The letters in the New Testament from Saints Peter and Paul, whose feast we celebrate on Jun. 29, are the praise and proclamation of God's mercy, and an exhortation to practice it.
St. John Eudes was born into a peasant family in Normandy, France, in 1601. After discerning a call to the priesthood he joined the Oratorians, and studied under two of the greatest French Oratorian spiritual masters.
Let us move on now to the works of St. Bonaventure, the great 13th century mystic philosopher, theologian, and doctor of the Church.
Following are three examples from The Little Flowers of St. Francis. In each of these examples, the Merciful love of God - manifest in His willingness to forgive sins - is the central theme.
In the High Middle Ages, the theme of the merciful love of God was certainly not the exclusive property of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Catherine of Siena, and the Dominicans. The early Franciscans also contributed to the Church's meditations on Divine Mercy in their own distinctive way.
Catherine was clearly a mystic of the highest order, and she lived a life saturated with prayer.
When we fail to be merciful, St. Thomas reassures us that Divine Mercy for the repentant is not just adequate or sufficient for us, but superabundant, as infinite as God's nature itself.
Let us return to the writings of the Patristic scholar Henry Chadwick and his summary of St. Augustine's fully developed doctrine of salvation.
St. Augustine was born in 354 A.D. in a small town in what is now Algeria, North Africa. His father was a pagan, but his mother was a devout Christian believer, later canonized and known to the whole Catholic world as St. Monica.
We should remember to be grateful, particularly on the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter the Apostle on Feb. 22, for Christ's loving protection of His Church.
