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The Infinite Mercy of God on our Sinful World Homily Sunday, April 23 , 2nd Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday at St. Joseph Parish, Detroit
A word to the sinful: “Lift up your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees,” (Heb 12:12), for the Lord says, “I am bringing my righteousness near, it is not far away; and my salvation will not be delayed. I will grant salvation to Zion, my splendor to Israel.” (Is 46:3) Indeed, “our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed” (Rom 13:11). This very day, this very afternoon, we have gathered to adore and to obtain Divine Mercy, which is another name for God. A certain woman was born in Poland in 1905; she died at the young age of 33 from tuberculosis, and Pope John Paul the Great canonized her in the year 2000. She is Sister Faustina, whose relic we have here today, posed next to the Paschal candle. She is in eternal happiness and simply awaits the resurrection of the flesh when Christ comes again. She had visions from the Lord, the love of her heart, who wrote down all her private revelations about divine mercy in her Diary, which I recommend to the reading of all here present. Because of the Lord’s promptings to her, Pope John Paul the Great also proclaimed the second Sunday of Easter to be divine mercy Sunday. Therefore the whole cluster has participated in the novena of divine mercy which starts each year on Good Friday, including the prayer of the Divine Mercy Chaplet, which St. Faustina taught us and which we pray often with great relish. In today’s homily, therefore, let us meditate on the sinful state of man, let us meditate on the works of the Lord, and let us meditate on the message of God’s mercy. In England, one bishop stood up against King Henry VIII’s sinful actions and schism, and he paid with his life. He was the only bishop in the Tower of London in those days, when the Tower should have been filled with bishops, but these bishops were cowards and sold their souls to be in good with the King. (Ah, things never change!) This bishop, this brave, holy bishop, this martyr, is St. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, often remembered with the great and holy St. Thomas Moore. He wrote a book on the Seven Penitential Psalms, a book which I also highly recommend to you all, my dear brothers and sisters, for your spiritual reading. He wrote, “There are many who wail, are contrite, and confess their sins, but there is scarce one in a thousand who does due satisfaction.”[1] Oh, how hard it is for us to truly repent. We don’t like to admit we’re sinners, much less to a priest in the confessional who in his turn is also a sinner. We find excuses to justify our sinful actions, or excuses to refrain from confessing. And so we continue down the path of enslavement to our sins, occasionally perhaps even turning to heaven to shake our fist because of our sad lot. St. John teaches us, “Do not imitate what is evil, but what is good,” (3 Jn 1:11), and we hypocritically ask him, “Who are you calling evil?” The first step we need to obtain Divine Mercy is to admit our sinfulness. Let us be honest with ourselves and with God: he knows the truth anyway, and he knows it more perfectly than we do, because of his divine intellect. Do we think we fool God by saying we are not sinners? How can we obtain divine mercy if we can’t admit our misery to begin with? Let us turn to the Lord, for he wishes only good for us, he wishes to heal us and to forgive us, to free us from the slavery of sin. God has designs of mercy on us, but he can’t save us without our help. And the help we need to pitch in is this: examination of our conscience, confession of our sins, contrition of heart, the absolution of the priest, and satisfaction for the evil we have done by prayer, fasting and almsgiving. The Lord has designs of mercy for you! For you, so that you could live with Him and the angels and saints in eternal happiness, he created Adam and Eve. For you, he promised them a savior when they had perpetrated original sin. For you, he sent the patriarchs. For you, he sent Moses. For you, he set Israel free from Egypt and later again from Babylon. For you, he made covenants with Moses, Abraham and King David. For you, he inspired the prophets with the great writings of Wisdom. For you, to teach you, he punished the evildoer and raised up the good and lowly. For you, he created the Blessed Virgin Mary. For you, he himself came to earth in her womb. For you, he preached the Gospel. For you, he lived a truly human life on earth to be your example. For you, he endured calumny and wicked gossip. For you, he endured thorns, beatings, spittle, punches. For you, he died on the cross, to be an eternal sacrifice to pay for your sins. For you, he rose from the dead. For you, he ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit. For you, he sent apostles into the world, many of whom gave their lives to pass their faith on to you and your friends and family! For you, he sent saints, scholars, martyrs, teachers, virgins, contemplatives and missionaries into the world. And for you, he moved your heart to be here this afternoon, to meditate on his great love. What foolishness it would be to cast all that mercy aside, because we were too proud to admit our sinfulness and ask him for his mercy. Ask, for his mercy is endless. Indeed, we prayed in the Psalm in the readings at Mass, “His mercy endures forever” (Ps 18:2-4). Indeed, the Lord hears the cry of the penitent soul, as it says in the Psalms, “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity, for the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping” (Ps 6:9). By “depart, etc.,” he shows that he will change his life as proof of his conversion. God’s mercy is endless. He wishes peace upon us, as we read in today’s Gospel, “Peace be with you,” he said again and again to the disciples (Jn 20:19,21), and he has done all he could to save us from sin. All he needs is our free decision to truly follow him especially by faith. So great is his mercy, that, again as we just read in today’s Gospel, he gave the Apostles, those who govern the Church, the power to forgive sins (Jn 20:23). St. John Fisher again says, “whoever in this life will do penance, no matter how great a sinner he was before (if he does not despair of forgiveness), almighty God shall be merciful and forgive him.”[2] And again, after meditating on Psalm 129, the sixth of the seven penitential Psalms, he asserts, “We can now be assured that almighty God will be merciful to all true penitents: first, because of his promise; secondly, because he is almighty and can perform it at all times; thirdly, because he is so gentle and ever ready to forgive.”[3] Let us not end without remembering our loving and merciful mother Mary. St. Alfonsus de Liguori, in The Glories of Mary, when meditating on the prayer, “Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, etc.,” says, “For our common consolation, be it known that [Mary] is a Queen so sweet, clement, and so ready to help us in our miseries, that the holy Church wills that we should salute her in [the prayer Hail Holy Queen] under the title of Queen of Mercy.”[4] Let us therefore turn to God’s mercy, trust in God’s mercy, that his mercy is greater than all the sins of the whole world put together. He is far more interested in our salvation than any one of us is! Oh, how I pray that God open your hearts, and help you see the truth and beauty of his mercy! Renounce your sins, they do you no good and sadden our loving God. Turn to the sacrament of reconciliation often and in peace. Imitate God’s mercy with your own neighbor. Finally, help your neighbor find his way to God’s mercy, mindful of the teaching of St. James, in the last verse of the epistle he wrote, which reads, “My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins” (Jas 5:19-20). This is the day of God’s mercy. Let us praise the resurrected Lord for his love. Let us ask him to truly grasp his love. Let us repent from our sins and live in freedom. Let us help our neighbor, in the meek, joyful and effective way characteristic of Jesus Christ, to find his own way to divine mercy. Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, for the sake of the Lord’s sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world. Amen.
Lift up your head, raise your drooping hands, for your salvation is close at hand! For today is the afternoon of divine mercy
Indications before holy hour
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