(Given at the 8:30 am Sunday Mass at OLP)
Today is all about the mercy of God. Divine Mercy. This devotion stems from the visions of St. Faustina back in the 20th century. She was a simple Polish nun and received visions of Jesus as well as private revelations about his mercy. She wrote a diary and commissioned the first painting of the Divine Mercy image. St. John Paul II was a huge devotee of Divine Mercy, and even Pope Benedict XVI spoke highly of it. It is indeed one of the highest devotions in the Church today. Mercy is essential to who God is and what he does. What is Divine Mercy? It’s God’s condescension to us in Jesus Christ: the lowering of himself to our level. He became like us in all things but sin, as St. Paul says. He has entered our level in order to raise us to his. Divine Mercy is not an acceptance or tolerance of sin; just the opposite in fact. It challenges sinners to repent. To change our lives for the better. And it gives us the means to do so! God, in his mercy, meets us where we’re at, but he loves us so much more than to just leave us that way. True mercy challenges, it speaks the truth in love. Everything the Church teaches or says comes from the mercy of her spouse, Jesus Christ. She meets us where we are at, but calls us higher, to greater and better things. God and his Church have high standards AND high mercy. In society, there seems to be low standards and low mercy. You see this when someone is caught in grave scandal, especially in the area of sexuality. Society seems to be fine with promiscuity at various levels, until someone gets exposed. You can’t say “do whatever feels good and right” and then complain that someone takes that to its logical conclusion. You don’t want to have low standards and high mercy because in the end nothing will ever change. This is where enabling would fall. You also don’t want to have high standards and low mercy because that would just be cruel. Everyone would fall short eventually. Divine Mercy teaches us that sin is real and evil. It also teaches us that there is a God of boundless mercy who offers us his healing balm via the Sacraments and the grace to actually become holy people after his own heart.