The Effect of Divine Mercy

“For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”  These words of the Divine Mercy Chaplet are well known to Catholics today because of the popularity of the Divine Mercy message.   Jesus Himself gave this message to St. Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun in the 1930s just before the Second World War.  It was a time when it seemed that there was no mercy to be found for anyone.  God, whose timing is always perfect, reminded the world of His mercy just when it needed mercy most.

In my own life, the Divine Mercy message fascinated and attracted me from the first moment I heard of it.  God’s timing was also impeccable for me when He showed me the need for Divine Mercy. He emphasized it through a conversation I had with a young man studying for the priesthood over thirty years ago.  God made his story seem as if it could have jumped right off the pages of the Gospel.

I was visiting him one day in the seminary he attended and I noticed on his desk a book dark red in color.  On its cover was a picture of a nun and the title S aint Maria Faustina Kowalska Diary: Divine Mercy in my Soul.  I remarked to my friend that I had wanted to read it but had not gotten to it.  He looked at me very seriously and said, “That book saved my life.”

He explained to me that some years earlier his beloved brother contracted leukemia and died shortly after.  My friend was devastated by the loss of his brother and fell into despair.  He said that he simply could not understand how such a terrible thing could happen to a young and vibrant person loved by everyone.  He became furious with God and turned his back on Him.  He refused to go to Mass and sunk more and more deeply into depression and darkness. 

One day a woman who was a friend of his family came to visit.  She was a very fervent person and had heard how much he was suffering.  She handed him the very book that lay on his desk the day I visited him.  Then came her plea to him, “Promise me that you will read this.”  He wanted no part of religion, God, much less a nun’s diary.  The lady persisted and prevailed upon him, “Read it. You need to!”  He relented and said that he would.   Secretly he doubted that he would ever crack the cover.  

The Diary sat on his bedside table for a week and then, one night when he was deep into his anger and despair, he picked it up out of desperation and began to read it.  At first he was numb to the words.  First slowly, but then more and more intensely, a sense of peace began to come over him like a warm embrace. He dozed off and when he awoke, the book had fallen open to a page on which was written the words that Jesus spoke to St. Faustina, “My gaze from this image is like My gaze from the cross.”  “What gaze?” he asked himself.  He paged through the diary to find the holy card of the image of the Merciful Jesus that the woman had placed in it.  When he looked at the image, Jesus eyes met his. The Lord’s gaze seemed to draw him into an encounter.  He told me, “I knew that I was looking at Jesus who understood my pain because He had already carried my pain and suffering in His own heart.” 

That began his journey back from isolation and dark despair into the light of Jesus’ gaze that says, “I love you even to the point of dying on the cross for you. I understand your pain. I am with you.  My mercy is for you.”  This began a return to Mass and the sacraments for this sorrowful young man.

The effect of Divine Mercy is powerful in our lives.  It is about looking into the eyes of Jesus and seeing that we are loved and forgiven.  The image of the Divine Mercy shows us that. Yes, Jesus’ gaze from this image manifests His love and mercy for each one of us and the whole world.  He tells us that His mercy is so great that it can touch the hearts of all people.  Yet, the mercy of Jesus is so tender and understanding that it is also fitted for each one of us and the particular suffering and cross that each of us faces. 

My friend came to know the special love and mercy that Jesus held for him in a particular way in his life.  He experienced great pain and loss.  In his anger and frustration, he rejected the love and mercy that Jesus wanted to pour out upon him.  In His patience and loving persistence, Jesus used that woman who brought the message of Divine Mercy and that image of Jesus into a young man’s life.  Then as he spoke to me of His encounter with the Merciful Jesus and gazed into His eyes, he showed me how Jesus always looks upon us with love and heals us in His mercy. 

The Merciful Jesus desires to and has the power to heal the whole world by His sorrowful Passion.  We read in 1 Peter 2:24, “By his wounds you have been healed.” It is true.  He also so desires to heal each one’s heart by His gaze of infinite love – by His gaze from the Cross where has borne all suffering and pain and turned it into victory and endless peace and joy. 

The Divine Mercy message entrusted to St. Faustina Kowalska possesses an enduring beauty in its Chaplet, its prayer at the 3:00 pm Hour of Mercy, in its novena and in the great Feast of Divine Mercy on the Sunday after Easter.  All of these cherished prayers that come from the Heart of Jesus bring us to that encounter with Him in His gaze from His image of mercy – His gaze from the Cross.  On this Divine Mercy Sunday, let us place ourselves before that image of the merciful Jesus, whether it be a large image in church, a smaller image we have on our wall at home, a holy card, or a picture on–line.  There He will speak to us.  There we will see His gaze directed at us.   We will look back in love at Him.  Let us hear His words of mercy and love and healing for each of us in our own particular life circumstances.  If we listen attentively to Him as our gaze meets His, He will tells us how He wants to heal us.   After He has healed us by His mercy, let us go forth and bring that healing to others.

Jesus, I trust in You!

Most Reverend William J. Waltersheid
Auxiliary Bishop of Pittsburgh