Divine Mercy Sunday

by Fr. John Granato  |  04/07/2024  |  Words from Fr. John

My Dear Friends,

Today is the eighth day of the octave of Easter. For eight days we have been celebrating Easter day liturgically. Pope St. John Paul the Great also named this day Divine Mercy Sunday, after the devotion of St. Faustina, who received from our Lord words to share concerning his over abiding mercy to all sinners. The Diary of St. Faustina is a wellspring of comforting words from our Lord.

This powerful message of mercy is exemplified by the image of Divine Mercy, which we have hanging in both of our churches at Our Lady of Hope Parish. This image is presented in the sanctuary this weekend as you look towards the altar. It shows rays of white and red coming from the Heart of Our Lord, symbolizing the water and blood that comes from his side while hanging on the Cross, and further symbolizing the great sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist.

Baptism washes away our sins and is a powerful experience when baptism happens later in life when a sinner converts to the Christian faith. (But we should still be baptizing our children as soon as possible after birth so they may receive grace now and begin their journey as a follower of Christ). The Holy Eucharist nourishes our spiritual life and gives us strength to avoid sin. Both of these sacraments are tied closely to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We need to reconcile ourselves with our neighbor and with God by cleansing our soul of sin so that we may worthily receive the Holy Eucharist. Baptism wipes away sin, but because of our fallen nature, we are still capable of sinning, even gravely, so that this sacrament of reconciliation (or confession) renews us. Our soul becomes as white as snow once again.

Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and priest before he left the Catholic Church, understood baptism to be a sacrament of grace where grace covered our soul, comparing it to snow covering a pile of dung. The Catholic Church has always understood the grace of the sacrament as being a change in our soul that washes clean our Original Sin as well as our actual sins and makes us pure. Our human nature, once we are baptized into Christ, no longer is dung but rather our soul becomes as pure and dazzling as the young man at the tomb after the Resurrection. Let us continue to ask our Lord for his Divine Mercy and embrace the mercy and forgiveness offered by our Loving Father through his Son ’s redemptive act on the Cross. God Bless.