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| St. Faustina Kawalska |
In the Gospel (Luke 11: 1-4) Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, calling upon God as Jesus himself did: "Father". God is the one Father whose human children made in his own image and likeness must forgive one another as their Father forgives them.
Jesus directed St. Faustina to write a diary that contained her thoughts, prayers, and the words of Jesus to her. In one passage (#723) Jesus said: "The greater the sinner, the greater the right he has to My mercy." "Right"?
That's not a word we would think of in this context, but Jesus declares that because he came to forgive sinners, they are the ones who have the most claim on his mercy. Another passage (#1183) is a prayer that St. Faustina wrote. It sounds very much like the "one day at a time" spirituality of the Morning Offering: "O Jesus, I want to live in the present moment, to live as if this were the last day of my life. I want to use every moment scrupulously for the greater glory of God, to use every circumstance for the benefit of my soul. I want to look upon everything, from the point of view that nothing happens without the will of God."
4 comments:
God bless Fr. James Kubicki, S.J. He should be writing for America Magazine.
Maria I'd settle for anyone without a secret agenda to destroy the church to write for America magazine.
Amen to that!
People don’t seem to be able to see the hand of God in our existence. Or, perhaps even more often, the hand of God is misidentified. There are many reasons for that.
We already know that God’s values are not our values, but I don’t think that many people really appreciate the implications of that. When God extends mercy, which value system is involved? Is it your value system — a value system that is very far from God’s? Is there any reason to think that the situation that you think is worthy of mercy is the same situation that God thinks is worthy of mercy?
Or does God give greater weight to your community value system? Certainly God places great weight on community values, but God is God. He can expect us to give great weight to community values, and to “love your neighbor”, but that is for our benefit. God understands how to weigh trade-offs in ways that we can’t begin to understand.
Or does God give greater weight to the value system of another community - a community which might have values closer to God? I hope that we don’t assume that a particular group or country or religious sect can’t reflect God’s values in some manner.
Or does God use His own value system to decide what mercy means? In general, lessons are very important to God. And, in general, mercy would be something that helps to move you or others closer to God. (Yes, sacrifice is real.) I would point out that what God calls lessons are often interpreted as “punishment” or “suffering” in this existence. Our confusion about this is just another example of our inability to distinguish “good” from “evil”.
People sometimes describe fearing God. I think that as one knows God better, the fear grows.
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