The picture on this reflection was taken in the home parish church of St. Faustina in Glohowiec Poland.
Our Catholic Faith is so beautiful. We have great opportunities every day and every time we worship to praise God. But, for me there is nothing God offers that I can think which deserves more praise than His Divine Mercy.
It is through Divine Mercy that we are redeemed, it is through Divine Mercy that I have been led from despondent sinner to hopeful saint – maybe the sinner saint. While I am still a great sinner, the least worthy to be thought of by God, or receive anything but judgment and condemnation, Jesus says otherwise in His Divine Mercy.
The night I finally came back to God, I fell to my knees and prayed. I gave my life to Jesus that night but not our of Love of Him. No, I prayed from a place of imperfect contrition, that is to say, I was afraid of judgment and Hell.
I had come to realize in the prior weeks that if I died at that moment, my life and actions would earn me a place in hell. His judgment was cast and I would get what I had earned and deserved, cast out of the Heavenly Feast.
I had lived 3 1/2 decades far from Jesus. Not following any of His teachings and in many instances, I was worse than the centurions who spit in His Holy Face and slapped Him. I was raised Catholic and I know now the only reason I was brought to this moment on my knees before the Tribunal of God was because of my baptism.
I didn’t know then that God had marked me as His son that day in May of ‘66. My Baptism and Confirmation had protected me from even worse transgressions throughout my life. I only know that God had made it clear that if I died at that moment, my judgment would be eternal fires.
But, that moment of fearful repentance was enough to open the door to God’s Mighty Divine Mercy. Over the past 20 years, He has opened the floodgates of Divine Mercy in my life. First, He gave me just a trickling flow. I wasn’t ready for all He had to offer. But, more recently this flood has become a torrent. A tsunami of Mercy flooding my soul.
I now stand before my God, knowing that who I once was is gone. That man is cast away. In part, I am who I am because of who I was, but, also, I am who I am and can be because of Divine Mercy.
I went from a castaway doomed to eternal damnation to someone the Father can smile and proudly call His son. I show promise that someday I may be who He created.
I know who I was, I know the judgment He showed me is what I deserve and I know I earned this judgment against His wishes. My actions broke His heart and this judgment broke His Sacred Heart to cast. It is because of the knowledge of who I was and what I deserve that I give so much praise to God.
If Jesus can change my heart and redeem me, I praise Him so much more because anyone can be redeemed.
This is why you will always find me with my hands and off-key voice raised in praise to the Divine Mercy of God. “I know that my redeemer lives” Job 19:25
Join the song! “I would like to cry out to the whole world, “Love God, because He is good and great is His mercy!”” Divine Mercy in my soul # 1372
Who will join me at St. Albert the Great Church in Pittsburgh to sing praise to what Jesus has done in their life? Praise Nation is hosting a festival of praise of Saturday October 17 from 5:30-7:00pm.
This festival of praise is titled ‘Coming Home’. How about you join me and we sing together our joy at Coming Home to our Divine Savior. Through His Divine Mercy we are redeemed, He paid a high cost to call out through the wilderness and bring us Home. Come to the Festival of Praise and find me, then let’s sing to the goodness of the Lord as we offer our praise to His magnificent Divine Mercy.
“Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:4-6