Today I’m finishing up the Divine Mercy Novena in honor of Divine Mercy Sunday, which is tomorrow. This is the first novena I’ve ever prayed (it wasn’t so long ago that I didn’t even know what a novena was). Judging from the name, I thought novenas were certain prayers that you did for nine days, but apparently it can be nine anything: days; weeks; years; or perpetuity, which doesn’t really make it nine anything anymore if you ask me. I’ve come to the conclusion that the Divine Mercy Chaplet is a pretty cool prayer. It’s easy to memorize, which is great for those of us who still have to use a cheat sheet for the rosary sometimes, and the words themselves have a really profound meaning. And I’m a fan of linguistics, so for me the words, “For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world,” just have a really nice ring to them. (Also it’s short. I don’t have anything against long prayers, but I pray before bed, and I’m a little ashamed to admit that I’ve been known to fall asleep before finishing a rosary. Now the rosary makes me yawn. It’s very Pavlovian.)
Divine Mercy Sunday is one of those things I’d heard of but didn’t really know anything about until, you know, today. I was around for it last year, of course, but seeing as it was about a week after I’d decided to become Catholic, I was more worried about what was going on at Mass and kneeling at the right time than I was about what feast day or solemnity it was. (Is this a feast day? I don’t even know.) But this afternoon I was watching live coverage of the prayer vigil in Rome for the beatification of John Paul II, and they had a little segment on Divine Mercy Sunday and St. Faustina, a Polish nun, who had a vision of Jesus with two beams of light emanating from His heart, “one red and one pale.”
“Oh, so that’s who St. Faustina is,” I thought to myself. And then the segment went on to say that a painting of Faustina’s vision had been commissioned. “Oh, so that’s where that picture came from,” I thought. You learn something new every day.
I happened to go to the vigil Mass today because I have to be at the Methodist Church tomorrow for a Pioneer Club anniversary celebration and I didn’t want to wait until the end of the day tomorrow to go. Plus I just like going to Mass, so I’ll probably end up going at the end of the day tomorrow anyway. Father M. had Mass at the cathedral downtown, and he mentioned the Faustina painting, of course. We have a print on display in the church. He said the red light coming from Jesus’ heart represents blood and the white light represents water. These, in turn, represent Christ being both God and Man. There’s a lot of that going on, I’ve found.
Father M.’s homilies are always fantastic. Today he talked about the readings, when the risen Christ breathed on the apostles, establishing through the priesthood the sacrament of Reconciliation and how this institution relates to His Divine Mercy. He pointed out that there are only three instances in Scripture where it says that God breathed: during creation, when God breathed life; on the cross, when Jesus breathed His last and accomplished reconciliation between God and mankind; and in the upper room, when Jesus comforted the apostles and breathed on them. That, Father M. said, is how you know it was a really big deal.
I always get really excited in a super nerdy sort of way when I realize how much sense the Bible makes in the context of the Catholic Church.
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