Pope Francis: Discover the Riches Hidden in the Sacred Heart of Jesus

The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a liturgical feast celebrated on the Friday after Corpus Christi. Courtney Mares/CNA. VATICAN CITY — Ahead of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Pope Francis encouraged Catholics to discover the riches of charity hidden in the heart of Christ. “Friday we will celebrate the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Do not be afraid to present to him all the intentions of our suffering humanity, its fears, its miseries. May this Heart, full of love for men, give everyone hope and trust,” Pope Francis said June 17 in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. “I invite you to discover the riches that are hidden in the Heart of Jesus, to learn to love your neighbor,” the pope said via the livestream broadcast of his weekly catechesis. The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a liturgical feast celebrated on the Friday after Corpus Christi. The devotion to the heart of Jesus has Christ’s unconditional love at its center, exemplified in the blood and water which poured forth from Christ’s heart in his sacrifice on the cross. St. Marguerite Marie Alacoque, a 17th-century French nun and mystic, helped spread devotion to the Sacred Heart through her visions in which Christ expressed his desire to reveal his loving heart to mankind. Pope Francis said that the saints serve as “bridges” between God and his people through their prayers of intercession. He pointed to the life of Moses as an exemplary biblical model of intercessory prayer. The pope said that Moses belonged among those who are “poor in spirit, who live by making trust in God the viaticum of their journey.” “Moses urges us to pray with the same ardor of Jesus, to intercede for the world, to remember that despite all of its frailties, it always belongs to God,” Pope Francis said. “Scripture usually depicts him with his hands outstretched towards God, as if to form a bridge between heaven and earth with his own person,” he said. “Even in the most difficult moments, even on the day when the people repudiate God and him as a guide and make themselves a golden calf, Moses does not feel like putting his people aside.” Pope Francis explained that Moses prayed for others, not only for himself and thus became “the great intercessor of God’s people.” “We too must realize that we are never before God only as individuals, but also as members of the Church and children of the one human family. This should also become visible in the way we pray for one another,” he said. “Entrusted by God to transmit the Law to his people, founder of divine worship, mediator of the highest mysteries, he will not for this reason cease to maintain close bonds of solidarity with his people, especially in the hour of temptation and sin. He was always attached to his people. Moses never forgets his people,” Francis said. The pope said that Moses provides a “beautiful example for all pastors.” He said that Moses “does not sell out his people to advance his career. He does not climb the ladder, he is an intercessor.” The “greatness of pastors,” he said, is to be close to their people and not to forget their roots. “Pastors are the bridges between the people, to whom they belong, and God, to whom they belong by vocation,” Francis said. “This is why they are called ‘pontifex,’ bridges.” “And today, too, Jesus is the ‘pontifex.’ He is the bridge between us and the Father. And Jesus intercedes for us, He shows the Father the wounds that are the price of our salvation, and He intercedes,” he said. At the conclusion of his general audience, Pope Francis remembered the life of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese diplomat who saved the lives of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. “May freedom of conscience always and everywhere be respected, and may every Christian give an example of consistency with a conscience that is righteous and illuminated by the Word of God,” he said. https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-francis-discover-the-riches-hidden-in-the-sacred-heart-of-jesus

Pope Francis on the Feast of Corpus Christi: the Eucharist heals our wounded memory

Gerard O’Connell June 14, 2020. (CNS photo/Tiziana Fabi, Reuters pool) Pope Francis spoke about the importance of the Eucharist for the life of the church community and the individual believer when he celebrated Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, attended by some 50 people and a greater global audience following on television and the social media on Sunday, June 14. He spoke about it again, from the study window of the papal apartment, when he greeted hundreds of Romans, wearing masks and respecting social-distancing norms, in St. Peter’s Square when he recited the Angelus with them at noon. He reminded them that “today in Italy and in other nations, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi, is celebrated.” He emphasized the “mystical” and “communal” effects of the Eucharist on the life of the Christian and said that “one cannot participate in the Eucharist without committing oneself to sincere mutual fraternity.” In his homily, Pope Francis offered a profound reflection on the Eucharist as “God’s memorial.” “Scripture has been given to us that we might overcome our forgetfulness of God,” he told his global audience. He emphasized the importance of remembering in our prayer “the deeds of the Lord” and “those wonders that the Lord has worked in our own lives.” Indeed, he said, “if we do not remember it, we become strangers to ourselves, ‘passers-by’ of existence. Without memory, we uproot ourselves from the soil that nourishes us and allow ourselves to be carried away like leaves in the wind.” In his homily, Pope Francis offered a profound reflection on the Eucharist as “God’s memorial.” On the other hand, Francis said, “if we do remember, we bind ourselves afresh to the strongest of ties; we feel part of a living history, the living experience of a people.” He explained that “memory is not something private; it is the path that unites us to God and to others…. This is why in the Bible the memory of the Lord must be passed on from generation to generation.” Aware that in many places today the faith is not being passed on, Francis raised the question, “What if the chain of transmission of memories is interrupted?” His answer: “God knows how difficult it is, he knows how weak our memory is, and he has done something remarkable: He left us a memorial. He did not just leave us words, for it is easy to forget what we hear. He did not just leave us the Scriptures, for it is easy to forget what we read. He did not just leave us signs, for we can forget even what we see. He gave us food, for it is not easy to forget something we have actually tasted.” He reminded believers that “Jesus left us bread in which he is truly present, alive and true, with all the flavor of his love. Receiving him we can say: ‘He is the Lord; he remembers me!’” He recalled that Jesus instructed us “Do this in remembrance of me” and said that “the Eucharist is not simply an act of remembrance; it is a fact, it is the Lord’s Passover made present once again for us. In Mass, the death and resurrection of Jesus are set before us.” Pope Francis told Christians worldwide, “We cannot do without the Eucharist, for it is God’s memorial. And it heals our wounded memory.” Pope Francis told Christians worldwide, “We cannot do without the Eucharist, for it is God’s memorial. And it heals our wounded memory.” He gave three examples of how the Eucharist heals our memory. First, he said, “the Eucharist heals orphaned memory.” He recalled that “so many people have memories marked by a lack of affection and bitter disappointments caused by those who should have given them love and instead orphaned their hearts. We would like to go back and change the past, but we cannot.” “God can heal these wounds by placing within our memory a greater love: his own love,” the pope said. “The Eucharist brings us the Father’s faithful love, which heals our sense of being orphans.” Next, Francis said, “through the Eucharist, the Lord also heals our negative memory, that negativity that seeps so often into our hearts.” He told believers: The Lord heals this negative memory, which drags to the surface things that have gone wrong and leaves us with the sorry notion that we are useless, that we only make mistakes, that we are ourselves a mistake. Jesus comes to tell us that this is not so. He wants to be close to us. Every time we receive him, he reminds us that we are precious, that we are guests he has invited to his banquet, friends with whom he wants to dine…because he is truly in love with us. He sees and loves the beauty and goodness that we are.” “The Lord knows that evil and sins do not define us; they are diseases, infections,” Pope Francis said. “And he comes to heal them with the Eucharist, which contains the antibodies to our negative memory. With Jesus, we can become immune to sadness.” He acknowledged that “we will always remember our failures, troubles, problems at home and at work, our unrealized dreams,” but assured believers that “their weight will not crush us because Jesus is present even more deeply, encouraging us with his love. This is the strength of the Eucharist, which transforms us into bringers of God, bringers of joy, not negativity.” “Jesus approaches us gently, in the disarming simplicity of the host. He comes as bread broken in order to break open the shells of our selfishness.” Pope Francis told Christians worldwide, “We cannot do without the Eucharist, for it is God’s memorial. And it heals our wounded memory.” He gave three examples of how the Eucharist heals our memory. First, he said, “the Eucharist heals orphaned memory.” He recalled that “so many people have memories marked by a lack of affection and bitter disappointments caused by those who should have given them love and instead orphaned their hearts. We would like to go back and change the past, but we cannot.” “God can heal these wounds by placing within our memory a greater love: his own love,” the pope said. “The Eucharist brings us the Father’s faithful love, which heals our sense of being orphans.” Next, Francis said, “through the Eucharist, the Lord also heals our negative memory, that negativity that seeps so often into our hearts.” He told believers: The Lord heals this negative memory, which drags to the surface things that have gone wrong and leaves us with the sorry notion that we are useless, that we only make mistakes, that we are ourselves a mistake. Jesus comes to tell us that this is not so. He wants to be close to us. Every time we receive him, he reminds us that we are precious, that we are guests he has invited to his banquet, friends with whom he wants to dine…because he is truly in love with us. He sees and loves the beauty and goodness that we are.” “The Lord knows that evil and sins do not define us; they are diseases, infections,” Pope Francis said. “And he comes to heal them with the Eucharist, which contains the antibodies to our negative memory. With Jesus, we can become immune to sadness.” He acknowledged that “we will always remember our failures, troubles, problems at home and at work, our unrealized dreams,” but assured believers that “their weight will not crush us because Jesus is present even more deeply, encouraging us with his love. This is the strength of the Eucharist, which transforms us into bringers of God, bringers of joy, not negativity.” “Jesus approaches us gently, in the disarming simplicity of the host. He comes as bread broken in order to break open the shells of our selfishness.” “The Eucharist satisfies our hunger for material things and kindles our desire to serve,” he said. “It raises us from our comfortable and lazy lifestyle and reminds us that we are not only mouths to be fed but also his hands to be used to help feed others.” Alluding to this time of pandemic, Francis told his global audience: “It is especially urgent now to take care of those who hunger for food and for dignity, of those without work and those who struggle to carry on. And this we must do in a real way, as real as the bread that Jesus gives us. Genuine closeness is needed, as are true bonds of solidarity. In the Eucharist, Jesus draws close to us: Let us not turn away from those around us!” RELATED STORIES Pope Francis’ message for the World Day of the Poor amid pandemic: We are all responsible Gerard O’Connell At the end of Mass, he presided at the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and then went to the papal apartment, where after reciting the Angelus with those gathered in St. Peter’s Square, he issued the following passionate appeal for peace in Libya. Pope Francis said, “I am following the dramatic situation in Libya with great apprehension and sorrow. It has been present in my prayer in recent days. Please, I urge international bodies and those who have political and military responsibilities to recommence with conviction and resolve the search for a path towards an end to the violence, leading to peace, stability and unity in the country.” He said he also prays for “for the thousands of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons in Libya” and called on “the international community to please take their plight to heart, identifying pathways and providing means to provide them with the protection they need, a dignified condition and a hopeful future.” https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/06/14/pope-francis-feast-corpus-christi-eucharist-heals-our-wounded-memory

Pope Francis: The Devil Seeks to Destroy the Church Through Envy

Catholic News Agency

VATICAN CITY — The devil uses envy to try to thwart the proclamation of the Gospel, Pope Francis said at his morning Mass Saturday.
In his homily in the chapel at Casa Santa Marta, May 9, the pope reflected on the day’s first reading, Acts 13:44-52, in which the Jewish community at Antioch rejects St. Paul’s preaching about Jesus.
He said: “On the one hand there is the Lord, there is the Holy Spirit who makes the Church grow, and it grows ever more: this is true. But on the other hand, there is the evil spirit that seeks to destroy the Church.”
After citing other examples in the Acts of the Apostles where the apostles faced rejection, the pope asked: “And what is the devil's instrument to destroy the Gospel proclamation? Envy. The Book of Wisdom [2:24] says it clearly: ‘Through the devil's envy sin has entered the world’ -- envy, jealousy, here. Always this bitter, bitter feeling.”
Reflecting on this enduring struggle, Pope Francis quoted St. Augustine of Hippo, who wrote in The City of God that “the Church progresses on her pilgrimage amidst this world's persecutions and God's consolations.”

https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-francis-the-devil-seeks-to-destroy-the-church-through-envy

Pope at Mass: May Europe be united in dream of the Founding Fathers

Source: Verse of the day of 1 Corinthians 2:8

Pope Francis prays at Mass on Wednesday for Europe to show unity in response to the Covid-19 crisis, and reflects on the depth of God’s love for us. (Playback included)

By Devin Watkins

As he began Mass in the Casa Santa Marta on Wednesday morning, Pope Francis urged all nations to be united as they face the Covid-19 pandemic. He prayed especially for Europe.
“At this moment in which unity is very necessary between ourselves and between nations, we pray today for Europe, so that Europe might succeed in creating this fraternal unity dreamt of by the founding fathers of the European Union.”

God loves us madly

In his homily, the Pope reflected on Jesus’ words to Nicodemus in the day’s Gospel (Jn 3:16-21): “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
Pope Francis said this passage contains a wealth of theological revelation about Redemption.
He focused his attention on two aspects: the revelation of God’s love and the existential choice between light and darkness.
“God loves us,” said the Pope. “He loves us madly. As one saint used to say, God’s love seems like madness.”

Listen to our report

Cross contains all Christian wisdom

The cross, said Pope Francis, is the highest expression of this love. He added that everything is revealed to those who contemplate the cross.
"So many people, so many Christians, pass time gazing at the Crucified... And there they find everything because they have understood. The Holy Spirit teaches them that therein lies all science, all of God’s love, and all Christian wisdom. Saint Paul speaks about this, explaining that all human reasoning is useful only up to a certain point. But true reasoning – the most beautiful way of thinking which also explains everything – is the cross of Christ, is Christ crucified, who is scandal and madness. But He is the way. And this is the love of God. God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son. Why? So that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life. This is the love of the Father who wants His children with Him."

Light over darkness

Pope Francis then reflected on the choice between light and darkness. He said there are some people – “including us sometimes” – who are unable to live in the light, because they have become accustomed to darkness.
“Light blinds them and they cannot see. They are like human bats: they can only move about during the night. We ourselves, when we are in a state of sin, find ourselves in this condition, unable to tolerate the light. It is easier to live in the darkness; light slaps us on the face and shows us what we don’t want to see.”

Corruption blinds

Though it is difficult to face what the light reveals to us, said Pope Francis, it is worse when the eyes of the soul become ignorant of the light.
“So many human scandals and corruption teach us this. Those who are corrupt do not know what the light is, and don’t recognize it.”

Child of God… Or bat?

Pope Francis concluded inviting us to let the light of God’s love shine in our lives through the Holy Spirit. And we can ask ourselves:
“Do I walk in the light or in darkness? Am I a child of God? Or have I ended up like a bat?”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol6rVYoFY8k?wmode=opaque&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&wmode=transparent&modestbranding=1&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://www.vaticannews.va&start=&end=]

Full video of Pope's Mass

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope-francis/mass-casa-santa-marta/2020-04/pope-francis-mass-european-fraternal-unity.html

Easter offers solace for us all in the depths of coronavirus crisis

Coronavirus has declared war on Easter, but I suspect that Easter will win in the end.

For only the second time in modern Australian history, churches are silent by state edict, this time silent at Easter, the season of triumph and resurrection.

Churches were closed briefly during the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918-19. But there was such social unrest, such misery at being deprived of the comfort of church, and especially at a temporary ruling that banned clergy from quarantine areas meaning they could not minister to the dying — though ministers were more than willing to take the risks — that the restrictions were speedily revised.

Open-air church services, with everyone wearing masks, were quickly permitted. Today, church is only accessible online. It’s not a computer virus, after all.

But Easter is much more than a church service. Easter Sunday is the pivot of history. It also represents the apex of human solidarity.

Easter is love in the time of COVID-19.

The worst thing about the epidemic is the assault the coronavirus way of death makes on normal human solidarity. That’s an assault on Christianity. For Christianity is solidarity.

Coronavirus gives you a very lonely death. And loneliness is at the heart of all human misery.

Albert Camus, in his classic novel The Plague, an allegory of the Nazi occupation of France, ­observed: “The chief source of distress, the deepest as well as the most widespread, was separation.”

Throughout this time of virus we are torn apart, when we want to be together. And we never want more to be together than at the time of death.

Death is a part of life, a part of humanity. It comes to every person. But this virus means that a ­victim must die mostly alone, without a partner or relative or friend, or even a stranger, to hold their hand, to pat them on the shoulder, to encourage and console them with a touch or kiss.

Instead, the last sight for many will be a heroic health worker behind heavy layers of protective gear, looking something like a robot in an old science fiction movie. Perhaps at the last the ­patient will see only the distant eyes of a nurse, compassionate or preoccupied, caring or distracted, doing their best.

Easter is the human triumph over death. Of course it is a human triumph enabled by God. In Christian belief, Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. But he was also a man who lived and died, and then in Christian ­belief rose from the dead, a little over 2000 years ago.

Before he was known as God, he was known to his friends and family as a man. Fully human, fully divine, his divinity never diminished his human vulnerability.

Rightly transfixed as history is by the divine claims and nature of Jesus, it is too easy to lose sight of the intense humanity of his story. The gospels are worth reading, just for the story.

Selfless courage

The death of Jesus in the crucifixion, while agonising in a way that most deaths are not, has about it nonetheless something of the coronavirus death.

Like a COVID-19 patient, Jesus was in his death physically separated from the people who loved him most. At the foot of the cross were his mother, as well as Mary Magdalene and a beloved disciple. So often in the gospels, as in all the Christian story, it is the women who are the most faithful.

The things Jesus said as death approached tell a story not of an all-powerful, conquering god, with which the ancient world was all too familiar, and a facsimile of which so many people try to become today, but of a human man bearing the unbearable, which is the fate of all human beings in death.

Let me be very straightforward. I believe Jesus is God, as the gospels claim, but the God side of him didn’t overwhelm or subvert or ­negate the human side. The story of his life is therefore the ultimate story of human solidarity.

Much of Jesus’ last words ­recall to me things I have heard friends and family say as they lay in hospital beds approaching death. At one point, Jesus looks down from the cross at his mother, Mary. He instructs her, regarding the male disciple: “Woman, this is your son”, and to the male disciple: “This is your mother”. And from that day, Mary lived in the disciple’s house.

Everyone I have known approaching death has been concerned more than anything with the people they will leave behind. The request I’ve most often heard from a friend near death is: “Look after him when I’m gone” or “Keep in touch with her, won’t you?”. I heard a beloved uncle say as he lay dying: “Won’t you get my wife a cup of tea?”

In the ancient world, the childless widow was uniquely marginalised, generally with no income, often no home and no male champion to protect her. Jesus was concerned with Mary’s welfare in a practical way. Looking after his mother was all he asked of his ­disciple.

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who survived Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, in World War II. Out of that experience he wrote the magnificent Man’s Search for Meaning. He observed that the worst element of a beating, of which he received many, was the implied insult. Jesus’ death, alone on the cross, as he was mocked and ridiculed and humiliated, had the insult not implied but explicit.

And yet he prayed: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

This may seem virtuous beyond the scope of the human. Yet Frankl records prisoners in the camps who gave away their last piece of bread so that someone else might eat, manifesting through themselves the presence of God, even in a death camp.

But the most searing cry of Jesus on the cross surely was this: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Nearly, nearly, nearly Jesus shares our despair. Christianity is a religion in which God himself almost for an instant despairs of God. Even Jesus feels in this ­moment abandoned by God.

The story of Jesus is fulfilled in the Easter resurrection. Jesus conquers death. All of Christianity centres on the person of Christ. But as Frankl observes, the final freedom of every human being is the freedom “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”.

It is the attitude of Jesus to his death on the cross, while he is undergoing it, which is most telling. For after asking God why it is that he is suffering in this way, Jesus ­finally cries with a loud voice: ­“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

It is his last statement before death. It is the culmination of Jesus’ life before the resurrection. And the centre of it is complete surrender of his human will to the Father and his complete reliance on the Father.

Into your hands I commend my spirit. I can do no more. I can say no more. I have no more solutions, no more agency, no more action. Father, I am yours.

If this seems superhuman in its devotion, I think in fact it is close to the attitude every believer tries to take to death: thank you for this life, please look after the people I love, I am sorry for my wrongs (Jesus didn’t need to say that), please let this suffering pass, now I am yours and I rely on you absolutely. That is how Jesus ­transcends his humanity — by surrendering absolutely.

So why do I say that Easter is the triumph of human solidarity?

The basic shape of all human solidarity is to stay behind with the suffering person, to make their ­suffering your suffering, to share the burden with them where you can, and where you can’t, simply to be by their side to hold their hand at the last, to stay with them all the way through. It’s as simple as sitting up with a sick child or spouse. To have that same care for people beyond your kin is a necessary, wider human solidarity. The sociologist of ­religion, Rodney Stark, in his The Triumph of Christianity, ­offers two striking sociological reasons for the early and rapid spread of Christianity.

First, Christians valued women and girls more than any movement in history. They didn’t ­practise female infanticide, so Christian families had many more daughters than pagan families. As a result, they were much happier and the daughters converted their pagan husbands.

Christian care

Second, Christians didn’t run away during plagues, but tried to help. Cyprian, a 3rd-century bishop of Carthage, who was later martyred, offered the main historic description of the 3rd-century plague that afflicted the Roman empire and that historians speculate may have been an influenza ­pandemic. There were said to be 5000 people dying in Rome per day, accompanied by all manner of barbaric and ruthlessly selfish ­behaviour — especially the shunning of anyone who was sick.

Cyprian wrote that the plague “searches out the justice of each and every one and examines the mind of the human race; whether the well care for the sick, whether relatives dutifully love their kinsmen as they should, whether masters show compassion for their ailing slaves, whether physicians do not desert the afflicted”.

Today we can admire profoundly the bravery of our medical frontline people, as well as the police and the fireys, who share the suffering of the afflicted and do not desert them.

So how does this all link up to Easter?

Throughout all human history, people have been conscious of God. But they haven’t always known whether God is near or ­distant, merciful or capricious, personal or indifferent.

In the life of Jesus, God uniquely expresses maximum solidarity with humanity, and with human suffering. He not only comes among us but literally becomes one of us, with all of our travails. He stays behind to share our ­suffering, to give it meaning and, on Easter Sunday, to redeem it in resurrection.

The story of Christmas and Good Friday and Easter Sunday is the story of God carrying out an act of human solidarity at great cost — becoming a human being, with all our limitations and pains, and then leading us beyond to an eternal life that is promised but not yet seen.

Peace lies within

What good is all that right now, when we can’t meet Jesus in the flesh, can’t see him for ourselves, can’t ask for his help?

In the extremity of his own suffering, Frankl found one deep consolation — the contemplation of his wife, who was in another Nazi camp, where she died. There was a time when he wanted nothing more than to be allowed to think of her, to conjure in his mind her face and her voice.

He recalled the Song of Solomon, from the Old Testament: “Set me like a seal on your heart, love is as strong as death.”

As he is forced relentlessly into pointless, cruel labour for the Nazis, Frankl can still find bliss in the mental image of his wife. For the first time, he understands the heavenly hosts of angels lost in perpetual adoration of God.

The contemplation of God is helped by the kindness of others. Christians try to bring the mercy of God, and the light of God, into the world through their actions. God knows often enough they mess it up dreadfully.

The church has always been messy. Jesus chose 12. One betrayed him to death, three fell asleep as he suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane.

The most important early church leader, Paul, had been a persecutor of the innocent. And Peter, the man Jesus chose to lead the Apostles, who became the leader of the Christians after the resurrection, denied Jesus out of cowardice.

If Jesus was human, so too were his followers. All too human, in fact. Yet Peter and Paul also found the conviction to go to their deaths as martyrs for their beliefs, executed by the brutal Roman ­emperor Nero. Every death suffered in hope is a kind of martyrdom.

The Easter resurrection is the triumph of all martyrs, and the hope of all human beings.

GREG SHERIDAN

FOREIGN EDITOR

Greg Sheridan, The Australian's foreign editor, is one of the nation's most influential national security commentators, who is active across television and radio and also writes extensively on culture. He has w... Read more

 

 

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/easter-offers-solace-for-us-all-in-the-depths-of-coronavirus-crisis/news-story/64e47113d3704cc0b7f1409e05fe4759

 

Pope Francis says pandemic can be a ‘place of conversion’

by Austen Ivereigh

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The Tablet Interview

In an exclusive interview recorded for The Tablet – his first for a UK publication – Pope Francis says that this extraordinary Lent and Eastertide could be a moment of creativity and conversion for the Church, for the world, and for the whole of creation.

• Towards the end of March I suggested to Pope Francis that this might be a good moment to address the English-speaking world: the pandemic that had so affected Italy and Spain was now reaching the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. Without promising anything, he asked me to send some questions. I picked six themes, each one with a series of questions he could answer or not as he saw fit. A week later, I received a communication that he had recorded some reflections in response to the questions. The interview was conducted in Spanish; the translation is my own.

The first question was about how he was experiencing the pandemic and lockdown, both in the Santa Marta residence and the Vatican administration (“the curia”) more widely, both practically and spiritually.

Pope Francis: The Curia is trying to carry on its work, and to live normally, organising in shifts so that not everyone is present at the same time. It’s been well thought out. We are sticking to the measures ordered by the health authorities. Here in the Santa Marta residence we now have two shifts for meals, which helps a lot to alleviate the impact. Everyone works in his office or from his room, using technology. Everyone is working; there are no idlers here.
How am I living this spiritually? I’m praying more, because I feel I should. And I think of people. That’s what concerns me: people. Thinking of people anoints me, it does me good, it takes me out of my self-preoccupation. Of course I have my areas of selfishness. On Tuesdays, my confessor comes, and I take care of things there.
I’m thinking of my responsibilities now, and what will come afterwards. What will be my service as Bishop of Rome, as head of the Church, in the aftermath? That aftermath has already begun to be revealed as tragic and painful, which is why we must be thinking about it now. The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development has been working on this, and meeting with me.
My major concern – at least what comes through my prayer – is how to accompany and be closer to the people of God. Hence the livestreaming of the 7 a.m. Mass [I celebrate each morning] which many people follow and appreciate, as well as the addresses I’ve given, and the 27 March event in St Peter’s Square. Hence, too, the step-up in activities of the office of papal charities, attending to the sick and hungry.
I’m living this as a time of great uncertainty. It’s a time for inventing, for creativity.

In my second question, I referred to a nineteenth-century novel very dear to Pope Francis, which he has mentioned recently: Alessandro Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed). The novel’s drama centres on the Milan plague of 1630. There are various priestly characters: the cowardly curé Don Abbondio, the holy cardinal archbishop Borromeo, and the Capuchin friars who serve the lazzaretto, a kind of field hospital where the infected are rigorously separated from the healthy. In the light of the novel, how did Pope Francis see the mission of the Church in the context of Covid-19?

Pope Francis: Cardinal Federigo [Borromeo] really is a hero of the Milan plague. Yet in one of the chapters he goes to greet a village but with the window of his carriage closed to protect himself. This did not go down well with the people. The people of God need their pastor to be close to them, not to over-protect himself. The people of God need their pastors to be self-sacrificing, like the Capuchins, who stayed close.
The creativity of the Christian needs to show forth in opening up new horizons, opening windows, opening transcendence towards God and towards people, and in creating new ways of being at home. It’s not easy to be confined to your house. What comes to my mind is a verse from the Aeneid in the midst of defeat: the counsel is not to give up, but save yourself for better times, for in those times remembering what has happened will help us. Take care of yourselves for a future that will come. And remembering in that future what has happened will do you good.
Take care of the now, for the sake of tomorrow. Always creatively, with a simple creativity, capable of inventing something new each day. Inside the home that’s not hard to discover, but don’t run away, don’t take refuge in escapism, which in this time is of no use to you.

My third question was about government policies in response to the crisis. While the quarantining of the population is a sign that some governments are willing to sacrifice economic wellbeing for the sake of vulnerable people, I suggested it was also exposing levels of exclusion that have been considered normal and acceptable before now.

Pope Francis: It’s true, a number of governments have taken exemplary measures to defend the population on the basis of clear priorities. But we’re realising that all our thinking, like it or not, has been shaped around the economy. In the world of finance it has seemed normal to sacrifice [people], to practise a politics of the throwaway culture, from the beginning to the end of life. I’m thinking, for example, of pre-natal selection. It’s very unusual these days to meet Down’s Syndrome people on the street; when the tomograph [scan] detects them, they are binned. It’s a culture of euthanasia, either legal or covert, in which the elderly are given medication but only up to a point.
What comes to mind is Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. The great controversy at the time was over the [contraceptive] pill, but what people didn’t realise was the prophetic force of the encyclical, which foresaw the neo-Malthusianism which was then just getting underway across the world. Paul VI sounded the alarm over that wave of neo-Malthusianism. We see it in the way people are selected according to their utility or productivity: the throwaway culture.
Right now, the homeless continue to be homeless. A photo appeared the other day of a parking lot in Las Vegas where they had been put in quarantine. And the hotels were empty. But the homeless cannot go to a hotel. That is the throwaway culture in practice.

I was curious to know if the Pope saw the crisis and the economic devastation it is wreaking as a chance for an ecological conversion, for reassessing priorities and lifestyles. I asked him concretely whether it was possible that we might see in the future an economy that – to use his words – was more “human” and less “liquid”.

Pope Francis: There is an expression in Spanish: “God always forgives, we forgive sometimes, but nature never forgives.” We did not respond to the partial catastrophes. Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that 18 months ago a boat could cross the North Pole because the glaciers had all melted? Who speaks now of the floods? I don’t know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature’s responses.
We have a selective memory. I want to dwell on this point. I was amazed at the seventieth anniversary commemoration of the Normandy landings, which was attended by people at the highest levels of culture and politics. It was one big celebration. It’s true that it marked the beginning of the end of dictatorship, but no one seemed to recall the 10,000 boys who remained on that beach.
When I went to Redipuglia for the centenary of the First World War I saw a lovely monument and names on a stone, but that was it. I cried, thinking of Benedict XV’s phrase inutile strage (“senseless massacre”), and the same happened to me at Anzio on All Souls’ Day, thinking of all the North American soldiers buried there, each of whom had a family, and how any of them might have been me.
At this time in Europe when we are beginning to hear populist speeches and witness political decisions of this selective kind it’s all too easy to remember Hitler’s speeches in 1933, which were not so different from some of the speeches of a few European politicians now.What comes to mind is another verse of Virgil’s: [forsan et haec olim] meminisse iubavit["perhaps one day it will be good to remember these things too”]. We need to recover our memory because memory will come to our aid. This is not humanity’s first plague; the others have become mere anecdotes. We need to remember our roots, our tradition which is packed full of memories. In the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, the First Week, as well as the “Contemplation to Attain Love” in the Fourth Week, are completely taken up with remembering. It’s a conversion through remembrance.
This crisis is affecting us all, rich and poor alike, and putting a spotlight on hypocrisy. I am worried by the hypocrisy of certain political personalities who speak of facing up to the crisis, of the problem of hunger in the world, but who in the meantime manufacture weapons. This is a time to be converted from this kind of functional hypocrisy. It’s a time for integrity. Either we are coherent with our beliefs or we lose everything.
You ask me about conversion. Every crisis contains both danger and opportunity: the opportunity to move out from the danger. Today I believe we have to slow down our rate of production and consumption (Laudato Si’, 191) and to learn to understand and contemplate the natural world. We need to reconnect with our real surroundings. This is the opportunity for conversion.
Yes, I see early signs of an economy that is less liquid, more human. But let us not lose our memory once all this is past, let us not file it away and go back to where we were. This is the time to take the decisive step, to move from using and misusing nature to contemplating it. We have lost the contemplative dimension; we have to get it back at this time.
And speaking of contemplation, I’d like to dwell on one point. This is the moment to see the poor. Jesus says we will have the poor with us always, and it’s true. They are a reality we cannot deny. But the poor are hidden, because poverty is bashful. In Rome recently, in the midst of the quarantine, a policeman said to a man: “You can’t be on the street, go home.” The response was: “I have no home. I live in the street.” To discover such a large number of people who are on the margins … And we don’t see them, because poverty is bashful. They are there but we don’t see them: they have become part of the landscape; they are things.
St Teresa of Calcutta saw them, and had the courage to embark on a journey of conversion. To “see” the poor means to restore their humanity. They are not things, not garbage; they are people. We can’t settle for a welfare policy such as we have for rescued animals. We often treat the poor like rescued animals. We can’t settle for a partial welfare policy.
I’m going to dare to offer some advice. This is the time to go to the underground. I’m thinking of Dostoyevsky’s short novel, Notes from the Underground. The employees of that prison hospital had become so inured they treated their poor prisoners like things. And seeing the way they treated one who had just died, the one on the bed alongside tells them: “Enough! He too had a mother!” We need to tell ourselves this often: that poor person had a mother who raised him lovingly. Later in life we don’t know what happened. But it helps to think of that love he once received through his mother’s hope.
We disempower the poor. We don’t give them the right to dream of their mothers. They don’t know what affection is; many live on drugs. And to see them can help us to discover the piety, the pietas, which points towards God and towards our neighbour.
Go down into the underground, and pass from the hyper-virtual, fleshless world to the suffering flesh of the poor. This is the conversion we have to undergo. And if we don’t start there, there will be no conversion.
I’m thinking at this time of the saints who live next door. They are heroes: doctors, volunteers, religious sisters, priests, shop workers – all performing their duty so that society can continue functioning. How many doctors and nurses have died! How many religious sisters have died! All serving … What comes to my mind is something said by the tailor, in my view one of the characters with greatest integrity in The Betrothed. He says: “The Lord does not leave his miracles half-finished.” If we become aware of this miracle of the next-door saints, if we can follow their tracks, the miracle will end well, for the good of all. God doesn’t leave things halfway. We are the ones who do that.
What we are living now is a place of metanoia (conversion), and we have the chance to begin. So let’s not let it slip from us, and let’s move ahead.

My fifth question centred on the effects on the Church of the crisis, and the need to rethink our ways of operating. Does he see emerging from this a Church that is more missionary, more creative, less attached to institutions? Are we seeing a new kind of “home Church”?

Pope Francis: Less attached to institutions? I’d say less attached to certain ways of thinking. Because the Church is institution. The temptation is to dream of a de-institutionalised Church, a gnostic Church without institutions, or one that is subject to fixed institutions, which would be a Pelagian Church. The one who makes the Church is the Holy Spirit, who is neither gnostic nor Pelagian. It is the Holy Spirit who institutionalises the Church, in an alternative, complementary way, because the Holy Spirit provokes disorder through the charisms, but then out of that disorder creates harmony.
A Church that is free is not an anarchic Church, because freedom is God’s gift. An institutional Church means a Church institutionalised by the Holy Spirit.
A tension between disorder and harmony: this is the Church that must come out of the crisis. We have to learn to live in a Church that exists in the tension between harmony and disorder provoked by the Holy Spirit. If you ask me which book of theology can best help you understand this, it would be the Acts of the Apostles. There you will see how the Holy Spirit de-institutionalises what is no longer of use, and institutionalises the future of the Church. That is the Church that needs to come out of the crisis.
About a week ago an Italian bishop, somewhat flustered, called me. He had been going round the hospitals wanting to give absolution to those inside the wards from the hallway of the hospital. But he had spoken to canon lawyers who had told him he couldn’t, that absolution could only be given in direct contact. “What do you think, Father?” he had asked me. I told him: “Bishop, fulfil your priestly duty.” And the bishop said Grazie, ho capito (“Thank you, I understand”). I found out later that he was giving absolution all around the place.
This is the freedom of the Spirit in the midst of a crisis, not a Church closed off in institutions. That doesn’t mean that canon law is not important: it is, it helps, and please let’s make good use of it, it is for our good. But the final canon says that the whole of canon law is for the salvation of souls, and that’s what opens the door for us to go out in times of difficulty to bring the consolation of God.
You ask me about a “home Church”. We have to respond to our confinement with all our creativity. We can either get depressed and alienated – through media that can take us out of our reality – or we can get creative. At home we need an apostolic creativity, a creativity shorn of so many useless things, but with a yearning to express our faith in community, as the people of God. So: to be in lockdown, but yearning, with that memory that yearns and begets hope – this is what will help us escape our confinement.

Finally, I asked Pope Francis how we are being called to live this extraordinary Lent and Eastertide. I asked him if he had a particular message for the elderly who were self-isolating, for confined young people, and for those facing poverty as result of the crisis.

Pope Francis: You speak of the isolated elderly: solitude and distance. How many elderly there are whose children do not go and visit them in normal times! I remember in Buenos Aires when I visited old people’s homes, I would ask them: And how’s your family? Fine, fine! Do they come? Yes, always! Then the nurse would take me aside and say the children hadn’t been to see them in six months. Solitude and abandonment … distance.
Yet the elderly continue to be our roots. And they must speak to the young. This tension between young and old must always be resolved in the encounter with each other. Because the young person is bud and foliage, but without roots they cannot bear fruit. The elderly are the roots. I would say to them, today: I know you feel death is close, and you are afraid, but look elsewhere, remember your children, and do not stop dreaming. This is what God asks of you: to dream (Joel 3:1).
What would I say to the young people? Have the courage to look ahead, and to be prophetic. May the dreams of the old correspond to your prophecies – also Joel 3:1.
Those who have been impoverished by the crisis are today’s deprived, who are added to the numbers of deprived of all times, men and women whose status is “deprived”. They have lost everything, or they are going to lose everything. What meaning does deprivation have for me, in the light of the Gospel? It means to enter into the world of the deprived, to understand that he who had, no longer has. What I ask of people is that they take the elderly and the young under their wing, that they take history under the wing, take the deprived under their wing.
What comes now to mind is another verse of Virgil’s, at the end of Book 2 of the Aeneid, when Aeneas, following defeat in Troy, has lost everything. Two paths lie before him: to remain there to weep and end his life, or to follow what was in his heart, to go up to the mountain and leave the war behind. It’s a beautiful verse. Cessi, et sublato montem genitore petivi (“I gave way to fate and, bearing my father on my shoulders, made for the mountain”).
This is what we all have to do now, today: to take with us the roots of our traditions, and make for the mountain.

Austen Ivereigh is a fellow in contemporary church history at Campion Hall, at the University of Oxford. His latest book is Wounded Shepherd: Pope Francis’s Struggle to Convert the Catholic Church, published by Henry Holt.

https://www.thetablet.co.uk/features/2/17845/pope-francis-says-pandemic-can-be-a-place-of-conversion-

Easter Message 2020 from Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP

Is hope possible?

Dare we hope in a world that is suffering? It can seem impossible, even insensitive, to talk of hope when people are sick or dying, anxious or isolated, unemployed or otherwise burdened.

One of my Dominican brothers in England, with whom I once lived, died of COVID19 this week. 18 more Dominicans have it in Europe. I can’t visit my own parents here in Sydney because their nursing home is locked down. So I know something of the burden this epidemic is on people.

We’ve been through plagues before. Some have been devastating. But eventually they pass. After Good Friday comes Easter, after the tomb new life.

A precedent

In 1919 Spanish flu took 15,000 Australian lives. But we bounced back, and our society and economy prospered. Though the pandemic had closed churches and stopped Masses, Australian Catholics also bounced back, recovering from their long Eucharistic fast by building many churches and doubling their practising rate.

There’s every reason to expect we’ll recover this time, sooner rather than later, and maybe stronger, more united, more idealistic – if we learn the lessons.

Think of the countless acts of selfless service we’ve witnessed of late from health workers, neighbours, families, pastors. Think of the novel pastoral responses to this novel coronavirus. In times like these people of faith and ideals really shine.

A light shines in the darkness

On Easter night the new Easter candle is normally lit and carried into the Church as a symbol of Christ, our light returned and hope restored. This year there’ll be no congregation to light their own candles from it. But already people are demonstrating Easter light in their works of mercy and prayer.

God bless you and your loved ones in this strange but holy time.

Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP, DD BA LlB BTheol DPhil, Archbishop of Sydney

Related

• 30,000 log on to view Archbishop Fisher’s Palm Sunday Mass
• Aussie priests take their people to the Blessed Sacrament

https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/easter-message-2020-from-archbishop-anthony-fisher-op/

Pope encourages Catholics to contemplate ‘seven sorrows’ of Mary

Mary and St. John stand at the foot of cross in this depiction of Christ's crucifixion at Holy Family Church in Ramallah, West Bank. (Credit: Debbie Hill/CNS.)

Cindy Wooden

Apr 3, 2020

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

ROME - On the Friday before Holy Week, Pope Francis asked people to keep a long tradition of Catholic piety by focusing on “the suffering and sorrows of Our Lady.”

“Honor Our Lady and say, ‘This is my mother,’ because she is mother. This is the title that she received from Jesus precisely there, at the cross,” the pope said at Mass April 3. Jesus “did not make her prime minister or give her ‘functional’ titles. Only ‘mother.'”

Mary did not ask for any honor or special titles, the pope said. “She didn’t ask to be a quasi-redemptrix or a co-redemptrix, no. There is only one redeemer and this title cannot be duplicated.”

For decades, some Catholics have been petitioning the popes to recognize Mary as “co-redemptrix” to highlight the essential role she played in redemption.

“Just disciple and mother - and in that way, as mother, we must think about her, seek her out, pray to her,” Pope Francis said. “She is the mother in the church that is mother. In the maternity of Our Lady, we see the maternity of the church, which receives everyone, good and bad, everyone.”

The Friday before Palm Sunday is observed in many places as the “Friday of Sorrows,” a special day of Marian devotion.

Pope Francis asked Catholics to spend time considering the “seven sorrows” of Mary: Simeon’s prophecy that a sword would pierce her heart; the flight into Egypt; the worry when the child Jesus could not be found because he was in the temple; meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary; seeing Jesus on the cross; witnessing Jesus, lifeless, being taken down from the cross; and seeing Jesus being buried in the tomb.

Mary bore those sufferings “with strength, with tears - it wasn’t a fake cry, hers was truly a heart destroyed by pain,” the pope said.

Pope Francis said that late in the evening, when he prays the Angelus prayer, he contemplates the seven sorrows and recalls “how the mother of the church, with so much pain, gave birth to all of us.”

With the morning Masses from the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae livestreamed during the coronavirus crisis, Pope Francis begins the liturgy with a special thought and prayer intention each day.

“There are people who already are thinking about the ‘after,’ what happens after the pandemic,” the pope said April 3. They already are strategizing ways to alleviate “all the problems that will come - problems of poverty, jobs, hunger. Let us pray for all the people who are helping today, but also thinking of tomorrow to help all of us.”

https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2020/04/pope-encourages-catholics-to-contemplate-seven-sorrows-of-mary/

Vatican Grants Emergency Plenary Indulgence for Divine Mercy Chaplet

By Chris Sparks

The Church is responding to the problems we all face as a result of this pandemic with great seriousness and generosity. The Holy Father is throwing wide open the doors of the Church’s storehouses of grace for the faithful, making it as easy as possible for all of us to be assured of the graces we need to speed the sick and the dying through Purgatory, and to be assured of the graces needed for salvation at the moment of our deaths.

Spread the news of these special graces to every Catholic on the front lines of facing this disease that you know. Make sure they know how to make use of these graces.

New Plenary Indulgence

Because of the pandemic, anyone who, with “the will to fulfil the usual conditions (sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion and prayer according to the Holy Father’s intentions), as soon as possible,” recites the Divine Mercy Chaplet with the intention “to implore from Almighty God the end of the epidemic, relief for those who are afflicted and eternal salvation for those whom the Lord has called to Himself,” can receive a plenary indulgence each day.

This great news was announced in an official decree from the Apostolic Penitentiary on March 20, 2020.

There are other ways to gain this special plenary indulgence, as well:

• the faithful suffering from coronavirus and subject to quarantine by order of the health authority in hospitals or in their own homes, with a spirit detached from any sin, can gain the plenary indulgence if they “unite spiritually through the media to the celebration of Holy Mass, the recitation of the Holy Rosary, to the pious practice of the Way of the Cross or other forms of devotion, or if at least they will recite the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and a pious invocation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, offering this trial in a spirit of faith in God and charity towards their brothers and sisters, with the will to fulfil the usual conditions (sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion and prayer according to the Holy Father’s intentions), as soon as possible.
• “Health care workers, family members and all those who, following the example of the Good Samaritan, exposing themselves to the risk of contagion, care for the sick of Coronavirus according to the words of the divine Redeemer: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15: 13), will obtain the same gift of the Plenary Indulgence under the same conditions.”
• “This Apostolic Penitentiary also willingly grants a Plenary Indulgence under the same conditions on the occasion of the current world epidemic, also to those faithful who offer a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, or Eucharistic adoration, or reading the Holy Scriptures for at least half an hour, or the recitation of the Holy Rosary, or the pious exercise of the Way of the Cross, or the recitation of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, to implore from Almighty God the end of the epidemic, relief for those who are afflicted and eternal salvation for those whom the Lord has called to Himself.”

And here’s a crucial concession to us all, in case we can’t receive the Anointing of the Sick during this period of pandemic and quarantine:

• “The Church prays for those who find themselves unable to receive the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick and of the Viaticum, entrusting each and every one to divine Mercy by virtue of the communion of saints and granting the faithful a Plenary Indulgence on the point of death, provided that they are duly disposed and have recited a few prayers during their lifetime (in this case the Church makes up for the three usual conditions required). For the attainment of this indulgence the use of the crucifix or the cross is recommended (cf. Enchiridion indulgentiarum, no.12).”

Divine Mercy graces and promises

And more: Make sure they know of the special graces promised to us by our Lord through St. Faustina. Make sure people know that we can obtain unimaginable graces for ourselves, for those suffering as a result of this coronavirus, and for the whole world as we groan beneath the burden of this pandemic.

Jesus told St. Faustina of a number of ways to help people make sure that their final destination is Heaven.

Jesus made extraordinary promises for praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet:

At the hour of their death, I defend as My own glory every soul that will say this chaplet; or when others say it for a dying person, the pardon is the same. When this chaplet is said by the bedside of a dying person, God’s anger is placated, unfathomable mercy envelops the soul, and the very depths of My tender mercy are moved for the sake of the sorrowful Passion of My Son (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 811).

… when they say this chaplet in the presence of the dying, I will stand between My Father and the dying person, not as the just Judge but as the merciful Savior (Diary, 1541).

He also made extraordinary promises for veneration of the Divine Mercy Image:

Paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the signature: Jesus, I trust in You. I promise that the soul that will venerate this image will not perish. I also promise victory over [its] enemies already here on earth, especially at the hour of death. I Myself will defend it as My own glory (Diary, 47 and 48).

Jesus made extraordinary promises for those who trust in Him.

The graces of My mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is — trust. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive (Diary, 1578).

My daughter, know that My Heart is mercy itself. From this sea of mercy, graces flow out upon the whole world. No soul that has approached Me has ever gone away unconsoled. All misery gets buried in the depths of My mercy, and every saving and sanctifying grace flows from this fountain. My daughter, I desire that your heart be an abiding place of My mercy. I desire that this mercy flow out upon the whole world through your heart. Let no one who approaches you go away without that trust in My mercy which I so ardently desire for souls.

Pray as much as you can for the dying. By your entreaties, obtain for them trust in My mercy, because they have most need of trust, and have it the least. Be assured that the grace of eternal salvation for certain souls in their final moment depends on your prayer. 

You know the whole abyss of My mercy, so draw upon it for yourself and especially for poor sinners. Sooner would heaven and earth turn into nothingness than would My mercy not embrace a trusting soul (Diary, 1777).

Jesus also made extraordinary promises to all those who spread the message and devotion of Divine Mercy:

Souls who spread the honor of My mercy I shield through their entire lives as a tender mother her infant, and at the hour of death I will not be a Judge for them, but the Merciful Savior. At that last hour, a soul has nothing with which to defend itself except My mercy. Happy is the soul that during its lifetime immersed itself in the Fountain of Mercy, because justice will have no hold on it (Diary, 1075).

Turn to Our Lady

So during this pandemic, let’s thank God for the tremendous graces He’s made available to us through the Holy Father and through St. Faustina. Let’s make sure we spread the word of God’s merciful love, and make regular use of the devotions He’s given to us with such exceptional promises. And let us join the Holy See in asking the Blessed Mother for her special help now:

May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and of the Church, Health of the Sick and Help of Christians, our Advocate, help suffering humanity, saving us from the evil of this pandemic and obtaining for us every good necessary for our salvation and sanctification.

Pray for me; I’ll pray for you.

Chris Sparks serves as senior book editor for the Marian Fathers. He is the author of the Marian Press book How Can You Still Be Catholic? 50 Answers to a Good Question.