God’s Mercy is unfathomable and beyond our comprehension. We may never realize the magnitude of His Mercy until it is revealed to us at the time of our passing from this life to the next. Before His great Seat of Judgement, God will reveal to penitent souls the sins of omission and commission that we neglected to confess in Sacramental Confession during our earthly lives that He has absorbed in His Mercy. None of us can be sure that we have made perfect confessions when we availed ourselves of the great Sacrament. Many of us don’t take into account the sins of the tongue, or the wonderings of the mind, or the temptations of the eye that we entertained that God holds as sinful and that never entered into our minds to confess before the priest, our “Altos Christos”, our other Christ. At the time of our passing, our gratitude will be overwhelming, and His Love will be all encompassing. We will be forever grateful.

Many a saved soul will be ransomed in the final moments of God’s Judgment from the clutches of the evil one , the great accuser, through the intercession and pleading of Our Blessed Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Our Lady, our Mother of Mercy, will be the final hope and the key to Heaven for many saved souls. Recall that all of God’s graces, redemption being the greatest, are given to humankind through the hands of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This concept is paramount to understanding the many graces of God and His Mercy. The failure to recognize the power of the intercession of Our Blessed Mother, on the part of many, is often a deliberate act of avoidance or ignorance. Tragically, many Christians intentionally sever themselves completely from this precious gift of God’s mercy, extinguishing any last hopes of obtaining the Mercy of God and the rewards of Heavenly Paradise.

Our Lord, Jesus Christ, revealed the depth of His mercy to St. Faustina in the Divine Mercy revelations. We are instructed through this revelation that in order to receive God’s Divine Mercy there are several conditions. The first condition is trust. All hope of God’s mercy hinges on our hope and faith in God’s forgiveness manifested by our complete trust. By trusting in God’s Divine Mercy we must have the courage and commitment to ask God directly for His mercy. It is not given freely without asking. Many of this generation , so steeped in the concerns of worldly pursuits, have separated themselves far away from God and the great gifts of God’s Divine Mercy and have, therefore, squandered their hopes of redemption by not trusting in the Mercy of our All Loving God.

Another key component required for receiving God’s Divine Mercy is the need to show our love for others by the mercy we show to them. We cannot ignore the needs of our brothers and sisters. We are our brothers’ keepers. We cannot be complacent in our own isolated cosmos and hide behind self-constructed barriers of ignorance, willfully blinding ourselves to the needs of others. We must voluntarily take on some part of the yolk of our brothers and sisters in need to show our mercy to others as we ask God to do the same for us. Many of those around us are in desperate need of assistance. It might be monetary, maybe it’s emotional, perhaps it’s spiritual, and often it entails our having a good listening ear. Whatever the needs of others we encounter, we must  engage in attempts to come to the aid of our brothers and sisters and show them our mercy. Sins of omission can be as deadly to the soul as sins of commission.

God’s Divine Mercy also requires a contrite heart. One must surrender one’s will to be in conformity with the Divine Will of God. As scripture reminds us, our breath of life is short.  Before we know it, all of us will find ourselves face to face before Almighty God to be judged and sentenced to accept our final reward or our fatal punishment. The only thing that we will bring with us to life everlasting is our Will in our eternal souls. Before the reunification of our earthly and hopefully glorified bodies at the end of the world, at the time of the Second and Glorious Coming of Jesus Christ, our souls will present to God our Wills. Will they be the Wills of love and charity or will they be Wills of self pride and selfish desires? There will be no concealment before the Almighty Throne of God of the truths of the lives we have lived. The Gift of Divine Mercy, as revealed to St Faustina, is the last hope of mankind in our time before Jesus returns as Just Judge. In the Divine Mercy Devotion we participate in the Chaplet and the Novena of Divine Mercy. Within it Jesus outlines specific conditions and the magnitude of His efforts to save souls in need of His Mercy. It is good to participate in the daily recitation of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, especially during the 3:00 Holy Hour of Mercy. Likewise, reciting the Novena of Divine Mercy for nine days brings great joy to our Heavenly Father. The Church recommends that it be commenced on Good Friday, in preparation for the great Feast of Divine Mercy, the first Sunday after Easter. However, this Novena can be commenced during any nine day cycle during the year.

Followers of Christ also need to understand that it is only in the Body of Christ, namely through the Holy Catholic Church, the bride of Christ, the we can receive the full extent of His Mercy through Sacramental Confession. In addition to a firm amendment of heart as we approach this great gift of Sacramental Confession, we must also trust in God’s forgiveness at the time that absolution is granted without questioning God’s mercy. We must never abandon our faith in our ability to accept God’s forgiveness. JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU must be on our minds and in our hearts… knowing that we are never abandoned by God.

As Jesus revealed to St. Faustina, there is no limit to My mercy. Those who approach My mercy with a sincere Trust in My Mercy, though their sins be as scarlet, may have the confidence in My forgiveness. Also, through the veneration of the Image of the Divine Mercy, with the inscription “Jesus, I Trust in You”, many graces of forgiveness will be granted to the penitent soul.

It is a great insult to God to think that our sins are greater than His Mercy. St. Padre Pio reminds us that God is Love and that we must never lose sight of this fact and strive daily to live in His Love with all of our attention directed towards God. We must thank God continuously for the many gifts we have received. We must avoid sin not only because we fear the consequences, but so as not to offend or disappoint our Heavenly Father. His mercy is unfathomable when we acknowledge our sins, take ownership of our actions, and beg our Father for forgiveness in order to be worthy of the great love He has for us.

Today we find many Catholics who are lukewarm in the faith, ignorant in the faith, or who have intentionally separated themselves from the faith. There are many  who are not aware of the culpability they face before the justice of God and the Divine Mercy that Jesus offers the world.Even purgatory is an expression of God’s Mercy. When we die, many unsuspecting souls will find themselves very close to their Heavenly reward but will be denied this final grace because of some stain of sin. The flames of Purgatory will enable that soul close to salvation to remediate the obstacles to their redemption so that after a term of purification they will share in the joys of Paradise with God in the Communion of Saints, with the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the Angels.

The Fatima Prayer… “Oh my God, I believe,I adore, I hope and I love thee, and I beg pardon for all those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love thee” is another expression of the mercy of God that we can offer to benefit all our earthly brethren for it calls upon the mercy of God for all of His creation, especially “those most in need of His Mercy”. Now is the time of Mercy. Now is the acceptable time.

“ JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU”.

Lloyd Gerard Greenberg

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