Jesus: “I have revealed to you the whole ocean of my mercy”.

7 ways that St. Faustina is influencing Pope Francis on mercy

The Holy Year of Mercy has at its core a figure straight out of the St. John Paul II playbook

By John L. Allen Jr.

Associate editor January 4, 2016

                               

ROME — Because Pope Benedict XVI was seen as a man of tradition, it was often easy to miss the innovative aspects of his papacy. In equal-and-opposite fashion, because Pope Francis is seen as a maverick, it’s tempting to overlook the various ways he stands in continuity with his predecessors.
Yet Francis’ signature initiative — probably the thing he would tell you he’s been building toward from the beginning, his Holy Year of Mercy — has at its core a figure straight out of the St. John Paul II playbook.
In fact, there’s a woman behind the pontiff’s jubilee: St. Faustina Kowalska, the Polish nun who launched the worldwide Divine Mercy devotion.

Faustina was an early 20th century mystic who belonged to an order called The Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. She reported a series of visions, captured in her 700-page diary, in which she said Jesus told her to spread devotion to his mercy under the motto, “Jesus, I trust in you.”

Growing up in Krakow, the young Karol Wojtyla was fascinated that this message of mercy arose in Poland between the two World Wars. Later, as John Paul II, the Polish pope would beatify and canonize Faustina, and he also established a feast of Divine Mercy for the first Sunday after Easter — another request that Faustina said came straight from Jesus.
It’s true that Francis has not talked much about Faustina out loud in connection with his Year of Mercy, leading some devotees to wonder if she’s in danger of becoming the “forgotten woman” of the jubilee.

Yet upon closer examination, it seems clear that her fingerprints are all over it. Consider the following seven indications of her influence on Francis and his thinking about mercy.
1. Papal bull
When Francis issued a formal papal bull decreeing his holy year, titled Misericordiae Vultus, he chose to do so on April 11, 2015 — the vigil of the feast of Divine Mercy, the observance directly associated with Faustina.

In the bull, Francis wrote, “I think especially of the great apostle of mercy, Saint Faustina Kowalska.”

“May she, who was called to enter the depths of divine mercy, intercede for us and obtain for us the grace of living and walking always according to the mercy of God and with an unwavering trust in his love,” he wrote.


2. Programmatic line

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Looking back, it seems clear that the programmatic line for Francis’ jubilee came during his first airborne news conference returning from a trip to Brazil in July 2013.
Although he was asked specifically about Communion for the divorced and remarried, he gave a broad reply about the importance of mercy. He said he believes the present era is a “kairos” of mercy, using an evocative Greek New Testament term that means a privileged moment in God’s plan of salvation.
In the next breath, Francis cited John Paul II and Faustina.
“But John Paul II had the first intuition of this,” he said, “when he began with Faustina Kowalska, the Divine Mercy …. He had intuited that this was a need in our time.”


3. “Ocean of Mercy”
In his homily for this year’s New Year’s Day Mass, marking his first public utterance of 2016, Francis argued that alongside a “torrent of misery” in the contemporary world, there is also an oft-overlooked “ocean of mercy.”
Though he didn’t explicitly cite Faustina, he easily could have. “Ocean of mercy” is one of her signature phrases, appearing in her diary a robust 16 times.
Here’s a classic for-instance, in this case from one of her visions of Jesus: “I have revealed to you the whole ocean of my mercy,” she reports Jesus saying. “I seek and desire souls like yours, but they are few.”
In another place, Faustina writes that “during Holy Mass, I was given knowledge of the heart of Jesus and of the nature of the fire of love with which he burns for us … he is an ocean of mercy.”


4. Poland trip
At least in terms of crowd size and the magnitude of the event, the highlight of Pope Francis’ jubilee year isn’t likely to come in Rome. Instead it’s likely to be in Krakow in late July, when Francis travels there to lead the Church’s World Youth Day.
Obviously, the legacy of John Paul II and Faustina will be front-and-center throughout that trip.
To make sure no one misses the point, Francis signed off on making John Paul II and Faustina the co-patrons of World Youth Day, referring to them both as “apostles of divine mercy.” The outing shapes as an homage by Francis to Faustina and the pope who canonized her, and one can expect him to reflect on the Divine Mercy devotion at length.


5. The “misericordina”
On Nov. 17, 2013, Francis used his typical Sunday Angelus address to do something more customary in TV infomercials: He hawked a prescription drug, even having people hand out samples in St. Peter’s Square.
Only the “drug,” in this case, wasn’t actually from a pharmacy, even though it was made up to look that way. Instead it was a small packet containing a rosary, the Divine Mercy image with the motto “Jesus, I trust in you,” and instructions for use. Italians call it the misericordina, a play on the word for mercy.
“It’s a spiritual medicine,” the pope told the crowd that day. “Don’t forget to take it, because it’s good for you, it’s good for your heart, your soul, and your whole life.”


6. Roman priests
In March 2014, Francis held a session with priests of Rome in the Vatican’s Paul VI audience hall, saying he wanted to devote it to the theme of mercy. He spoke at length about John Paul II and Faustina.
“In his homily for the canonization, which took place in 2000, John Paul II emphasized that the message of Jesus Christ to Sister Faustina is located, in time, between the two World Wars and is intimately tied to the history of the 20th century,” Francis said, going on to quote several passages from the homily.
In a key line, Francis said, “Today we forget everything far too quickly … but we cannot forget the great content, the great intuitions and gifts that have been left to the People of God. And Divine Mercy is one of these.”
In retrospect, it seems a clear hint that Francis understands his jubilee of mercy as an extension of that “intuition and gift.”


7. Francis in Cuba
When Pope Francis traveled to Cuba just before heading to the United States last September, he chose “messenger of mercy” as the motto for the outing, making it something of a preview of his jubilee.
He said Mass in Havana’s Revolution Square on Sept. 20, and commentators noted the irony that alongside the towering images of Che Guevara and José Martí that dominate the space, there was also a large image of Jesus that was put up for the day.
What was less commented upon, however, was the nature of that depiction: It was the Divine Mercy image, with the motto “Jesus, I trust in you” in Spanish.


An earthier brand of mercy
Granted, the approach Francis takes to the theme of mercy is not simply a photocopy of Faustina’s.
Hers was a highly spiritual version of mercy, focused on compassion for lost souls and people suffering under the weight of sin. Francis’ brand of mercy is earthier, insisting on finding expression in concrete acts of solidarity with the poor, with migrants and refugees, with prisoners, and other victims of what he calls a “throwaway culture.”
That’s why one could make a strong case that the other woman behind the pope’s jubilee is Mother Teresa, and it’s probably no accident that her canonization also seems likely to take place during the year, perhaps in early September.
Yet these are questions of emphasis, not contradiction. Francis certainly would acknowledge that one does not have to be poor to need mercy, and it’s not as if Faustina was blind to the social gospel; the order she joined in Poland, after all, was devoted to helping troubled women, including unwed mothers and prostitutes.
Make no mistake: Francis is a change agent in many respects. But when it comes to his jubilee of mercy, he’s not reinventing the wheel; he’s giving a new push to a wheel that started rolling with a Polish nun and was sped up by a Polish pope.
As a final note, Francis would no doubt also say that Faustina offers a classic illustration of his oft-stated argument that women in Catholicism don’t have to be ordained priests in order to exercise influence.
It’s entirely possible that by the end of the jubilee, it’ll be like a hockey game with three stars of the game acknowledged: Francis, who called it; Faustina, who inspired it, and Mother Teresa, who provided its model for mercy-in-action.
In other words, the female contribution may actually trump that of the male. If so, that’s something in which a pope who’s repeatedly vowed to seek greater roles for women in the Church may find food for thought.

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John L. Allen Jr., associate editor, specializes in coverage of the Vatican. More

Christmas and the passion for purity

By Karl Schmude   December 25, 2015   

The feast of Christmas readily evokes images of innocence and purity, centred on the Christ-child in the manger at Bethlehem. Karl Schmude ponders the deep roots of the desire for purity, and its ramifications in history as well as in the current environment of terrorism.

As terrorist attacks command the increasing attention of world leaders, there is an insistent need to probe the underlying causes of this new surge of violence.

Many of the oft-cited reasons for terrorism focus on issues such as political instability and economic deprivation, chiefly in the Middle East but now also in Europe. These are no doubt significant, but they do not go deep enough to explain the brand of destructive idealism now in evidence.

Political leaders tend to have shown a reluctance to link recent terrorist acts with Islam, believing that this would only serve to fan religious hatreds and marginalise the Muslim community; but in practice, it tends to reinforce the terrorist cause by ignoring the source and context of movements such as ISIS, which not only directly invoke the name of Islam but also conceive of their devotion in unmistakably religious terms.

In a recent commentary, the American priest-scholar, Fr James Schall SJ, focused on this fundamental misunderstanding:

“The ‘terrorists’ do not call themselves ‘terrorists’. Not accurately naming the problem enables one not to do too much about it. Indeed, no such thing as a ‘terrorist’ organisation exists except in the ideological minds of the West. ISIS is engaged in Islamic Jihad, nothing more, nothing less. What we insist on calling ‘terror’, they call war.” (MercatorNet: An ‘Act of War’, November 17, 2015)

Increasingly we realise how difficult it is for the contemporary West to take religion seriously as an intellectual and social force.

We can flirt with it as a phenomenon of exotic interest, like the strange practices of a fringe sect or the ornamental jewellery of performing pop stars, but recognising the significance of religious faith as a force of transcendental authority and the vitalising root of an entire way of life tends to exceed our comprehension.

Our cultural habit is to look at the material and social causes of movements and events, and to ignore the spiritual and intellectual impulses underlying them.

We struggle, for example, to give weight to the longings for deliverance and ultimate salvation that represent an essential part of human nature, and therefore of human culture, throughout the ages – and especially our own Judaeo-Christian tradition.

The most salient mark of a revolutionary movement like ISIS is actually a profound idealism, expressed in a passion for purity.

It is an intense yearning for a way of life untainted by corruption or weakness of any kind, and it is this which gives a spiritual power and psychological appeal to ISIS, and inspires so many young recruits.

The very term ‘suicide bomber’ is a misnomer, in that those who sacrifice themselves in this way do not see it as committing suicide (which is an abandonment and despair of life), but rather as engaging in act of martyrdom (dying for a higher cause that gives meaning to their lives and commands their unquestioning obedience).

As Fr Schall has further noted: “Young men persuaded by this faith only blow themselves up if they think they are accomplishing something noble and good. It is not an act of arbitrariness. Without a ‘cause’, they would not inflict it upon themselves. They would be shocked to think that they are killing ‘innocent people’. They reject any notion that they are killing just for the sake of killing. No, they are carrying out a ‘mission’ assigned by Allah to all of Islam, backed, in their minds, by Qur’anic passages and an historical tradition of conquest.”

Thus the description of a ‘cult of death’ does not sufficiently capture what is at the heart of our current dilemma. We face a ‘cult of purity’ prior to a ‘cult of death’; a spiritual passion that serves as a spur to political ambition and military aggression.

Robyn Creswell and Bernard Haykel, two American scholars of Middle Eastern culture, have recently emphasised the ‘obsession with purity’ shown by ISIS, and the ways in which the culture of jihadism finds its clearest expression, not in politics but in poetry.

It is poetry, they argue, that reveals the heart of the movement, making clear the mainspring of ISIS – and its fundamental fantasy.

For the jihadist, poetry is an inspiring way of giving witness to what they see as the truths of Islam – often in defiance of the seeming half-heartedness of parents and elders.

‘Surrounded by sceptics, the jihadi poet fashions himself as a knight of the word, which is to say, a martyr in the making.’ (New Yorker, June 8 & 15, 2015)

Until the West recognises the degree of idealism, however perverted and misguided, that animates ISIS, it will continue to misread the purpose and character of the movement – and, in a political and military sense, its plans and strategies.

The feast of Christmas has always given us the most beautiful images of innocence and purity, centred on the Christ-child and the Virgin Birth.

It also brings to mind the Massacre of the Innocents, celebrated as a Feast Day on 28 December, when we vividly recall how the powers of this world concentrated on the purity of the young – and strove to destroy the Child-Saviour.

Christmas is an opportunity for reflecting upon the spiritual and intellectual power and appeal of the idea of purity, and understanding its cultural expressions in the past as well as at the present time.

Christ’s statement in the Beatitudes, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God’, is a timely reminder of the central Christian insight that purity, in company with the other virtues, is based on an interior disposition rather than simply exterior behaviour.

The difference is implied in a statement of the ‘whisky priest’ in Graham Greene’s novel, The Power and the Glory, when he queried whether washing himself was a waste of time, as he realised that the culture he now inhabited “had invented the proverb that cleanliness was next to godliness – cleanliness, not purity”.

The passion for purity has great spiritual significance. It has inspired innumerable individuals and movements in history, such as monasticism and the tradition of priestly celibacy, as well as specific organisations like the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart to combat alcoholism.

It forms an indispensable part of the Church’s liturgical cycle – the season of Advent purifying and preparing us for Christ’s birth at Christmas, just as Lent serves a similar purpose for His resurrection at Easter.

Yet we know that the desire for purification has not always found expression in good causes. It has historically had catastrophic as well as creative effects.

The French Revolution offers an instructive example, notably in the person of the Jacobin leader, Robespierre.

His puritanical pursuit of virtue was integral to his vision of the Revolution, which he saw as an event, not merely (or even mainly) political, but moral and religious in character. It involved the creation of a new moral order that embraced terror as a way of cleansing humanity of its corruption and remaking it in perfection.

In some ways, the Reign of Terror in France in the late 18th century might appear as an historical prefigurement of the practice – as well as the philosophy – of ISIS in the early 21st century.

A more modern illustration of the passion for purity was Nazism.

The Holocaust was caused by Hitler’s hatred of the Jews which drove him to impose the purity of the Aryan race by expelling every form of ‘racial infection’. It was so unappeasable that even the inevitable drift of Germany towards defeat in the final months of the war did nothing to stop the transport of Jewish and other citizens to the Nazi death camps.

Much has recently been made of the need to rally in defence of Western values, such as social tolerance and religious liberty, while working to ‘deradicalise’ young people perverted by Islamist ideology.

Unfortunately, this implies that the West itself lacks any radical strength in its own tradition, any comparable source of serious inspiration (which it has historically drawn from its Judaeo-Christian roots), that would enable it to counter and finally overcome Islamist extremism – or secularist sluggishness.

We may wonder whether the challenge we face is not radicalism as such – and the need to ‘deradicalise’ – but rather the oppressive and violent form it has now assumed.

The Christian tradition, after all, is intrinsically ‘radical’ – in the original sense of penetrating to the roots of one’s God-given creation and cherishing them; not ignoring them as though they are dispensable, or pulling them up so as to pervert and destroy them.

It is ‘radical’ in beginning with the conversion of the human heart.

This has historically led to vital advances and foundational reforms in society – arising from core beliefs such as the dignity of all human beings, which resulted in the abolition of slavery, and the assumption of natural order, which lay behind the pursuit of scientific discovery. All were infuenced by the moral and intellectual heritage of Christianity.

Finally, it is likely to require a Christian radicalism, in the most creative sense as a spiritual movement exerting a personal and cultural impact, to defeat a destructive radicalism.

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Taken from: https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/christmas-and-the-passion-for-purity/

The Angel of Saint Paul’s Shipwreck

Acts 27

14 Not long after this, a hurricane-force wind called the northeaster blew down from the island. 15 When the ship was caught in it and could not head into the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along. 16 As we ran under the lee of a small island called Cauda, we were able with difficulty to get the ship’s boat under control. 17 After the crew had hoisted it aboard, they used supports to undergird the ship. Fearing they would run aground on the Syrtis, they lowered the sea anchor, thus letting themselves be driven along. 18 The next day, because we were violently battered by the storm, they began throwing the cargo overboard, 19 and on the third day they threw the ship’s gear overboard with their own hands. 20 When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and a violent storm continued to batter us, we finally abandoned all hope of being saved. 21 Since many of them had no desire to eat, Paul stood up among them and said, “Men, you should have listened to me and not put out to sea from Crete, thus avoiding this damage and loss. 22 And now I advise you to keep up your courage, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only the ship will be lost. 23 For last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve came to me 24 and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul! You must stand before Caesar, and God has graciously granted you the safety of all who are sailing with you.’ 25 Therefore keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will be just as I have been told. 26 But we must run aground on some island.