From the Wikipedia article on St. Faustina (1905-1938),
Sister Maria Faustina (born Helen Kowalska) "...was a Polish Roman Catholic nun and mystic. Her apparitions of Jesus Christ inspired the Roman Catholic devotion to the Divine Mercy and earned her the title of "Apostle of Divine Mercy".
"Throughout her life, Faustina reported having visions of Jesus and conversations with him, of which she wrote in her diary, later published as The Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul. Her biography, submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, quoted some of these conversations with Jesus regarding the Divine Mercy devotion.[2] "
The Divine Mercy devotion is big around here, possibly because of the large number of people here with Polish roots.
I once waded through all 300-plus pages of Faustina's diary. I found it about equal parts inspiration and exasperation. I admired her perseverance in pursuing her religious vocation. She was from a very poor family and didn't have much education. At that time religious orders usually required a "dowry" from the families of girls entering the convent. Her family didn't have the money, and was not encouraging of her desire to become a nun. She knocked on doors until she found an order willing to wave the dowry requirement. Her visions of Jesus and Mary had started before she entered the convent and continued throughout her life.
The heart of the message from the visions was that mercy is the defining attribute of God. This of course was not a new concept and was affirmed by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. But human beings seem to forget that and need to be reminded from time to time.
Of course the version of the diary that I read was a translation, and one probably doesn't get all the meaning of the original. Faustina's prose style was at times off-putting and a bit purple. There was a lot of use of the word "gushing", as streams of mercy gushing from the Savior's heart.
The translator not only capitalized the names of Jesus and God, but every adjective, possessive, or pronoun pertaining to him. I understand reverence for the Holy Name, but it was distracting when the diary was quoting Jesus speaking in the first person. It made him seem egotistical. Which of course since he is God, he would have had every right to be. But it doesn't square with the Jesus of Scripture.
Some of the message seemed confusing and overheated, rather like the Fatima message. My approach is to take what I can use, and leave the rest, since it is a private revelation.
The part that I can use is the Divine Mercy Chaplet. It is a soothing and meditative prayer form that I use often, in a rather pared down version. The basic how-to (not pared down) is here.
Our parish has used the version set to music by Trish Short. Several families have used it for funeral wake services. There are other versions set to music, but this one is my favorite. The song starts about four and a half minutes into the video.
Some of the message seemed confusing and overheated, rather like the Fatima message. My approach is to take what I can use, and leave the rest, since it is a private revelation.
The part that I can use is the Divine Mercy Chaplet. It is a soothing and meditative prayer form that I use often, in a rather pared down version. The basic how-to (not pared down) is here.
Our parish has used the version set to music by Trish Short. Several families have used it for funeral wake services. There are other versions set to music, but this one is my favorite. The song starts about four and a half minutes into the video.
I am not a fan of Pope Saint John Paul II. I never say his luminous mysteries. Why? Because the rosary, as given to St. Dominic, had 150 Aves, which gave the laity prayers to equal the 150 psalms the priests said in the Divine Office. I am big on sticking to tradition unless there is a need to change greater than just that The Big Guy thinks it needs something else. Thus, if he liked Sister Faustina, that would be strike one against her with me. Strike two would be that one of JP's predecessors, probably Paul VI, decided she was a fake. Paul, of course, was Italian. John Paul and Faustina were Polish. I'm not accusing, I am just saying. Paul VI suspected the German author who "took down" Sister's revelations was garnishing them.
ReplyDeleteAnd strike three was that the Divine Mercy devotion looks like a comic book version of the Sacred Heart. Occam's razor comes into play: We have it, why do we need this?
(Full disclosure: One of my daughters is a Visitation nun, as was St. Margaret Mary Alaquoque who promoted the devotion. The Visitations, then as now, were close with the Jesuits, who enter this story with the presumption that if they are for it, it's fine with me. The Sacred Heart is where my morning begins.)
Up to here, I am willing to accept that I may be a crusty old fart unwilling to learn new ways in my old age. If that's all my discomfort with Divine Mercy is, fine, leave me alone to wallow in the good, old days that never wert. But, but, but JPII decreed we'd all fall all over ourselves over the Divine Mercy on what happened to be -- and still is, but you'd never know it in some parishes around here -- the second Sunday of Easter, and literally in a liturgical sense the end of the day of Resurrection. That was the Church's biggest feast until this bigger new toy was vouchsafed us by the pope who didn't notice sexual abuse. A few years ago, I realized that many of the Catholics I know now consider Easter the first day of the Divine Mercy octave. Mention that to a a promoter of the Cause, and he will say they are wrong to do that. He will tell me that. He won't tell them that. And this one devotion is giving the Church Universal a bunch of church ladies in the mold and model of those Jean complains about. Amen.
Tom, as I mentioned, I am not an uncritical booster of this feast. I am with you that the timing of it takes away from the second Sunday of Easter. The only trouble is, that according to the diary, that's what the Lord asked for. But still we're talking about a private revelation.
DeleteI find the intrusion of the Divine Mercy devotion into the Easter season to be one of the most annoying things that John Paul II imposed. Is nothing sacred? They had the picture displayed next to the altar today but no mention of it in the homily, thank the Lord.
DeleteI am all for praying for mercy because I sure am not getting anywhere without it, but there are scads of devotions that feature mercy that could be substituted for that of St. Sister Faustina. Here are a whole bunch of mercy saints you could pray with in this Year of Mercy. I'll take St. Margaret of Scotland, in whose chapel I once prayed at Edinburgh Castle.
ReplyDeletehttp://saintsresource.com/saints-mercy/
I'm basically with Tom. The nice thing about any given devotion in the Catholic church is you can take it, leave it or never glom onto it in the first place. When it comes to Divine Mercy Sunday, I've never glommed. I had never heard of Sister Faustina until I was well into adulthood. I'm a little skeptical in general of visionaries - maybe because I grew up in the era of Medjugorje. There are various unapproved/uncertified visionaries in the US, which I do my best to steadfastly ignore. I'm sure Sister Faustina's thing is all copacetic, but it's never been part of my spirituality so far. More power and best wishes to those whose boat it floats.
ReplyDeleteOur collective enthusiasm for this feast seems to be underwhelming. I wonder if later it may possibly slide to the position of an optional observance on the church calender, rather like the saint days which are optional observances.
ReplyDeleteActually, "optional observance" is pretty much the status right now. Some lay people always get a tri- parish Divine Mercy prayer service together for the afternoon of the Sunday after Easter. They try to enlist the priests and deacons to be involved in it. But this weekend was Confirmation in all three parishes in town. The clergy were all evented out, and declined the invitation. They told the lay people, "You can do it!" Seems like the perfect occasion for some lay empowerment.
DeleteYesterday, our parish "cluster"* of five parishes had a collective celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday at one of the other parishes. Per my personal policy which I mentioned in a previous comment, I didn't attend, although my pastor did, as apparently going to confession is part of what is done at these things, and they needed priests. Now - the same group of parishes offered communal celebrations of penance within the last 2-3 weeks during Lent.
DeleteI get the connection between divine mercy and the sacrament of penance; I guess what I don't immediately see is how that program fits on the Sunday that ends the Octave of Easter. The whole thing feels square-peg-round-hole-ish to me.
This five-parish celebration is a new thing, but one they ("they" in this case being "an unidentified collection of people, of whom I am not one") are hoping will become an annual occurrence, with the site rotating among the five parishes from year to year. Our turn will come in a couple of years, so it's entirely possible that my days of resolutely ignoring the existence of Divine Mercy Sunday are numbered.
* The Chicago Archdiocese is going through a process called "Renew My Church", which is essentially a strategic planning process to account for the mismatches between parish churches, the numbers of priests available to be pastors for them, the numbers of schools that are open and the numbers of students that attend the schools. When the dust settles, the expectation (mine, anyway) is that there will be considerably fewer parishes, and perhaps many fewer schools, than there are now. Pursuant to the plan, the parishes of the archdiocese are being organized into clusters of parishes in geographic proximity to one another. Our cluster of five parishes doesn't get "activated" for a few more years, but we're trying to start building cooperation ahead of time, whenever it makes sense and when, I suppose, nobody's turf gets needlessly threatened. At some point, though, transgressions of turf will be a real and necessary thing. We're buckling up our seatbelts, as it should be an exciting ride, in the same way that a bone graft or an IRS audit is an exciting ride.
Somewhat the same thing is happening in our area, with clustering of parishes. Mostly it is the smaller town and rural churches being "missions" and "chapels" of larger parishes. All three of the parishes in our town are large enough that they will remain full service, but they will have some satellite parishes under their wings. They are being very careful not to outright close the small town parishes, because that is sometimes what holds those little communities together.
DeleteTurns out a couple of priests did get roped into the divine mercy service, for the reason that you mentioned, Confessions. I'm pretty sure most of those people went to confession prior to Easter, so don't really see how it was urgent. Something about a plenary indulgence, but there's not a time limit on that, just that one should have gone "recently". The priests and deacons are kept really busy during Holy Week and Easter, and then with Confirmation for us. That goes according to the archbishop's schedule, we have to take whatever dates we can get. But it seems like the clergy should get to take a breather, and not have the para-liturgies like Divine Mercy dumped on them immediately.
A neighbor parish, for the second year in a row, held a Divine Mercy whooop-de-doo with two preachers plus Father Stan(?) Fortuna, the Franciscan singer who is good enough that if he had gone into saloon singing he coulda been a contender. I've heard him. And wall-to-wall confession.
DeleteThe parish has a genu-wine Sister Faustina relic. Oh, in fact it's the one I wrote about in Commonweal in the what I did last Sunday issue. The pastor said he did a lot of praying to Faustina while he was trying to get the church built. (I would have relied on the Sacred Heart, but if it works for Father Z...)
Gosh! Never heard of it....
ReplyDeleteHow'd you get so lucky? Bet if you look around your church, someone put the picture on an easel this weekend.
DeleteDon't think so.. We have a lot of graven images. Most are of Our Lady of....a Madonna from south of the U.S.--Caribbean, CAmerica, and SAmerica. One side altar is usually replete with them but I think they were cleared for the Altar of Repose (Holy Thursday, Good Friday) and haven't returned. It's possible a madonna of mercy is among them, but she wasn't in church on the First Sunday after Easter...we had the refreshing account of Doubting Thomas, one of my favorites.
DeleteCorrection: Discussing this discussion over lunch with my significant other, I learn that the image of Divine Mercy is Christ, not Mary (as I thought), that that very image has appeared in our parish on an easel (as Katherine predicted) from time to time, but not on the altar of the Madonnas, and that he had heard of St. Faustina because in high school he had a date with a girl named Faustina.
DeleteAstonishing!
Wow, Katherine, how on earth did you make it through the whole diary? I have only read excerpts, mostly cherry picked by folks who aren't fans of this particular "saint'. A lot of what I read sounded down right heretical at least for the modern day Catholic church, and down right nutsy for most christians in general, In the sections I read, she sounded borderline emotionally disturbed. She certainly had a very vivid imagination and must have been tormented by nightmares a lot.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that disturb me too about Divine Mercy is the indulgence for those who do the "right" things and say the "right" prayers in the "right" order at the "right" times. When still Catholic, I had been relieved when indulgences were sort of buried under the rug, out of sight. Tonight we watched a Rick Steves special about Martin Luther, filmed during the 500 anniversary year. And of course, the issue of indulgences was included. The church may not sell them for money anymore, but they sell them just the same by convincing people to just do and say the "right" things (and don't forget your donation). The sheer arrogance of the church to claim that it can "grant" indulgences to people - that it can do what only God can do - is one of the many doctrinal issues I had with the church that just kept piling up over the years.
I have noticed that the Catholic churches around here who do Divine Mercy Sunday are mostly of the very conservative Catholic variety - the kind that have National Catholic Register in their racks, but not National Catholic Reporter. Or First Things or Crisis, but not America and definitely not Commonweal. I would be surprised to see Divine Mercy done at Holy Trinity in Georgetown, but I haven't been there lately and don't know for sure (Jesuit). I wonder if your region is one reason. The Divine Mercy folk also seem to be largely Trump supporters, and you see that more in the mid-west than in the blue coastal states. So no Divine Mercy stuff for Margaret in NYC, and not a lot in DC. And of course, not at all in my friendly, neighborhood Episcopal church. Thanks be to God!
I read the diary to inform myself, since so many folks around here are attached to the devotion. With them it seems to be more of an ethnic thing rather than an uber-conservative one. The diary raised the same flags with me that the visions such as Fatima do. Such as what you mentioned about saying the "right" prayers, etc, as well as the dire predictions of coming tribulations. Not that they're wrong about that, but there's always tribulations.
DeleteAs I mentioned, the benefit that I take away from it is the chaplet, which I find meditative in a way that doesn't require concentration. the mother of one of my friends converted late in life, and got a great deal of comfort from the chaplet during her last illness, and the family used a musical setting of it for her wake service.
I have wondered if some visions don't amount to hallucinations, but on the other hand I don't want to be dismissive of other people's spiritual experiences.
About indulgences, I have noticed now that the stated conditions for them include that one be repentant of past sin and give up all attachment to sin. Sounds like what we used to call "perfect contrition". In which case, did the indulgence really do anythinganything, since the person has already turned to God for forgiveness?
DeleteSorry about the "anythinganything", when I type on my Kindle it sometimes stutters like that.
DeleteKatherine, maybe they're using a Hawaiian algorithm.
Delete"I have wondered if some visions don't amount to hallucinations"
DeleteA couple of thoughts on this observation, which also has struck me from time to time:
1. I think it's likely that any number of saints wouldn't strike us as being in good mental health. We should rejoice that heaven is also for people with various psychological maladies
2. My personal opinion is that mystical experiences are extremely important to religion, including Catholicism. Probably among the occupants of every pew in our churches on a Sunday is at least one person who has had a vision, or a dream, or some sort of intensely religious private experience that is critical to her/his spirituality. It may be a healing that s/he doesn't ascribe to medical science. It may be something that causes us skeptics to raise our eyebrows.
I agree with you, Jim. It's comforting to think one doesn't have to be playing with a full deck to get to heaven.
DeleteAlso agree about the importance of mystical experiences. And I think a lot of times they are something that people experience intensely, but can't translate well into words.
I have never experienced anything like a vision, just occasionally flashes of insight that last for a moment, and then they are gone. And try as I might, I can't bring them back, except as a vague memory.
Jim, I agree that many people may have had some kind of mystical experience, or at least think they have. But that doesn't make them saints. I think the main reason Faustina was canonized was because she was Polish. I can think of a few popes who don't deserve the designation either, for that matter. I have known a couple of saints during my life, but none of them will ever be named that by the church. So I guess we should simply choose to study the saints whose lives inspire us, whether official or not.
ReplyDeleteAnne, I agree with you about the saints we choose. I've known some, too.
DeleteFWIW, my learning about the life of Jean Donovan, the lay woman who was executed by El Salvadoran military at the same time as the three women religious, has awoken my interest in seeing her canonized. I think she offers important witness. But I don't know how to go about it. If there is a cause already in motion, I'd support it.
St. Faustina apparently tried to baptize Jews. She recounted some scheme whereby a friend would tell her when a dying Jewish woman's family had left her alone so Faustina could baptize her. Strikes me as somewhat weird that you would plot to baptize someone who, we're they conscious, would not want it.
ReplyDeleteDidn't remember that part. Of course my eyes were glazing over for part of that book. I mighta skipped through some of it.
Delete