Mar. 9, 2010: Fr. Miles Walsh - Divine Mercy Novena
Divine Mercy as Super-Abundant Satisfaction for Sin
Fr. Miles Walsh, Pastor of Our Lady of Mercy
The greater the sin, the greater the Mercy of God. The greater the sinner, the greater his right to partake from the infinite abyss of God’s Mercy. Those words and those sentiments, by the way, are not mine; they are the words and thoughts of Jesus Himself, confided to St. Faustina. Two weeks ago, when I preached on Divine Mercy as the greatest attribute of God, I quoted Pope John Paul II to the effect that Mercy can indeed be said to be God’s greatest attribute in this sense, namely, that God became mercy solely for our sake. In Himself, in the blessed communion of the three Divine Persons, God has no need for Mercy, for the simple reason that the Father does not need to be merciful to the Son or to the Holy Spirit, nor do the Son and Holy Spirit need to be merciful to the Father or to one another. No, God became mercy for us because sinful and weak creatures though we are, He loves us with an unconditional love. When man we disobeyed God and had no way of making satisfaction for our sin, He sent His own Son to suffer and die for our salvation. And once He made that sacrifice for us–the Father giving us His only Son; the Eternal Son emptying Himself of glory to become flesh like us, even to the point of suffering and dying on the cross; the Spirit of God taking up His abode in the humble temple of our bodies and our souls–once God made this sacrifice for us, He desperately desired that we take advantage of His Mercy and immerse ourselves in it. The Father wants us to approach Him through His Son. He wants us to know and to trust Jesus Christ, who is His Mercy in human flesh, and He wants Jesus and the Holy Spirit to lead us to Him.
Tonight I want to speak to you on Divine Mercy as Super-Abundant Satisfaction for Sin. That phrase, “super-abundant satisfaction for sin,” comes from St. Thomas Aquinas, but it reflects a truth of Divine Revelation. It also provides an answer to a question, an objection really, that many of us have often wrestled with, viz., how can God possibly forgive all our sins and give us a new beginning in life? With so much water (so much bad water) under the bridge, how can the mercy of God ever make up for my sin and the sin of the whole world? And yet the Church teaches us that as the eternal Son of God and as an infinite Person of the Godhead, Jesus more than made up for our sin by becoming man and by suffering and dying on the Cross. Think about it–who among us could ever have imagined or fathomed that the remedy for our sin would be the incarnation, death, and resurrection of God’s beloved Son? As St. Paul says in 5:20: Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. The greater the sin, the greater the mercy of God.
Nine years ago, in 2001, I went on a pilgrimage to Poland. Our group visited the tomb of St. Faustina, the birthplace of Pope John Paul, the shrine of Our Lady at Czestochova, but we also visited the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. Even by the most conservative estimates, more than 1,000,000 innocent people were put to death, with calculated cruelty, in that place. Infants were torn from their mothers’ arms; children were separated from their parents, experimented on, and killed; the old were exterminated; the young and the healthy were humiliated, starved, raped, beaten, worked almost to death, then poisoned with gas, their bodies incinerated in brick ovens. There can be no earthly explanation for what happened in that place except for pure hatred of the human race. Auschwitz was the very embodiment of a world apart from the mercy of God. And yet tragically, it is not unique.
We live in a world today in which our tax dollars are being used to procreate human life in laboratories for the sole purpose of medical experimentation and certain destruction; a world in which unborn children are put to death in their mothers’ wombs to spare us the inconvenience of their unwanted lives; a world in which bombs are dropped on civilian populations and justified as the inevitable cost of waging war; a world in which killing fields and the denial of the most basic human rights have abounded in places as disparate as China, Cambodia, Russia, South America, and the abortuaries of our own land; a world in which, in the hearts of many, money reigns as god. Meanwhile, what has the world’s response been? While Rome burns, so to speak, countless millions entertain themselves with internet pornography; others fill the void in their lives by turning to alcohol and drugs. Our movies and our films are rife with blasphemies and curses against God; and those who reject God are doing all in their power to banish prayer and the knowledge of God from the public square. Much of the world is content simply not to be bothered, to remain ignorant of God and indifferent to Him.
Is it any wonder that in our world today...God wants the message of His Divine Mercy to be known more urgently than ever before? Is it any wonder that Jesus confided the message of Divine Mercy in a new and utterly compelling way to a humble Polish nun just before her death on the eve of the Second World War? Is it any wonder that the Spirit of God inspired Christ’s Vicar on earth, a Polish Pope, John Paul II, to spread the message of Divine Mercy throughout the world and to institute the feast of Divine Mercy at the dawn of this new third millennium? Is it any wonder that the Spirit of God fills this church week after week, inviting us to a transformation of heart so that we can carry the message of God’s Mercy to the ends of the earth? Imagine how much better our community would be...if six or seven hundred of us went out of this church as dedicated apostles of Divine Mercy. God is pouring out His Mercy on the world in a super-abundant way today...for the simple reason that the world needs Divine Mercy as it has never needed it before. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.
Before I close tonight, I want to recommend a little booklet entitled, Why Mercy Sunday?, by Fr. George Kosicki. (Copies of this booklet for a donation of $5 will be available in the vestibule of the church after tonight’s Mass.) Fr. Kosicki is one of the foremost apostles spreading the message of Divine Mercy in the world today, and in this little booklet he explains how our prayer at this novena is preparing us for the feast of Divine Mercy on octave day of Easter, a day when Jesus wants to pour out his super-abundant Mercy on us and on the whole world. To accomplish that, Jesus must first lead us to repent and to unite our hearts to His Sacred Heart, so that we will be able to pray from the very depths of our souls: Jesus, I trust in You!
(Fr. Miles Walsh)
