By Chris Sparks
This time is a kairos of mercy. John Paul II had this intuition first, when he began with Faustina Kowalska, the Divine Mercy ... he had something, he intuited that it was a necessity of this time — Pope Francis, July 28, 2013.
It is a strange fact that St. Faustina Kowalska, the Secretary and Apostle of Divine Mercy, doesn’t appear in the landmark encyclical on Divine Mercy written by the pope who beatified and canonized her.
And yet in 1980, when Dives in Misericordia (Rich in Mercy) was released by St. John Paul II, the ban on Faustina’s writings had only been lifted two years previous by St. Paul VI. The first Polish edition of the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska only existed as a work in progress.
Sure, St. John Paul II had also been the one to launch her cause for canonization as cardinal archbishop of Krakow. But still, in 1980, she wasn’t yet fully and clearly on the Church’s radar.
That would soon change.
Early the next year, the Holy Father was shot on the anniversary of Our Lady’s first appearance at Fatima. While St. John Paul II was convalescing from the assassination attempt, his friend Archbishop Andrew Deskur read to him from the first published Polish edition of St. Faustina's Diary, which our very own Fr. Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, had provided. The first Polish edition of the Diary was printed in Rome because the Communist occupation of Poland at the time prevented the Diary from being printed there.
Saint John Paul II would go on to beatify and canonize St. Faustina, establish Divine Mercy Sunday in the universal calendar of the Church, entrust the world to Divine Mercy, and die on the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday, 2005. As he said at the Lagiewniki Shrine of Divine Mercy in 1997, “The Message of Divine Mercy has always been near and dear to me. It is as if history had inscribed it in the tragic experience of the Second World War. In those difficult years it was a particular support and an inexhaustible source of hope, not only for the people of Krakow but for the entire nation. This was also my personal experience, which I took with me to the See of Peter and which in a sense forms the image of this Pontificate.”
So in some ways, we can read Dives in Misericordia as the thesis statement of his entire pontificate. In the encyclical, he drew deeply on the teachings of Scripture and Catholic Tradition in order to challenge the world of 1980 to raise its eyes from merely earthly realities and to see how Christ opens up to us Heaven.
God the Father is rich in mercy (see Eph 2:4). He turns to us mercy’s gaze through the Son, the Divine Mercy Incarnate, and sends the Holy Spirit, the living and eternal Love of God (which is Divine Mercy when it encounters creatures) to heal us from our sinfulness, raise us from spiritual death, and draw us into communion with the divine life.
This is the meaning of history. This is the meaning of life, and we live in a world that has been so wounded by sin and suffering that many of us have lost sight of that truth. Justice is insufficient when all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (see Rom 3:23). A world order defined by and demanding strict justice — even vengeance — will end in universal destruction. Justice alone will not put a limit on evil, but only Divine Mercy. Only forgiveness, a limit on retribution, and even generously bearing the guilt of others will ever bring us a world at peace.
Ultimately, the world is defined by the merciful love of a Father for His children. The whole cosmos is a temple, a home, intended to be the place where love is given and received between Creator and creatures, between a Father and His beloved children.
And that encounter between Merciful Love and humanity is mediated through a mother — through the created world, through Daughter Zion, through the Church, and through the Blessed Virgin Mary. Saint John Paul’s deep devotion to the Blessed Mother, summed up in his pontifical motto “Totus Tuus” (“totally yours”) that described his total consecration to Jesus through Mary, leads him to offer her as the model for receiving, proclaiming, praying for, and living God’s mercy.
Saint John Paul ends the encyclical with a challenge to the Church that will apply to the end of time:
No matter how strong the resistance of human history may be, no matter how marked the diversity of contemporary civilization, no matter how great the denial of God in the human world, so much the greater must be the Church's closeness to that mystery which, hidden for centuries in God, was then truly shared with man, in time, through Jesus Christ.
What mystery is that? The mystery of the divine Father’s love.
So as we mark the 40th anniversary of the promulgation of Dives in Misericordia, let us take it up once again and read it, listening to St. John Paul’s perennial wisdom. Let’s follow him in his meditation on the Scriptures and their teaching on Divine Mercy. Let us imitate him in learning from St. Faustina, practicing the message and devotion she transmitted, and share the Divine Mercy with the world.
Mary, Mother of Mercy, pray for us.
Saint John Paul II, pray for us.
Saint Faustina Kowalska, pray for us.
Chris Sparks serves as senior book editor for the Marian Fathers. He is the author of the Marian Press book How Can You Still Be Catholic? 50 Answers to a Good Question.
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