Now I Get It

By Margaret Kleinman

Last spring I became part of the Marian Helper family, and I felt moved to write to share my experiences and to thank all of you on Eden Hill for the wonderful work you are doing, of which I am now blessed to be a part.

Last summer, after several health challenges that required me to temporarily live in a nursing home, I felt strongly guided to do a special 54-day novena to ask the Blessed Mother for help. I knew she would hear and respond to my prayers. The novena ended on Oct. 5. It was months later that I found out that is St. Faustina's feast day. On that day, a friend "coincidentally" gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

Less than two weeks after I finished the novena, another friend handed me a leaflet on Divine Mercy. I had heard of the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy and had loved the beautiful image of The Divine Mercy, but I didn't know too much about them.

When I read the story of The Divine Mercy, it moved me. That same afternoon, my friend gave me another leaflet titled "Contemplate My Wounds." After I read it, I began to get a little understanding of how powerful and healing this message is.

That evening, I spoke to our Lord in prayer and asked if He was guiding me to The Divine Mercy message and devotion and if he would let me know. Well, I got my answer in minutes!

When I turned on the TV to watch a Sunday night movie, the opening scene showed a procession of people entering a village, all dressed in red and white and carrying crucifixes. When I saw that, I knew I was being called to this devotion. All that evening, I felt a strong presence of peace all around me and in my room. In my heart, I felt that the Lord was with me.

A day or two later, I began to pray the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy together with my friend. There's a Spanish language channel here in southern California that has a show featuring the chaplet, sung in Spanish, every day at 3 p.m. I'm bilingual, so I can pray in English and Spanish. The people singing the chaplet moved me to tears. Since that day, I try to say or sing the chaplet daily at 3 p.m.

I am also trying to practice mercy more in my daily life and grow more deeply in it, allowing God's mercy to transform me inside and, through me, touch many others. And so now I can say that Our Lady truly answered my prayers in a most beautiful way. The gift she brought me is so much greater than simple physical healing, for the healing of the soul is much more important than that of the body.

Though I will never lose hope that my physical problems can be healed or at least improved or relieved, I now understand more deeply that even suffering can be a blessing. God is with me in it, giving me the strength to rise above it and an inner joy that nothing can touch.

Margaret Kleinman lives in Gardena, Calif.

Learn how you can become a Marian Helper - helping the Marians to spread the message of The Divine Mercy and devotion to Mary Immaculate.

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