FOR STARVING N O CATHOLICS, A DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY HOMILY

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"Today,"  announced Father at the end of Mass this morning, "from 3 till 4 there will be a Holy Hour for the Divine Mercy Sodality." So I went along. I did think I might be a 'Sodality' of just one, but then two more parishioners turned up.

And that was our parish celebration of Divine Mercy, instituted by Pope St John Paul II in 2000 for the universal Church. "This," said John Paul II, "is the happiest day of my life". 

It was on the Vigil of the Feast of Divine Mercy that he was to die, just five years later.

"So what's a Sodality?" You might well ask. 

Sodalities, like hats for the ladies, and Redemptorist parish missions and kneelers, gradually fizzled out after Vatican II. The Holy Name Society was a sodality: the men of the parish, complete with banner, had the front pews of the church to themselves one Sunday every month; their wives (broadly speaking, the Catholic Women's League, another sodality) were banished (in their hats) to pews further back - but they had their own Sunday too. There were Legions of Mary for their holy daughters, and the Children of Mary for the also-rans (I was one such).

These are the sorts of things we in our parish are being exhorted to remember right now, as we warm up for the 150th Jubilee of St Patrick's, Waipawa - a perfect little jewel of a church - in two weeks' time. The foyer of St Patrick's sister church, St Joseph's Waipukurau, is filling up with memorabilia; beautiful vestments, missals and lectionaries and an elaborate travelling case of sacred necessities for the priests' visits to the sick, for instance. 

So with Father's mind running on these things, as he indefatigably collects and displays them, perhaps it's not surprising that the word 'sodality' sprang to his lips, and people thought he was talking about a Holy Hour for a Divine Mercy group of some kind, rather than a universal Feast of the Church.

The memorabilia is on display at St Joseph's because the porch at St Patrick's is too small. Have you noticed that as Mass congregations have dwindled since Vatican II, the size of the 'gathering space' has commensurably increased? Even though Massgoers now feel free to chat in church as if it's a concert they've come to (in spite of the little Fatima seer Jacinta's insistence that Our Lady had told her that's "deeply offensive to Our Lord") and in spite of the fact that down the street there's a cafe on every corner, there's a deeply-felt need to talk after Mass as well, and eat and drink after Mass, or at least to feel that we can if we want to.

Back in the day when they built St Patrick's they came to Holy Mass in gigs and buggies, on horseback or on foot but it didn't seem to occur to them that they needed any food but the Eucharist. Catholics went to Holy Mass to worship their God and be instructed in the faith, to receive the Blessed Sacrament in Holy Communion and to prepare themselves for that awesome encounter with the Almighty by going to Confession. 

They came to Holy Mass because they knew it mattered more than anything else. They were rewarded with that kind of faith because of the effort they put into loving the Lord with all their hearts, and trying to please Him,especially by sorrow for their sins. Repentance. 

And this was even before the miracles of Fatima, and Our Lady's tears and pleading for the salvation of souls, and the glimpses She gave little Jacinta and Francisco Marto (now Saints Jacinta and Francisco) and their cousin Lucy, of hell, which so terrified those children they all devoted the rest of their lives to praying for souls. 

But now, even after the enlightenment of Fatima, Lourdes, Garabandal, Quito, Akita et al, Sunday after Sunday rolls by, and the Sacrament of Confession (Reconciliation, it's a nicer word isn't it, and less upsetting to Protestants) by which God fits us to receive Him hardly rates a mention. We seem to think all we have to do is turn up. And pay up, book our seats, to attend celebrations of the kind of parish life which is now history.

It's history because now in the world of Novus Ordo we're told there's nothing we can do to merit eternal life. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has become a weekly - and for many, far more seldom than weekly - shot in the arm of anaesthetic, soothing us with "memories" and absolutely unfounded assurances of eternal life and joy for all, as long as you turn up. 

So why on earth should we need a Divine Mercy Sunday? We won't need it in heaven and we're all going there, aren't we? Who needs mercy? The man the world calls Pope Francis bangs on about mercy, but his brand of mercy is for the divorced and 'remarried' and for sodomites, at the expense of babies slaughtered without mercy in their mothers' wombs', and so it's mercy at the expense of justice which is not mercy, but cruelty. 

Cruelty, because souls must be falling into hell now at a far greater rate than snowflakes, as witnessed by those three little children when shown them by their Blessed Mother Mary.

No wonder only three people turn up to pray for Divine Mercy. It's the Novus Ordo effect.

So for N O Catholics who are spiritually starved, here's a Divine Mercy Sunday homily  - https://catholicpreaching.com/wp/divine-mercy-sunday-b-conversations-with-consequences-podcast-april-10-2021/ - which is actually based on the Gospel (John 20:19-31): 

This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us. It’s a dialogue that happened on the night Jesus triumphantly rose from the dead. 

It’s a colloquy that reveals Jesus’ true priorities, why he entered the world, why he suffered, died and rose. He did it all to impart Divine Mercy. And as we prepare to celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday, the exclamation point of the Easter Octave, let us enter much more into that great mystery and gift.

• On Easter Sunday evening, Jesus walked through the closed doors of the Upper Room where the apostles were huddling together out of fear and said to them, “Shalom!,” “Peace be with you!” Jesus had come down from heaven to earth and given his life to give us peace, but it was a special kind of peace, one the world can’t give or take away. “Not as the world gives peace do I give it,” Jesus had said during the Last Supper. 
• The peace Jesus leaves and gives us is not the mere absence of war or conflict, but a definitive peace treaty with God through the forgiveness of sins. Without this type of peace, no other form can endure, because it is sin that destroys interior peace, the peace of the home, the peace of friendship, the peace of communities, the peace of nations. And so Jesus, wasting absolutely no time to set the next stage of his peace plan in motion, on the night he rose from the dead divinely empowered the apostles as his peacemakers to bring that gift, and the joy to which it leads, to the ends of the earth.
• It’s important for us to pay close attention to the various steps Jesus took so that we can understand better the divine foundation of the Sacrament of his Mercy and better explain it to those who have been poorly catechized about the Sacrament or who claim that they can confess their sins to God alone without the Sacrament. 
• Jesus began by saying to the apostles, “Just as the Father sent me, so I send you!” We know that the Father had sent Jesus as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world and Jesus was sending his apostles to continue that saving mission of mercy. Since we know that God alone can forgive sins against Him (see Mk 2:7), however, Jesus needed to impart to the apostles that divine power.

• So he breathed on them as he said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He gave them God the Holy Spirit so that they might forgive sins in God’s name, just as we hear every time the priest pronounces those beautiful words in the Sacrament of Penance, “God, the Father of Mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has … sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins.”

• And then Jesus did something that refers to the essential structure of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. He said, “Those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; those whose sins you retain, they are retained.” Since Jesus didn’t give the apostles the capacity to read hearts and souls, the only way they — and their successors and their priestly collaborators — would be able to know which sins to forgive or to retain would be if people told them. And that’s what happens in the Sacrament of Confession.
• It’s so fitting that Jesus established this Sacrament of his Mercy on Easter Sunday Evening because he wanted to link the joy of his resurrection to the joy of forgiveness. He had pointed to the connection between the two when he gave us the unforgettable Parable of the Prodigal Son.

• When the lost son returns to the Father to give his rehearsed speech of repentance, the Father erupts with happiness, that his son was dead and had been brought to life again.This Parable, which is about what happens in the Sacrament of Penance, points to the truth that every reconciliation is a resurrection! In every good confession, a son or daughter who was dead comes to life again, healed of sins both mortal and venial, and made fully alive once more in Christ Jesus!
• That’s why it’s so fitting that the Easter Octave concludes with Divine Mercy Sunday. In the great Jubilee of the Redemption, in the year 2000, St. John Paul II established this feast for the Sunday after Easter so that all of us could thank God for the gift of his merciful that led him to stop at nothing in order to save us from our sins and from the eternal death to which our sins lead.

• John Paul announced the establishment of this Feast during the canonization of St. Faustina Kowalska, the humble Polish sister to whom in a series of profound mystical experiences during the 1930s, Jesus had revealed the depths of his merciful love for the human race and his desire for all people to recognize our need for his mercy, trust in it, come to receive it, and share it with others.

St Faustina Kowalska

 

• We don’t have time to cover this devotion, approved by the Church, in depth, but it features five elements that Christ revealed to Saint Faustina so that we would be able to grow in our appreciation of, and transformation through, Divine Mercy: stopping each day at 3 pm, when Christ breathed his last on Calvary, to implore his mercy and bring him our prayers; venerating him in the image of Divine Mercy, by which he, risen from the dead, blesses us and asks us to trust in him; praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, offering God the Father Jesus in the Eucharist and begging him, on account of his Son’s passion, for mercy on the whole world; praying a novena, starting from Good Friday, in which we bring to Jesus various groups of people in need of his mercy; and finally Divine Mercy Sunday, when we celebrate the end of the Easter Octave and ponder in the Gospel Jesus’ establishment of the Sacrament of his Mercy on Easter evening.

• Each of these five nourishes our gratitude for Divine Mercy, deepens our recognition of the need for it, spurs us to come to receive it, and helps us to learn how to share it, passing on to others the richness of mercy we have first received.
• Please permit me a personal word about God’s mercy. This past Wednesday, the best confessor I ever had and knew, Fr. Joseph Henchey, a priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Stigmata, died at the age of 91 in Chicago. He was a tremendous priest, someone Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Bishop Robert Barron have both called one of their great spiritual heroes. He was a great theologian, having taught at the Angelicum in Rome for many years, and a much sought after retreat master for priests, religious, seminarians and lay people.

• But his real genius was as a spiritual director and a confessor. When he was at the North American College in Rome, he would open his door at 4 am for seminarians who wanted to see him for some quick words of encouragement or for confession. He became so popular that they ended up building a confessional in the chapel where he would hear. But I remember once going to him to confess.

• I don’t remember what sins I had, but I was very sorrowful for them and that sorrow came forth. Fr. Henchey’s reply I’ve never forgotten: “We give thanks to God for the graces God has given you to make such a good confession. This whole experience of God’s loving mercy for you will help make you a good and merciful confessor. Let God make these sins happy faults that help you help others rejoice in so great a Redeemer.”

• That experience of the joy of being forgiven, of God’s wanting to bring good even out of the evil we commit, I’ve never forgotten, and I have always tried to hear others’ confessions as Father Henchey heard mine. Please entrust him with me to our Merciful Redeemer, that the measure with which Father Henchey measured out God’s mercy will be measured back to him.
• This Divine Mercy Sunday is an opportunity for all of us to give God thanks for his mercy that endures forever and avail ourselves more fully of the means he has given us to implore it. God bless you!

 

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: Jn 20:19-31

On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,
for fear of the Jews,
Jesus came and stood in their midst
and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”

Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve,
was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”
But he said to them,
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
and put my finger into the nailmarks
and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

Now a week later his disciples were again inside
and Thomas was with them.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked,
and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples
that are not written in this book.

But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that through this belief you may have life in his name.