This Sunday 8 April is Divine Mercy Sunday

What is Divine Mercy Sunday?

Among all of the elements of devotion to The Divine Mercy requested by our Lord through St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, the Feast of Mercy holds first place. The Lord's will with regard to its establishment was already made known in His first revelation to the saint, as recorded in her Diary. In all, there were 14 revelations concerning the desired feast.

Our Lord's explicit desire is that this feast be celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter. This Sunday is designated in "The Liturgy of the Hours and the Celebration of the Eucharist" as the "Octave Day of Easter." It was officially called the Second Sunday of Easter after the liturgical reform of Vatican II. Now, by the Decree of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the name of this liturgical day has been changed to: "Second Sunday of Easter, or Divine Mercy Sunday."

'Now On Throughout the Church'

Pope John Paul II made the surprise announcement of this change in his homily at the canonization of St. Faustina on April 30, 2000. There, he declared: "It is important then that we accept the whole message that comes to us from the word of God on this Second Sunday of Easter, which from now on throughout the Church, will be called ‘Divine Mercy Sunday.' "

By the words "the whole message," Pope John Paul II was referring to the connection between the "Easter Mystery of the Redemption" — in other words, the suffering, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, followed by the sending of the Holy Spirit — and this Feast of Divine Mercy, the Octave Day of Easter, which fulfills the grace of atonement as lived through by Christ Jesus and offered to all who come to Him with trust.

This connection is evident from the scripture readings appointed for this Sunday. As John Paul said, citing the Responsorial Psalm of the Liturgy, "The Church sings … as if receiving from Christ's lips these words of the Psalm." "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His steadfast love (= mercy) endures forever" (Ps 118:1). And then, Pope John Paul II developed the connection further: "[This comes] from the lips of the risen Christ, who bears the great message of Divine Mercy and entrusts its ministry to the Apostles in the Upper Room: ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you. … Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (Jn 20:21-23).

The Importance of the Image

During his homily, John Paul also made clear that the Image of The Divine Mercy St. Faustina saw, which is to be venerated on Divine Mercy Sunday, represents the Risen Christ bringing mercy to the world (see Diary 49, 88, 299, 341, 570, 742). Pope John Paul II said: "Jesus shows His hands and His side [to the Apostles]. He points, that is, to the wounds of the Passion, especially the wound in His Heart, the source from which flows the great wave of mercy poured out on humanity.

"From that Heart, Sr. Faustina Kowalska, the blessed whom from now on we will call a saint, will see two rays of light shining from that Heart and illuminating the world: ‘The two rays,' Jesus Himself explained to her one day, ‘represent blood and water' (Diary, 299).

"Blood and water! We immediately think of the testimony given by the Evangelist John, who, when a soldier on Calvary pierced Christ's side with his spear, sees blood and water flowing from it (see Jn 19:34). Moreover, if the blood recalls the sacrifice of the cross and the gift of the Eucharist, the water, in Johannine symbolism, represents not only Baptism but also the gift of the Holy Spirit" (see Jn 3:5; 4:14; 7:37-39).

The Meaning of the Day

Clearly, Divine Mercy Sunday is not a new feast established to celebrate St. Faustina's revelations. Indeed, it is not primarily about St. Faustina at all — nor is it altogether a new feast! As many commentators have pointed out, The Second Sunday of Easter was already a solemnity as the Octave Day of Easter; nevertheless, the title "Divine Mercy Sunday" does highlight and amplify the meaning of the day. In this way, it recovers an ancient liturgical tradition, reflected in a teaching attributed to St. Augustine about the Easter Octave, which he called "the days of mercy and pardon," and the Octave Day itself "the compendium of the days of mercy."

Liturgically the Easter Octave has always been centered on the theme of Divine Mercy and forgiveness. Divine Mercy Sunday, therefore, point us to the merciful love of God that lies behind the whole Paschal Mystery — the whole mystery of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ — made present for us in the Eucharist. In this way, it also sums up the whole Easter Octave. As Pope John Paul II pointed out in his Regina Caeli address on Divine Mercy Sunday, 1995: "the whole octave of Easter is like a single day," and the Octave Sunday is meant to be the day of "thanksgiving for the goodness God has shown to man in the whole Easter mystery."

Given the liturgical appropriateness of the title "Divine Mercy Sunday" for the Octave Day of Easter, therefore, the Holy See did not give this title to the Second Sunday of Easter merely as an "option," for those dioceses who happen to like that sort of thing! Rather, the decree issued on May 5, 2000, by the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship and The Discipline of the Sacraments clearly states: "the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II has graciously determined that in the Roman Missal, after the title Second Sunday of Easter, there shall henceforth be added the appellation ‘or [that is] Divine Mercy Sunday'…".

Divine Mercy Sunday, therefore, is not an optional title for this solemnity; rather, Divine Mercy is the integral name for this Feast Day. In a similar way, the Octave Day of the Nativity of Our Lord was named by the Church "The Feast of the Mother of God."

Not Just an Option

This means that preaching on God's mercy is also not just an option for the clergy on that day — it is soundly expected. To fail to preach on God's mercy on that day would mean largely to ignore the prayers, readings and psalms appointed for that day, as well as the title "Divine Mercy Sunday" now given to that day in the Roman Missal.

Clearly, the celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday does not compete with, nor endanger the integrity of, the Easter Season. After all, Divine Mercy Sunday is the Octave Day of Easter, a day that celebrates the merciful love of God shining through the whole Easter Triduum and the whole Easter mystery. It is a day of declaration of reparation for all sin, thus the Day of Atonement.

Where to Celebrate?

Holy Cross Catholic Church

Leigh Road
Eastleigh, Hampshire SO509DF
England

St John Fisher

48 Thanet Road
BEXLEY, Kent DA16 3QL
England

Our Lady of Good Counsel Church

15 Peebles Way, Rushey Mead
Leicester, Leicestershire LE4 7ZB
England

Marian Fathers

1 Courtfield Gardens
West Ealing
London, London W13 0EY
England

Our Lady of Compassion RC Church

Green Street
London, London E13 9AX
England

St John the Evangelist, South Parade, Bath. BA2 4AF

Tel: 01225 464 471

parishadmin@stjohnsrcbath.org.uk

St Mary-on-the-Quay Colston Avenue, BS1

parish@stmary-on-the-quay.com

Tel:
0117 926 4702

Saint Edmund’s Catholic Church

65 Oxford Road
, Calne
Wiltshire
SN11 8AQ

Tel: 01249 813131 

Parish Priest: Father Michael Walsh

Email: edmundcalne@sky.com

Juventutem London: Mass for Persecuted Christians

Friday 24th April, 7:30pm

St Mary Moorfields Church, London EC2M 7LS (click for a map)

High Mass with Polyphony for Persecuted Christians,

on the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

The Sacred Triduum Beckons

Michael Sean Winters  |  Apr. 2, 2015 

http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/sacred-triduum-beckons

Today, the Church enters liturgically into its greatest mystery, the Sacred Triduum, in which we celebrate the events that, together, have brought about our salvation. Here, in these days, is the answer to all varieties of Pelagianism for these days are about God’s great deeds. In the accounts of the Passion, the humans do not come off very well and we are all kidding ourselves if we think we would have done any better if we had been there at the time.

At the close of tonight’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper, there will be no final prayer and closing blessing or dismissal. After the Sacred Body of the Lord is carried to the Altar of Repose, and venerated there, the ministers will depart in silence. Tomorrow, at the beginning of the Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday, the ministers enter and leave in silence and there is no “In the name of the Father…” at the beginning of the liturgy and no closing blessing at the end. After the profound reverence before the cross, the presider immediately intones the opening prayer. At the end, all is silence. On Saturday evening, at the Great Vigil, the service again begins abnormally, with the lighting of the Paschal fire. Only at the end of the Vigil Mass do we return to normal when the presider imparts a blessing and the people are dismissed by the deacon. I am not sure the origins of this practice – in the long years when the Easter Vigil was suppressed, was it done differently? – but the significance is obvious: The Triduum is one, long, continuous prayer just as the work of salvation, the Paschal Mystery, is one event, one mystery.

Why is this important? We have all met fellow Christians who over-emphasize Good Friday, who lead self-flagellating lives, who nail everything to the cross, who can be very miserable and joyless disciples of the Lord. We also know fellow Christians who go to the opposite extreme, people for whom everything is Easter and sunrise, and there is no dark side to the human soul, no Satan biting at our heels, no cross to be borne. And, we know other Christians who forget about that evening of communion and instruction that was the Last Supper, for whom the salvation Jesus brings is an individualistic salvation, me and Jesus, or a Christian for whom salvation is entirely an abstraction of the mind, something that God did, but which we do not really experience as the disciples experienced it in the Upper Room. These latter do not take the Lord’s body to eat and the former think one can dine on the Lord’s body alone. Both are wrong.

The Church, on the other hand, sees the light of Easter through the shadow of the Cross, and confronts the Crucifixion in the sure hope in the resurrection, and both Cross and empty tomb we experience as men and women with newly washed feet. The Church is just conservative enough to insist that no matter how smart, how compassionate, how thoughtful, we are, still the Cross will manifest itself in our human lives. We will be broken and the most dangerous breaks, as Pope Francis made clear again this morning in his homily at the Chrism Mass, are those breaks that lead us into spiritual worldiness, which is much more dangerous than standard worldiness. Pity the man who knows not the divine, for whom this coming Saturday night is like all other nights. But, pity more than man who, unwilling to accept or even acknowledge the crosses he is given to bear, and the human  sympathies that result from learning to bear one’s crosses, lords over other people his own spiritual powers or claims the power to empty the spiritual life of crosses altogether with some new fangled ideology of human-driven liberation. The Church conserves the scandal of her founding on a hill in Jerusalem, in all the grim humanness of an execution brought on by the religious leaders of His day whose verdict against Jesus exposed their own preference for spiritual worldiness and their consequent unwillingness to trust that God might be achieving something different and something new.

The Church is just liberal enough to still be startled by God’s verdict on the events of the Triduum which brings the deepest kind of liberation we humans can actually experience, the liberation from death and sin. Instead of rationalizing the events of the Triduum, there is still that instinct in the life of the Church to accept the mystery of divine love and convey it in signs and symbols more than syllogisms or slogans. Instead of “making sense” of the Triduum, the Church is just liberal enough to revel in the freedom it bestows to turn the whole world upside down. And, so, in the Exsultet, we are told that the fall of the human race is now the “happy fault” and “necessary sin of Adam.” We find that the hillside in Jerusalem, forever marked by the cross is now also marked by an empty tomb. We are free to look at death henceforth as a door not a wall, and liberals like opening doors. Our sense of freedom, our Catholic liberalism, is not to be confused with a secular liberalism. That, too, would invite spiritual worldiness, not least these days when liberals tend to be such a dour, grumpy lot. No, our Catholic liberalism is a deeper freedom, a freedom that warms to justice but which exults – Exsultet! – in mercy.

So, here is the first thought for these holiest of days: The Triduum is one event in the history of salvation and the Church recognizes this in the liturgy. Any attempt to over-emphasize the one over the others will lead to grief. But, here is the second thought for these days: We must let ourselves experience these events sequentially, as the disciples did. Tonight, we must go into the Upper Room for a meal, aware that something is in the offing, but unsure of what that something might be. We must acknowledge that side of us which, with Peter, does not want to permit the Lord to wash our feet and then, in such quintessentially human overcompensation, asks that the Lord wash not just our feet but our whole bodies. We must sit at table and let the Lord feed us, trying to imagine what it was like for the disciples not to know what we have come to know, that the bread and the wine truly is His body and His blood, and that He has given the Church a priesthood to bring His body and blood to us throughout our human journey. On this night, let us accept the mandate to love, the grace of communion and the blessing of a presbyterate.

Tomorrow, we must find within us the honesty to admit that we would be standing with the crowd, shouting “Crucify Him!” just as last Sunday we stood with the crowd shouting “Hosanna!” We must acknowledge our role in bringing this verdict of condemnation and execution to its completion, the countless ways we scourge others or let our pride rob others of their humanity, the ways we connive to stamp out life we find inconvenient. Tomorrow, we must acquaint ourselves with the despair, the fear, and the confusion of the apostles: This was not how things were supposed to turn out! Tomorrow, most of all, we must let ourselves feel the painful humanity of Jesus crying “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” God did not come down and save His own, yet how quickly we expect God to come and save us from our crosses. Jesus died, and He died alone, and that is why death ultimately is so terrifying, on account of its abysmal loneliness. Tomorrow, let us not run from the desolate feeling, the sense that all is lost, such reflections bring upon us.

At the Great Vigil, or Sunday morning, whichever service you attend, try and wonder at the sense of surprise the disciples must have felt. When we discover the empty tomb, do we feel the need to go and search for the Lord? Do we recognize Him when we encounter Him? Do we let Him call us by name, so that we might recognize it is He? Can we admit that there is no joy like this joy, the flip side of the coin of love which manifested itself as suffering amidst the evil of Good Friday and now manifests itself as joy amidst the joy brought on by the recognition that God’s verdict on this man Jesus was different from man’s verdict. Can we, all of us, commit to trust in the Lord who defied the Pharisees and endured the cross and grave to achieve this unexpected, even unexpectable, victory? Can we say and sing with Paul (and with Handel): Death is swallowed up in Victory. O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?

Yes, the work of our salvation is one great event, but let us experience it sequentially, as the disciples did so that we might never emphasize the one aspect over the other. A Blessed and Holy Triduum to you all.  

Monastic Experience Weekend (Triduum)

Vocations

Thursday, 2 April 2015 at 10:00 - Sunday, 5 April 2015 at 16:00 (BST)

London, United Kingdom

Free

Men aged between 18 and 49 are invited to come and experience the richness and tradition of a Benedictine Holy Week. They will have the chance to share in the community's liturgy at Mass and in the Divine Office, and to spend some time in private prayer and private reading. They are invited to have a taste of the community's life and, if they wish, to speak about their own lives.

If you would like to know more, or if you would like to stay at the monastery with a view to discerning your vocation, (either for an organised weekend or at some other time) please phone or write to:

Abbot Martin Shipperlee

Ealing Abbey, Charlbury Grove London W5 2DY

020 8862 2000

dmartin@ealingabbey.org.uk

http://ealingmonks.org.uk/vocation/monastic-experiences/ 

There is still time for the Sacrament of Confession before Easter

A Difficult Confession... A Communion Filled with Consolation

“I could not have been more relieved: I wept with happiness. I venture to say that it was on that day that I became an honest man.” Thus, François-René de Chateaubriand of the Académie Française, describes the effects of a well-made childhood Confession.

In his famous work, Memoires d’outre-tombe (Memoirs From Be- yond the Grave), Chateaubriand — renowned diplomat and great French writer — reveals how he overcame a trial, undergone by many souls and yet to be experienced by many others. He narrates the story in the literary style typical of the early 1800s.

 The time for making my first communion approached. My piety appeared sincere; I edified the whole school. My fasts were frequent enough to cause my masters concern.  I had for a confessor the superior of the seminary, a man of fifty and of stern demeanour. Each time I approached the confessional he anxiously questioned me. Surprised at the triviality of my sins, he did not know how to reconcile my distress with the lack of importance of the secrets I confided to him. As Easter approached the priest’s questions became more incisive.

“Are you withholding anything from me?”

“No, Father.”

“Have you committed such and such a sin?”

“No, Father.”

It was always: “No, Father.” He dismissed me doubtfully, sighed and gazed into the depths of my soul. I left his presence pale and guilt-ridden as a criminal.

I was to receive absolution on the Wednesday of Holy Week. I spent the night between Tuesday and Wednesday in prayer, reading with terror the book of Painful Confessions. On the Wednesday, at three in the afternoon, we set out for the seminary accompanied by our parents.

Upon arrival, I prostrated before the altar and lay there as if vanquished. When I arose to enter the sacristy where the superior awaited, my knees trembled beneath me.

I cast myself at the priest’s feet, and it was only in the most strained of tones that I managed to pronounce my Confiteor.

“Well, have you forgotten anything?” the man of God asked me.

I remained silent. His questions continued; always the fatal, “no, Father,” issued from my lips. He meditated; he sought counsel of Him who conferred upon the Apostles the power of binding and loosing souls. Then, with an effort he prepared to give me absolution. It would have caused me less dread had a thunderbolt issued from heaven. I cried out:

“I have not confessed all!”

The redoubtable judge, the delegate of the Supreme Arbiter, whose face had so evoked fear, now became the most tender of shepherds; he embraced me, and I melted in tears:

“Come now,” he said to me. “My dear boy, courage!”

I will never have a similar moment in my life. I could not have felt more relieved had the weight of a mountain been lifted from me I wept with happiness. I venture to say that it was on that day that I became an honest man. The first step having been taken, the rest cost little.

“After all,” he added, “you have little time for penitence; but you have been cleansed of your sins by a courageous, though tardy, avowal.”

Raising his hand, he pronounced the formula of absolution. On this second occasion, that fearful hand showered nothing but heavenly dew upon my head; I bowed to receive it, feeling a participation in the joy of the angels.

I ran to the foot of the altar where my mother awaited me and cast my- self into her arms. I no longer seemed to be the same person to my masters and schoolfellows; I walked with a light step, head held high with an air of radiance in the triumph of repentance.

On the following day, Holy Thursday — the commemoration of the In- stitution of the Eucharist — Chateaubriand received his First Communion.

What he felt in his childish heart remains between him and God alone. Nevertheless, we can affirm that the presence of the Eucharistic Jesus in his soul made him tremble with love and happiness. For he later affirmed that like the martyrs of old, he would gladly have laid down his life and shed his blood on that occasion to praise and       honour Him. ²

From archives of the Heralds of the Gospel magazine Vol. 1, No. 3 Jan-Feb 2007