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A Message Of Mercy
Christ is merciful – indeed, He is mercy itself. He sees the needs not only of each one of us as individual human beings, but also as a human family. He sees the faults and failings we have as people and as a society, the selfishness and sinfulness which is present amongst all of us, and the consequences of all the wrong decisions we make because of our human fallibility. And yet despite all this, He loves us – and His love is infinite. Because that love is given to us “whilst we were still sinners”, as St Paul describes it eloquently, we call it ‘mercy’ – mercy is a…
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The Words of Faustina
I remember once reading a biography of a particular holy person. Now, this person had already written a great deal about their own spiritual experiences and their spiritual thoughts on a number of matters. Commenting on this, in the foreword the biographer had noted – rather astutely, I thought – that to really get to know a Saint or holy person it is not sufficient to listen to what they say about themselves; it is crucial that we listen to what others say of them, too. For this reason, I try always to read the biographies of those Saints who are of interest to me, as much as I read…
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Days Of Mercy
One of the spiritual highlights of my year is the Divine Mercy novena. This begins on Good Friday and concludes on the day before the Feast of Divine Mercy, which is tomorrow, the octave day of Easter. Whilst novenas are a popular Catholic devotion and are practised by many (or, at least, were – it is perhaps not so much the case now), this one is different in one crucial respect – the text and prayers of this Novena were dictated directly by Jesus, in the course of the ‘Divine Mercy’ apparitions to Saint Faustina Kowalska in the autumn of 1937. [Note: These apparitions fall under the category of ‘private revelation’; they…
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Latter-Day Simeons
There’s a man who comes to the Church on Saturday afternoons, at least an hour before the evening Mass begins. After lighting a little candle, he then goes and sits toward the back, gazes at the Tabernacle and prays until Mass begins. There is another man who comes in the morning and he does much the same as the first man. And there are the women, too. The ones I am thinking of come along to the Eucharistic Holy Hour on Sunday afternoons and spend that hour simply being in the presence of the Lord, praying silently and placing everything before Him. These people – and countless others like them…
