During Babe Ruth’s baseball career, he
drifted away from his faith. One night he was very ill in a New York hospital,
and a friend suggested he makes his peace with God. As a result, Babe Ruth
asked to see a priest. After celebrating the sacrament of Reconciliation, Babe
Ruth wrote: “As I lay in bed that evening, I thought to
myself – what a comfortable feeling to be free from fear and worries. I could
simply turn them over to God.” What an expression of Trust in God’s Love and
Mercy. The greatest message of Jesus in all of the
Gospels is Mercy In the Gospel of John (3:17) -“For
God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the
world might be saved through Him.” God does not desire the destruction of
sinners but their conversion. Our Psalmist from today’s readings
says, “I was hard pressed and was falling, but the LORD helped me”, and “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his
love is everlasting”. The message of God’s Divine Mercy
and forgiveness – that flows from God’s abundant love – is the source of our
hope.
As written in her Diary – Jesus said
to St. Faustina: “Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to My
mercy” (Diary, 300). If you were to take all of the sins
ever committed on earth, they would not amount to a grain of sand in comparison
to the oceans of the Divine Mercy of God.
God always provides in super abundance.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation or
Penance – is one of the greatest gift of God to His Church – through which we
experience God’s mercy – through Christ – with Christ – in Christ… People should want to take advantage
of such a great blessing – such a great gift. A gift is no good unless you
unwrap it and open it and use it. Pope Francis said: “The greatest sin
today is that people have lost the sense of sin” and therefore lost “the
meaning of the kingdom of God” and in its place the sense of “I can do
anything” has emerged.
As an example, using the biblical
episode in which King David falls in love with Bathsheba and sends her husband,
general Uriah, to fight in the front line and thus to certain death. It is in
fact a murder. King David is faced with a great
sin, but he does not see it as a sin. He doesn’t even think of asking for
forgiveness. Instead, all he thinks about is: ‘How can I resolve this?’ It can happen to all of us. I think
we can all relate to it. We are all sinners and we are all tempted. It’s part
of life’s normal struggle. But the problem – the most serious problem is not so
much temptation and sin against God’s commandments, but our behavior and
attitude towards sin. Pope Francis said that when the Kingdom of God is
forgotten, when the Kingdom of God diminishes, one of the signs is a loss of
the sense of sin”.
We live in a very secular and
atheistic world and the focus is on the power of man instead of God’s glory! We have become masters in justifying
ourselves. We always have alibi that explains our shortcomings. Everything can
be explained away. It is always the other person’s fault. And so – people do
not think in terms of sin anymore, they no longer feel sorry and repentant and
therefore, in their mind, there is no need to change. The truth is: Salvation will not
come from our cunning, our cleverness, or our intelligence. Salvation comes
from God’s grace and how we train every day of our Christian life cooperating
with God’s grace. In the midst of trials, violence and
hatred in the world, in the midst of struggles in life, God wants the world He
created and loved to know Him in a relationship of intimate trust.
The message of The Divine Mercy is
simple. It is that God loves us — all of us. And, he wants us to recognize that
His mercy is greater than our sins, so that we will call upon Him with trust,
receive His mercy, and let it flow through us to others. Thus, all will come to
share His joy. The Divine Mercy message is one we
can call to mind simply by remembering ABC:
A – Ask for His Mercy. God wants us
to approach Him in prayer constantly, repenting of our sins and asking Him to
pour His mercy out upon us and upon the whole world.
Jesus told St. Faustina: What
offends Him more than the sins people commit is people’s lack of trust in His
mercy. Jesus told St. Faustina to tell people His Message: “If you think you
are a greater sinner than the others, the more you have a greater claim, a
greater right to My Mercy.” Jesus said: “Let them come to me.
Everyone who comes to seek my mercy, I will not disappoint them.” “I will grant
them the remission of all their sins, even if they be as scarlet; if they be more
than the grains of sand on the seashore and the stars in the heavens.”
B – Be merciful. God wants us to
receive His mercy and let it flow through us to others. He wants us to extend
love and forgiveness to others just as He does to us. Our being forgiven of our
sins depends on our being merciful also towards others. As in the Lord’s
Prayer: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” The first step in being merciful
with others is to reflect on our own sinfulness and countless times we have
been forgiven instead of judging those who have sinned against us. “Have you
ever thought that you are also capable of doing those bad things people did,
maybe even worse? – if given the opportunity or if you were put in the same
situation.
Mother Teresa said: “If you judge
people, you have no time to love them.”
A – Ask for God’s mercy.
B – Be merciful
B – Be merciful
C – Completely trust in Jesus. God
wants us to know that the graces of His mercy are dependent upon our trust. The
more we trust in Jesus, the more we will receive.
“Jesus, I trust in You!” This prayer
clearly expresses the attitude with which we, too would like to abandon
ourselves trustfully in the hands of our only Savior – Jesus Christ.
When we go to confession – we tell
the priest – in essence – we tell Christ… – who is using the body of the priest
– we start with: “Bless me Father for I have sinned.” Doesn’t it sound odd or
strange? It seems there is some boldness or arrogance in those words: “Bless
me…” It seems more natural or more correct to say: “Punish me…” or “Spare me…
for I have sinned.” But bless me, for I have sinned? There is a profound truth there.
Blessing is not deserving. Blessing is not payment for good deeds. Blessing is
not earned. Quite the opposite, blessing is the gift one receives by pure grace
and mercy. Grace is getting what we do not deserve. Mercy is not getting what
we deserve. AND – When one receives a blessing –
it says more about the goodness of the one who blesses or the one who gives the
blessing than the goodness of the one being blessed. Think about how this applies to Thomas,
Doubting Thomas. He wasn’t around when
Jesus appeared to the disciples the first time.
They all told him of the Lord’s appearance, but he doubted. He could not wrap his head around the idea
that he would rise from the dead. Then just
a week later Jesus appeared to the group and Thomas was there. Jesus offers his wounds to Thomas as proof
and Thomas responds with the greatest of responses, which is “My Lord and my
God!” Jesus did not ridicule or condemn
him. He loved him and Thomas trusted. The Gospel goes on to say that many other
signs were given. Some were not written
down, but others were so that we might come to believe also and have life in
His name. Such a great gift!
We also need to realize that a
blessing is not just a gift. It is also a commissioning. In the Gospel, Jesus
said to his disciples, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send
you.”
The question to us is – How does our
faith in the Risen Lord, in the Resurrection, in the Divine Mercy of God, in
His unconditional love for us – affect our attitude? How does our faith affect
how we see ourselves, how we see and treat other people, and therefore how we
live our daily lives?
Remember the ABC’s.
A – Ask for God’s mercy. B – Be merciful. C – Completely trust in Jesus.
A – Ask for God’s mercy. B – Be merciful. C – Completely trust in Jesus.