I actually expected about 20 or 30 people at the Mass here today, so a nice little surprise from Our Lady.
With the confessions at the end of Mass, we'll have the procession down at the bottom of the hill, and so for those who still need to go to confession, I'll hear confessions down next to the Divine Mercy Chapel at the bottom of the hill.
There's a little confessional there, so we'll make sure everyone who needs to or wants to go to confession will have the opportunity to do that today.
Today is the second Sunday of Easter.
We celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday today, a feast given to the Church by God through essentially two Polish saints, through St. Faustina Kowalska, the Apostle of Divine Mercy who died at the age of 33.
She died one day after the feast of St. Francis in 1938, and then of course Pope St. John Paul II, who made this feast universal, so for the whole Church on the day of St. Faustina's canonization, April 30, 2000, and who himself, famously we should say, died on the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday in 2005.
Jesus had told St. Faustina that he wanted the first Sunday after Easter to be the feast of his mercy.
We read in St. Faustina's diaries these words of our Lord.
Jesus said,I desire that the feast of mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls and especially for poor sinners.
On that day the very depths of my tender mercy are open.
I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the font of my mercy.
The soul that will go to confession and receive holy communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment.
On that day all the Divine floodgates through which graces flow are opened.
That's paragraph 699 in St. Faustina's diary.
And another time Jesus told her this, he said, the feast of my mercy has issued forth from my very depths for the consolation of the world.
Paragraph 1517, the term which best expresses our English concept of mercy in Latin is the term misericordia.
It's a compound word, it puts together two words, it's the word miser, which means wretched or pitiful, plus the word cordia, which refers to the heart.
So misericordia is a certain fusion of mercy with the heart.
It means to look on someone else's misery with compassion.
It can be moved to pity by the difficulties or hardships that other people face.
In terms of divine mercy, we can confidently say that there is no mercy within the Trinity itself.
That may sound very scandalous when we say that, right?
Let's explain.
There's no mercy among the three divine persons because there's no misery there, essentially.
God the Father has no need to extend mercy to God the Son.
God the Son has no need to extend mercy to the Holy Spirit and vice versa because each person in the Trinity is infinitely perfect.
Mercy, divine mercy, is condescending.
When we use the term condescending, we usually mean it in a negative sense, right?
You say, Alan is condescending to the other workers.
What does that mean?
It means that Alan tends to look on them, maybe with contempt, and treat them with disrespect.
But the word condescending originally meant to descend or climb down from a higher place in order to be with someone who's in a lower place.
Word condescending in the time of the early Renaissance meant to make gracious allowance for human frailty, and it referred to either God regarding humanity or to the actions of the king regarding his subjects, too.
So divine mercy is condescending in the sense that God first and foremost looks down from heaven upon our human frailty, upon our sins, our poor decisions.
He looks on those not with a critical or judgemental spirit, but rather with pity, with compassion, with love.
And God not only looks down, he also very famously comes down to meet us, right?
God truly is condescending in that sense.
St. Paul tells us this in his letter to the Philippians when he says, have this attitude in yourselves, which was in also Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped or held onto, but rather he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death, on a cross, says the Apostle, Philippians 2 verses 5 through 8.
And this is also very much along the lines of what Pope Francis talks about when he speaks to pastors and priests, encouraging them to not get their hands dirty in their pastoral work and to make sure that as shepherds, he says they have the odor of the sheep.
What does he mean?
He means really helping people where they are at in your ministry work, not just expecting them to always come to us or expecting them to always come to us neat and all cleaned up.
We don't always get the neat and cleaned up people.
There are a lot of them here at the farm, but not always that case, right?
God Himself didn't wait for us to become perfect or do everything perfectly before He decided to come and help us.
Again, St. Paul says this to the Romans, he says, for while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly, and God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, Romans 5 verses 6 and 8.
Today's feast also ties very closely into the gospel, which was proclaimed just a few minutes ago.
We heard the risen Christ say to His disciples in John 20, He said, 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.
Those whose sins you retain are retained, verses 20 through 23.
So what does Jesus do?
He sends His disciples out just as He was sent out, He was missioned by the Father, and their ministry will be one of mercy and reconciliation, reconciling sinners to God.
Same thing that Jesus Himself does.
How will they do that?
In particular, through the sacraments.
In this case specifically, in the case of the sacrament of confession or reconciliation, the power to forgive and to retain sins in the name of Jesus is elsewhere described in the gospel as the authority to bind and loose.
We see that in Matthew 16 verse 19, Matthew 18 as well.
Council of Trent in the 16th century connected the episode in the gospel today directly with the institution of the sacrament of confession.
According to the testimony of tradition, the direction of all matters connected with penance was in the primitive church, in the primitive Christian church, always in the hands of the bishops and the priests.
You don't just go to God directly and get your sins forgiven that way.
St. Cyprian, who died in 256, he says that the forgiveness of sins and the giving of the peace of the church took place through the priests, he says.
St. Basil, doctor of the church, decrees that the sins must be confessed to those to whom the ministration of the mysteries of God are entrusted, meaning the bishops and the priests.
St. Ambrose said this right is given to the priests only.
St. Leo I remarks that the forgiveness of sins in the sacrament of penance can only be achieved by the prayers of the priests, he says.
So the abandonment of the teaching and practice of sacramental reconciliation through the priests in the church is actually a rejection of the teachings of scripture and the teachings of the early church and the teachings of the church nowadays too.
So you have to think that you can only have to go to God to bring your sins to him.
God doesn't say that.
God says go to my priests, I have given them the power to forgive sins.
This is actually a great grace for us when you think about it because if we humbly confess our sins and intend to amend our lives and we receive absolution from the priests, then we know that we're forgiven by God.
It's not even a question.
No question about it.
There's no mystery to it.
Did God really forgive me for this or for that?
Well there's no guesswork.
If I confess my sins to the priests, I receive the grace of the sacrament, there's no guesswork about it.
Plus remember that Jesus says regarding his church, he says, he who hears you hears me, he says in Luke 10-16.
He who rejects you rejects me.
He who rejects me rejects him who sent me, says Jesus.
Translation, we can't reject the teaching and the practice of the church without rejecting Christ.
So we have to be careful about that.
We'll close with one last thought for the day.
Two times in St. Matthew's gospel we hear Jesus say, go and learn what this means.
I desire mercy, not sacrifice, for I came not to call the righteous but sinners.
That's Matthew 9-13.
He repeats it a couple chapters later.
Matthew 12-7 he says, if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless.
Question, when Jesus says that he wants mercy, not sacrifice, does that mean that he's telling us we don't have to make any sacrifices?
Not really.
It's not essentially what he means.
What does he mean when he says, I don't want sacrifice?
Simply he's saying that there's no sacrifice that I can make or that you can make that can make us right with God.
There's no sacrifice that we can do that will obtain God's pardon and mercy.
Jesus himself was sent by God to be the sacrifice, to be the sacrifice that obtains mercy for us.
In the crucifixion of Christ, God's justice is placated, his sacrificial love is expressed, and also his mercy is poured out for us.
So Jesus provides the sacrifice, but he still says, I desire mercy.
What kind of mercy is he looking for?
Let's quote St. Faustina on this one, the prayer that she gives to the merciful heart of God.
This kind of will give us a picture of the mercy that Jesus wants.
In her diary, we read this, St. Faustina says, oh Lord, I want to be completely transformed into your mercy and to be your living reflection.
May the greatest of all divine mercies, divine attributes, that of your unfathomable mercy pass through my heart and soul to my neighbor.
And then she gives a list.
She says, help me, oh Lord, that my eyes may be merciful, so that I may never suspect or judge from appearances, but look for what is beautiful in my neighbor's souls and come to their rescue.
Help me, oh Lord, that my ears may be merciful, that I may give heed to my neighbor's needs and not be indifferent to their pains and their moanings.
Help me, oh Lord, that my tongue may be merciful, so that I should never speak negatively of my neighbor, but have a word of comfort and forgiveness for all.
Help me, oh Lord, that my hands may be merciful and filled with good deeds, so that I may do only good to my neighbors and take upon myself the most difficult and toilsome tasks.
Help me, oh Lord, that my feet may be merciful, so that I may hurry to assist my neighbor overcoming my own fatigue and weariness.
Help me, oh Lord, that my heart may be merciful, so that I myself may feel all the sufferings of my neighbor.
May your mercy, oh Lord, rest upon me.
And then she concludes saying this.
So Jesus, I want to live in the present moment, to live as if this were the last day of my life.
I want to use every moment scrupulously for the greater glory of God, to use every circumstance for the benefit of my soul.
I want to look upon everything from the point of view that nothing happens without the will of God.
God of unfathomable mercy, embrace the whole world and pour out yourself upon us through the merciful heart of Jesus.
That's the kind of mercy that the Lord works, looks for in all of us.
Let's ask our lady who is the mother of mercy to have a heart of mercy as she herself has and as her son has towards each and every one of us.
May the grace be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.