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— Misery and Mercy ‘The more miserable my soul, the more I feel the ocean of God’s mercy engulfing me and giving me greater strength and power.’ (255) St. Faustina was a weak woman with a mighty calling. She learned early on to entrust her afflictions to the God of Mercy. This is our key as well. Any being-healed one who seeks to restore others must acknowledge profound weakness in order to access the Mercy that is deeper still. We live first from the fount of Life: Christ Je

— Deep Wells of Mercy ‘He brought me into such close intimacy with Himself that my heart was espoused to His heart in a loving union; I could feel the faintest stir of His heart and He of mine. The fire of my created love was joined to the ardor of His eternal love.’ (1056) Why are the sexually broken so often the recipients of Jesus’ Mercy in the Gospels? To answer this, one must first consider the depth and power of human sexuality. God made each of us a deep well of desire

— Mercy Running (an army of Magdalenes) ‘I found my destiny at the moment when my soul lost itself in You, the only object of my love.’ (57) Why was Mary Magdalene the first disciple Jesus entrusted with His Resurrection? According to John’s Gospel, Peter and John raced to the empty tomb but could not comprehend Christ Resurrected. Jesus entrusted this sight to Mary Magdalene. After Peter and John had left the tomb, having sifted through evidence of the Resurrection without s

— Mercy Rising (on trembling legs…) ‘I know that the grain of wheat must be ground between millstones in order to become food. In the same way, I must be crushed in order to be useful to the Church and to souls.’ (641) Jesus is crushed to become for us the Meal of Mercy; death precedes life, first for Christ then for Christians. Only our death is not fatal. The Risen Lord invites us to die to our props and illusions; He grants us Mercy then resurrects what in us pleases Him.

— Mercy’s Sacrifice ‘How sad I am that souls do not recognize Love. They treat Me as a dead object.’ (1385) St. Paul implores us to not take Communion unworthily (1Cor. 11:27), and Church fathers echo him. Those who persist in serious sin should think twice… How do we square this with the God of sinners, He who desires Mercy and not legalistic sacrifice? It all depends on the attitude toward our sin, and towards His Sacrifice. The main document on Holy Communion from Vatican

— Mercy’s Meal ‘Jesus, may Your pure and healthy blood circulate in my ailing organism, and may Your pure and healthy body transform my weak body, and may a healthy, vigorous life throb within me…’ (1089) I have the privilege of taking communion most mornings at a church down the street from me. This is my daily bread: the Word spoken, the Word broken and offered generously to hungry ones like me. At the center of this church is a huge cross, on which Christ hangs, His finish

— The Gaze from the Cross, Part 2 (Please also read Part 1, Part 3 and Part 4) ‘Remember My Passion; if you don’t believe My Words, at least believe My wounds!’ (379) We meditate on the Cross, or Passion, of Jesus because His Cross is His most exquisite and profound manifestation of Mercy for us. St. Faustina says it best: ‘The greater the suffering, the purer the love.’ (53) He endured a slow, agonizing death to give us everything He had: His water for washing away our sin (

— The Gaze from the Cross, Part 1 ( Please also read Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4) ‘I want to live beneath Your divine gaze, for You alone are enough for me. When I am with You, Jesus, I fear nothing, for nothing can do me harm.’ (306) Christ Crucified is God’s greatest expression of Mercy for us. His death is the Source of our life. During these 40 days, we are asking God to show us His Mercy so that Mercy might alter our perspective on everything. We are thus wise to fix our g

— Everything I Have is Yours ‘At the moment of Your death on the cross, You opened an inexhaustible spring of Mercy for us, giving us Your dearest possession, the Blood and Water from Your heart. Such is the omnipotence of Your Mercy. From it, all grace flows to us.’ (1747) Grumbling over the obvious Mercy extended to the prodigal, his ‘good’ brother received this from a generous father: ‘My son, you have always been with me, and everything I have is yours.’ (Lk. 15:31) ‘Ever

— ‘The knowledge of my own misery allows me to know the immensity of Your mercy.’ (56) In order for Mercy to have its perfect way in us, we must recognize the depth of our sin. Mercy applies only to those who accept the terminal diagnosis of ‘miserable sinner.’ In that way, Mercy is not a sweet and accepting disposition that some people embody more than others; Mercy is the cure for a chronic disease—for the dehumanizing things that we perpetuate. Pope Benedict expresses it e

— ‘The great sins of the world are superficial wounds on My Heart, but the sins of a chosen soul pierce My Heart through and through…’ (1702) After Jesus met me with Mercy in my waterless pit of sexual immorality, I turned from sin. I knew I was wrong. Running away from Jesus and His truth did not change the truth. Mercy enabled me to stop running and face the truth—I needed Him because of my sin. Like the angels imploring Lot to get out of Sodom, Mercy paved the way for my r

— ‘In spite of everything, Jesus, I trust You in the face of every sentiment which sets itself against hope.’ (14) Imprisoned by hope: Zechariah expressed well the exile of the Israelites (Zech. 9: 11-12). Far from their land, subject to the cruelty of other masters and their gods, the holy nation hoped against hope for mercy. The prophet reminded them of the covenant of blood God had made with them—unchanging, Almighty Mercy. ‘Because of my blood covenant with you, I will fr

‘Bring your ear close to My heart, forget everything else, and meditate upon My wondrous mercy.’ (229) God’s greatest attribute is Mercy. It is the foundation of who He is; it is the way He wants to deal with us. In truth, Mercy is the only way we can know God. Through Mercy, God realigns His troubled, off-track and much loved child with Himself. The Creator unites Himself to the creature through Mercy. Throughout this fast, our central meditation will be upon Jesus, God’s on

‘He is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him.’ (Mk 16:6) Resurrection is reunion: Jesus, torn from His Father, now returns to Him. Evil demanded payment: crucifixion, the vast distance between God and God. Love crossed over that gap, conquering sin and death. Resurrection is the ultimate Father/Son reunion. Every Easter, God extends to us a fresh invitation to reenter that reunion. Jesus descended into hell to get us out of there. He rose again into perf

‘But I cry to you for help, O Lord; in the morning my prayer comes before you. Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? I have suffered your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me; Your terrors have destroyed me. All day long they surround me like a flood; They have completely engulfed me. You have taken my companions from me; the darkness is my closest friend.’ PS 88:13-18 Jesus’ rejection, abuse, and murder at the hands of men were not His

We might receive foot-washing and communion and yet still not grasp the cross. Perhaps our need for that cross is not yet clear. We may still believe in our own capacity to follow Him, the self-inspired power of allegiance to Jesus. Peter the ‘Rock,’ full of bluster and unrefined zeal, helps us here. He believed himself to be among the most radical followers of Jesus. Pride came before his fall on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion. Until the midnight hour, Peter continued to be s

Maundy Thursday makes one thing perfectly clear. It is God’s faithfulness that makes us faithful. On this night of foot-washing and communion, we behold the full extent of God’s love toward us. Mercy takes on new meaning as Jesus grants us tokens of the cross that awaits Him. He washes away our filth; He feeds us with bread from heaven. Foreseeing our departure from Him, He grants us powerful assistance for our return. In His faithful love, we see our unfaithfulness. Here we

In His mercy, Jesus redeems our suffering. Some of the sorrow we submit to Him is not of particularly noble origins—it may be, as we have seen, the bad fruit of our sin, or the normal wounds and losses we sustain this side of Heaven. He loves us to the extent that He will take every opportunity to invite us to surrender our sins and wounds. He grants us ‘cross-time’: an opportunity to receive and extend mercy. He makes us that much more fruitful in love. But suffering for wha

During Holy Week, we pause to consider Jesus’ cross and the smaller one He asks us to carry. The goal? To know Him more. Perhaps He will invite you in these days to ‘keep watch with Him’ in His suffering. We take another step toward Calvary by considering the ways we have been sinned against. He has not suffered only for our sins and foolishness; His cross-walk had as much to do with the gaps and gashes we bear due to others’ sins. Isaiah 53:4, 5 says it best: ‘Surely He bore

A tendency of most Christians is to want to enter into relationship with Christ through His cross but to want to avoid that same cross in our own lives. No-where is this more apparent than in how we deal with our personal sin. We will go to great lengths to deny our sin, and the suffering that we cause ourselves and others due to our sin. It offends us. We are in good company. I love how Peter, whom Jesus had just named as the Rock of the Church, refused the truth of the cros