) and yet Jesus does not reject his love. He takes our sincere heart of imperfect love and makes it perfect in his time; thanks to his great mercy Philein progresses to become Agape with God’s help!

     

Prayer: Lord help me to humbly acknowledge your love which is mercy and compassion as I pray: “Eternal Father, I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ in atonement for my sins and those of the whole world.  For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on me and on the whole world”!