Sunday, April 3, 2016

Morning by Morning New Mercies I See

Great is Thy faithfulness!  Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!

This has to be my favorite Protestant hymn (although there are so many beautiful ones!), but my favorite line goes with today's feast of Divine Mercy.  Yes, every morning I see new mercy from Jesus, but sometimes I need to focus my eyes and see it.  

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday and a recent addition to the Catholic Sunday feasts.  It was declared by St. Pope John Paul II at the canonization of St. Faustina in 2000.  Sister Faustina Kowalska was a Polish visionary who lived in the 1930s and wrote a diary of her visions and revelations from Jesus Christ, who appeared to her with rays extending from His Sacred Heart (see below).  Click here for more information about the feast, the Divine Mercy chaplet and the devotions specific to Divine Mercy.



When this feast was first declared, I remembered thinking how inconvenient that it was placed on the Sunday after Easter.  At my parish, that was traditionally the day we had First Communion.  However, Jesus asked that the feast be celebrated on this day.  Fourteen times in her visions, Jesus asked St. Faustina for a celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday on the octave of Easter.  In addition, in the very earliest liturgical documents of the Church, The Apostolic Constitutions, the apostle Thomas asked "after eight days let there be another feast observed with honor, the eighth day itself on which He gave me, Thomas, who was hard of belief, full assurance, by showing me the print of His nails, and the wound in His side by the spear." 

Oh, now that makes sense!

The Lord's mercy is boundless and an essential component of our salvation.  His mercy endures forever. (Psalm 136).  But it wasn't just a "one shot deal".  That is abundantly clear today.  Wasn't it enough that Jesus came to us as a man, died a humiliating and unjust death and then rose again?  Evidently not.  Just one week after the glorious Resurrection Day, we see Thomas, doubting it.  Jesus was so patient, so merciful!  Thomas' experience was so personal, because Jesus loves each of us and His Mercy extends to each us, just as we are.  Just reach out like Thomas and touch Him.  His mercy is new every day.

Alleluia!

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