The human race needs to realize that God loves everyone and no sin, however great it may be, can ever prevent anyone to come back to the Lord, because He is always waiting for the return of the sinner. “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost” (Lk.19,10). The prophet Joel experienced the tender love and mercy of God; he proclaimed: “God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment”(2.13). We can always rely on the Mercy of God, no matter how sinful we are. All that we have to do is to turn to Him asking for His Mercy. His Mercy is greater than all our sins. St. Paul says: “Where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more” (Rom. 5,20). So great is the mercy of our God that He is inviting us to embrace His Merciful love:  “Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord; though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword” (Is.1,18-19).

God Almighty has revealed His tender love and mercy to the human race through His various chosen ones all throughout the salvation history. In the 20^th century, He chose Sr.Faustina, a simple, uneducated Polish nun to remind the humankind about His Mercy. She was in her convent in Krakow, when she started getting visions of Jesus with the message of Mercy. In 1953, while she was praying for the Lord’s mercy on a certain city which the Lord was about to chastice, suddenly she saw the Holy Trinity and felt the power of Jesus’ grace within her. And she found herself pleading with God for mercy with the words she heard interiorly:

“Eternal Father, I offer You, the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world; for the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us. “ (Diary of St.Faustina, 475)

The next day, as she was entering the chapel, she again heard this interior voice, instructing her how to recite the prayer that our Lord called “the Chaplet”. This time, after “have mercy on us” were added the words “and on the whole world”. From then on, she recited this wording of the prayer almost constantly. (Diary, 476).

In subsequent revelations, the Lord asked her to encourage people to say the Chaplet (1541) and He revealed to her that those who pray this Chaplet with faith would receive extraordinary promises:

“Whoever will recite it, will receive great mercy at the hour of death”(687)

“When they say this Chaplet in the presence of the dying, I will stand between My Father and the dying individual, not as the just judge but as the Merciful Saviour” (1541)

“Priests will recommend it to sinners as their last hope of salvation. Even if there were a sinner most hardened, if he were to recite this Chaplet only once, he would receive grace from My Infinite Mercy” (687).

“Through this Chaplet you will obtain everything, if what you ask for is compatible with My will” (1731)

Thus from the Dairy of St. Faustina the special devotion of the Chaplet of Divine mercy began to spread throughout the world. Though this Chaplet may be prayed at any time, it is appropriate to pray it during the “Hour of Great Mercy”- three o’clock each afternoon, recalling the Passion of the Lord on the Cross at that time. It was on the Cross, the fountain of His Mercy was wide opened for all the souls when a centurion by name Longinus pierced His side by a lance, as the legend says.

Jesus revealed His wish to St.Faustina: “It is my desire that the Feast of Mercy be celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter. Mankind will not have peace until it turns to the fount of My Mercy.” The Lord also told her to recite it during the nine days before the Feast of Divine Mercy, as a Novena. “By this Novena of the Chaplet, I will grant every possible grace to the souls” (796).

The Feast of Divine Mercy has been made an official feast of the Church by Pope John Paul II at the Canonisation of St.Faustina on April 30^th in the Jubilee year 2000.  “It is important that we accept the whole message that comes to us from the word of God on this Second Sunday of Easter, which, from now on throughout the Church, will be called ‘Divine Mercy Sunday’ (First Sunday after Easter)

We need to go to the Sacrament of Confession and receive The Holy Communion on the Feast of Divine Mercy for the fulfilment of the promises. Jesus said, “Whoever approaches the Fountain of Life on this day will be granted complete forgiveness of sins and punishment” (699).”When you approach the confessional, know this, that I Myself am waiting there for you. I am only hidden by the Priest, but I Myself act in your soul. Here the misery of the soul meets  the God of Mercy. Tell souls that from this Fount of Mercy, souls draw graces solely with the vessel of trust. If their trust is great, there is no limit to My generosity” (1602).

Jesus has said: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” (Mt.5, 7); “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk. 6, 36). “Judgement will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgement” (Jas.2.13). As the Lord gave this Chaplet He also reminded us of our duty to be merciful to one another.

“I  demand from you, deeds of mercy which are to arise out of love for me. You are to show mercy to your neighbours always and everywhere. You must not shrink from this or try to excuse yourself from it” (742)

The loving God wanted the human race to know about His Mercy before He returns to judge the world. Since ‘He desires everyone to be saved’ (1 Tim.2,4), He deigned to give this devotion as “vessel of Mercy”, through which God’s Mercy can be poured upon the world. It is quite apt that the celebration of the Divine Mercy is kept on the first Sunday after Easter (Second Sunday of Easter). During the Holy Week the Church reflects on the Great Mercy of God the Father in sacrificing His Beloved Son for us. Father loves everyone as He loves Jesus (cfr. Jn 17,23). And therefore each one of us is so precious for the Father who willed that His Son Jesus atones for my sin by His Passion and death on the Cross;  Jesus, because of His love for me, was ready to die for me. Do I become conscious of my dignity and seek His Mercy for my sins?

Mary Pereira

Alleluia, the Lord is risen – He is risen indeed, Alleluia.

The Resurrection of Christ – Luca Giordano (Source : WGoA)

The Alleluia songs which were not sung in the Liturgies during the Lenten Season have now started echoing with the celebration of Easter, the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour.“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live” (Jn. 11,25).Our glory is in our Lord Jesus Christ: in His death on the Cross and in His resurrection. St. Paul has said: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” (1 Cor.15,17)  Through His Resurrection, Jesus triumphed over sin, death and evil; and when we accept Jesus, believe in Him and live His Word, this victory becomes ours also.

The Church celebrates the Resurrection of Christ in the Easter Vigil and in the Easter Sunday Liturgy. On the Holy Saturday the Church waits at the Lord’s tomb, meditating on his suffering and death. The altar is left bare, and the sacrifice of the Mass is not celebrated. Only after the solemn vigil during the night, the celebration of the Holy Eucharist as part of the Easter is held.

The Easter vigil is a vigil of the Lord. “That was for the Lord, a night of vigil, to bring the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, that same night is a vigil to be kept for the Lord by all the Israelites throughout their generations” (Ex.12, 42).

There are three parts in the Liturgy of the Easter Vigil.

1. The Service of Light
2. Liturgy of the Word
3. Liturgy of Baptism
4. Liturgy of the Eucharist.

To start with all the lights in the church are put out and the Easter Vigil begins with the blessing of the new fire by the Celebrant Priest. “The Priest cuts across in the wax with a stylus. Then he traces the Greek letter alpha (beginning) above the cross, the letter omega (end) below, and the numerals of the current year between the arms of the cross. Meanwhile he says:

1. Christ yesterday and today (as he traces the vertical arm of the cross)
2. The beginning and the end (the horizontal arm)
3. Alpha (above the cross)
4. Omega (below the cross)
5. All times belong to Him (the first numeral in the upper left corner)       2
6. And all the ages (the second numeral in the upper right corner)                0
7. To Him be glory and power(the third numeral in the lower left corner) 1
8. Through every age for ever (the last numeral in the lower right corner)2

Amen

Then the Priest inserts five grains of incense in the candle.  He does this in the form of a cross, saying,

• By His holy
• And glorious wounds
• May Christ our Lord
• Guard us
• And keep us. Amen.

Thereafter the Priest lights the Easter Candle from the new fire, saying:

May the light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds”.

As the Celebrant enters the church with the Easter Candle, he lifts it high and sings: “Christ our light” and the faithful respond in singing: “Thanks be to God”. (Source : ‘The Roman Missal’ 1986, NBCLC, Bangalore).

Following the Priest the faithful enter the church in procession, with the candles in their hands lit from the Easter candle. Then the lights in the church are put on. What a beautiful truth to realise once again that we have no light apart from the Light of Jesus. Our lives have to be illumined by the Light of the Lord, which alone dispels the darkness of sin, confusion, unbelief, restlessness and the like from us and from others. Jesus is the Light that brightens every human heart.

Jesus Christ has said: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (Jn 8,12). Entering the church with the lighted candles is a sign of our receiving the light of the Lord into our hearts and also a pledge to the Lord to walk in His light. During the forty days of Lent we have journeyed with the Lord, promising to the Lord to deny what is abhorrent to the Lord and to choose what is pleasing to Him; with a true and contrite Confession, we were given the grace of forgiveness of sins. In the first two days of Holy Triduum, Holy Thursday night and Good Friday, we have realised how painful it was for the Lord, bearing the sin of the human race. The gracious Lord has forgiven our past. Now it is time to start ‘anew’. Let us “be dressed for action and have our lamps lit” (Lk. 12, 35). We have “united ourselves with Him in His death in order to unite ourselves with His resurrection” (cfr. Rom. 6,5). With this attitude, with grateful heart and joy, now we enter into His Easter glory. We have mourned for Christ’s sufferings; now we celebrate the joy of His Resurrection.

Receiving the light from the Lord, we, in turn, should become the light of the world (Mt.5,14). Let the light and glory of the Lord shine through us dispelling all the darkness of sin from within. Unless this change takes place in us – a shift from “our former way of life, our old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and are renewed in the spirit of our minds and cloth ourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph.4,22-24), – we are missing the spirit of the celebration of the Easter Triduum.

In the Easter vigil, ‘the mother of all the vigils’, the relevant readings from the Scripture are selected in order to help us meditate on all the wonderful things God has done for his people from the beginning. As the Lord says through the Psalmist: “Incline your ears to the words of my mouth; I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our ancestors have told us; we will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might and the wonders that he has done” (cfr.Ps.78, 1-4). Listening to the readings we come to realise how patiently the Lord was guiding, providing and protecting the Israelites in their times of difficulties.

Another significant Rite of the Easter Vigil is the blessing of the water which is used later in varied occasions  – in Sacrament of Baptism, confirmation .. .for blessing the house and possessions, for making the sign of the cross as we enter and leave the church etc.  Lowering the Easter Candle into the water, the Priest prays: “We ask you, Father with your Son to send the Holy Spirit upon the waters of this font. May all who are buried with Christ in the death of baptism rise also with Him to newness of life”. Followed by this, there is a Renewal of Baptismal Promises, before which we invoke the intercession of all the saints in heaven by singing the Litany to the Saints – which is an overwhelming experience, I should say! The Saints, while on earth defeated the tactics of the evil by their faithfulness to the Lord and to his Word (cfr. Rev.12,11); and they are ever ready to help us in our spiritual battle. So it is quite meaningful that we seek their intercession before the renewal of our Baptismal Promises. In our baptism as an infant (some might have adult Baptism) the promises, our parents and God parents said on our behalf, are promised now with full conviction, making it our own promise. We reject Satan and his works, and promise to serve God faithfully in His holy Catholic Church. St. Paul asks: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him by Baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” (Rom.6, 3- 4)

“The Spirit of Christ who raised Jesus from the dead” (Rom.8,11) is given to us in Baptism, and it is by the power of this Holy Spirit that we can renew our baptism everyday in our lives.- dying with Christ and rising with Him for a new life. And thus let the joyful celebration of Easter be transferred into our lives so that the glory of the Lord will become visible in our lives.

‘Alleluia, Christ has risen from the dead,
He has risen to die no more.
He lives, Christ Jesus lives today’.
And because He lives, I can live today
And face every tomorrow with hope and courage. Alleluia!

Fr. JMK, Mary Pereira

“Let us test him with insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is” (Wis. 2,19)

Flaggelation of Christ – Caravaggio

When we do good to others we usually get a sort of satisfaction. Yes, we are all created to do good .. “We are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life”(Eph.2.10). But for whom do we usually do good? Is it not the ones who love us, who acknowledge what we do to them and are grateful to us?  Are we ready to continue to do good to those who turn to be ungrateful to us and insult us?

It is easy for us to do good to those who love us, appreciate us, who have a heart of gratitude for what we do to them. We are ready to go out of our way and do sacrifices for them. We are confident that we get the approval for it from the Lord. But through the book of Wisdom, the Lord shows a test of our patience and gentleness. When we are able to withstand the insult and torture of those for whom we do good,  and still continue to do good for them, unmindful of what they say or do to us, then we become successful in the test. On the other hand, if we become angry, sorrowful, disappointed at the face of ingratitude and insult from others, then we are failing in the test. It is not what we do, but it is our approach to people and how we behave towards them who return evil (in words and actions) for the good which we have done, that is taken as  criteria for our patience and gentleness.

Jesus is the perfect model for us . About 700 hundred years prior to Jesus’ coming , Prophet Isaiah  said: “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity….He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed” (53. 3-5).This was a prophecy about Jesus’ suffering on the first Good Friday. Do our thoughts raise to this ‘suffering servant of God’= when we face insults, ridicule, rejection from the people for whom we have done good? “By his wounds we are healed”. So by bearing the pains of insult, ingratitude and ridicule from others, we too can become the instrument of their healing and transformation.

Normally we all want to avoid suffering situations in life; we hate people who cause sufferings for us. On the contrary, Jesus was loving, doing good and praying for all who caused him the most shameful and painful sufferings. His attitude towards them was still that of love and concern. He understood the ‘helplessness and blindness of people who were returning evil for good;  and he foresaw the consequence of their malice – destruction of Jerusalem and also their eternal damnation. So he had compassion for them. And this noble, unparalleled attitude turned to be a cause of healing for others.

Doing good things, of course, is to be appreciated and promoted. St. James tells: “Anyone who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin” (Jas. 4.17). So we need, not only to repent for our sins of commissions (breaking the Commandments and Precepts of the Church etc), but also the sins of omissions. The rich man in the story of Lazarus and the priest and the Levite in the story of Good Samaritan were condemned because they did not do the good they could have done.

We cannot stop there, for in the ladder of spiritual growth we need to climb higher and higher. So avoiding sins of commissions and omissions is not the final….We need to soar high. Jesus has said: “Be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt.5.48). We need to note that Jesus is telling this in the context of His teaching on forgiving love. We think that we have to aim at perfection in our studies, job, life-style etc. But Jesus meant that we need to be perfect in love. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus exhorted the disciples to love the enemies (Mt.5.43-47); and as a conclusion to this teaching Jesus made this command: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt.5.48).

We become perfect in love, when we ‘walk the way Jesus walked’ (cfr 1.Jn.2.6). “The sufferings that we endure can mean that ‘in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his Body, that is the Church’ (CCC 1508; Col.1.24).  Since we are the members of the Body of Christ, the very attitude of Jesus should be ours. Thus we can continue to be the living members of the Body of Christ. When we do really love those who persecute us, we overcome our selfishness and love the other selflessly for his/ her own good. This attitude is counted for our perfection. Further, the same Holy Spirit who was working in Jesus in his earthly days to make him a perfect man is given to us also. This Holy Spirit wants us to respond to Him as Jesus did. So that we become one in Christ or Christ-like. It is expected of every Christ-follower to endure the sufferings inflicted by ‘malicious enemy’. There are ample opportunities for each one of us in our families, in our place of work to show this attitude of Christ in our lives.  In the Holy Eucharist, we receive Jesus’ Body- broken and Blood- shed for the forgiveness of our sins. Christ in the Eucharist wants to affect His attitude in our lives. Can a Christ follower be angry, cruel or impatient at the face of persecution and unjust treatment?

Jesus was gentle in all the situations of persecution. “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before his shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. …It was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.” (Is. 53.7,10). As Jesus gave his life as an offering for the sin of the humankind, let us also offer our lives as a ransom for the sin of others, by accepting the evil the way Jesus did –with gentle and humble of heart. The Spirit of Christ produced these fruits in Jesus (as man); and when we cooperate with the working of the Holy Spirit, He produces these fruits in us also.

“When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly” (1 Pet 2.23)

Fr. JMK, Mary Pereira