Behold The Heart Of Jesus, Which Drips Blood For The Love Of Man

It’s always the tissue of male heart muscle when the molecular structure of a Eucharistic miracle is examined under a microscope. Jesus had “heart” but, more importantly, He had a heart. The word “heart” is synonymous with grit, soul, intuition, love, strength, generosity, and, in its most total sense, the very center of man. Today’s feast embraces all of those meanings. 

Christ’s Sacred Heart teaches us that God loves us as a friend loves a friend, as a parent loves a child, or as a sibling loves his closest brother or sister. That is, Christ loves us in the same way as a person loves us, only more intensely. Our God doesn’t shift the planetary order, redirect the rays of the sun, or create a parallel gravitational field to magnetize His love for mankind. 

Science fiction requires a fluid imagination. Understanding God’s love should not, and does not, demand such mental contortionism. Understanding God’s love should be as simple as recalling your little hand in your father’s big hand as you walked next to him at night as a little girl. It requires remembering running into your mother’s soft embrace, cheek to cheek, after skinning your knee. Jesus Christ’s love for man is as human and as clear as a beating heart. Simply put, Jesus loves us from just above His solar plexus, where His heart pulsates with emotion for every sacred creature who harbors a human soul.

The widely loved devotion to the Sacred Heart is not rooted in a feast of ancient pedigree similar to those of Holy Week. No Christian of the first millenium ever gazed into the haunting eyes of Christ as He stared out from a Sacred Heart image enthroned on the family-room wall. It was only in 1856 that Pope Pius IX placed this feast on the Church’s universal calendar. The Pope acted after almost two centuries of devotion to the Sacred Heart, which had grown out of the thinking, preaching, and prayer of the indefatigable Saint John Eudes and out of the visions of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. Both of these saints were indebted, in turn, to the medieval revelations of the Sacred Heart granted to Saint Gertrude the Great.

We love the Heart of Christ because His heart loved us first. We adore the adorer, love the lover, and worship the worshiper. Because God comes first, all of our love for Him is the repayment of a debt. We are not doing God a favor by loving him any more than a hammer does a carpenter a favor by slamming nails into wood. Religion is about raw justice, not doing God favors. That God loves us is not readily apparent from creation itself or from the history of mankind. The gods were many things to many races throughout the ages, but love was not one of them. 

Christianity had to tell the world that God was love. And Jesus had to attach His arms to a cross and die for that message to be convincing. The visions of Saint Margaret Mary made God’s love concrete and comprehensible, while the visions of Saint Faustina Kowalska deepened the meaning of this feast still more. In these challenging visions, Christ rips open His heart to Sister Faustina and shows her a calm and deep ocean of mercy waiting to bathe repentant sinners in its saving waters. Three strands—the Sacred Heart, love, and mercy—are now braided in a tight belt of spiritual truth.

True heart is not proven by waving to the crowds from a car in a victory parade or by luxuriating on the beach with friends. Real heart is in the last stretch of the neck over the finish line, in climbing the stage to receive a diploma after years of academic struggle, or in pulling yourself out of bed to go to nocturnal adoration. True heart is synonymous with long suffering, perseverance, and conquering through adversity. True heart is dying on the cross when you didn’t deserve it. 

A true heart is a Sacred Heart. That’s the heart of our God. No athlete goes to the Olympics to compete for the silver. Jesus reached for the gold from the dais of the cross, slick with his own blood. There’s no need for us to keep on searching for a heart of gold in this world. 

We know in exactly whose body that heart beats. It’s all gold, it’s all sacredness, and it loves us like Himself.

The Eucharist In The Life Of Saint Faustina

During the celebration of Corpus Christi in Rome in 2004, the Pope announced the Year of the Holy Eucharist. Saint Faustina’s full religious name was Sister Maria Faustina of the Most Blessed Sacrament and her whole life revolved around the Holy Eucharist. If you read her diary almost every page makes reference to the Eucharist. In talking about her life to a friend she said, “The most solemn moment of my life is the moment when I receive Holy Communion and for every Holy Communion I give thanks to the Most Holy Trinity” (Diary 1804).

The sisters had a tradition that each sister drew a choice of patron for the year at the begining of each New Year. Sister Faustina was overjoyed year after year when she drew  "The Holy Eucharist"  (Diary 360).

She had a special relationship to the Holy Eucharist, because Jesus gave her a clear understanding of this mystery. She describes it “as the wonderful gift of His presence on earth”. During Mass, “I thanked the Lord Jesus for having redeemed us and for having given us the greatest of all gifts, the Holy Eucharist”. “You wanted to stay with us, and so you left us yourself in the Sacrament of the Altar, and you opened wide your mercy to us. You opened an inexhaustible spring of mercy for us, giving us your dearest possession, the Blood and Water, that gushed forth from Your Heart” (Diary 1747).

During a Holy Hour, in a vision of the cenacle, Sr. Faustina saw the institution of the Holy Eucharist. She came to understand that, "At the moment of consecration...the sacrifice was fully consummated. Hereafter, only the external ceremony of death will be carried out. Never in my whole life had I understood this mystery so profoundly as during that hour of adoration" (Diary 684, 757, 832).

She devoted a lot of her prayers to asking God to let the world understand more the unfathomable mystery and mercy of the Eucharist.  She said, “Who will ever conceive and understand the depth of mercy that gushed forth from His Heart”? 

It is only in eternity that we shall know the great mystery given to us in Holy Communion. One day we will know what God is doing for us in each Mass, and what sort of gift He is preparing through it for us.

“All the tongues of men and angels united could not find words adequate to describe this mystery of Your love and mercy”. “Transform me in Yourself, 0 Jesus, that I may be a living sacrifice and pleasing to You. I desire to atone at each moment of my life for poor sinners.“

Jesus answered her prayers telling her: “You are a living host, pleasing to the Heavenly Father” (Diary 1826). She said: All the good that is in me is due to the Holy Communion. I owe everything to it.

St. Faustina lived fully the prayer of the Church: “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love“.

Her experience of being like a living host, hidden, broken, and given, was to be the experience of her life - Her greatest desire was: to be hidden, like Jesus in the Eucharist; to be broken, like Jesus, in the passion; to be totally given, like Jesus, in the salvation of souls.

But, this experience was based on the union of love with the living God and this union was most profoundly experienced in conjunction with the Holy Eucharist, either during Mass and Holy Communion, or during adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

Her union with the Lord was, in His words, as a bride: Here, I am entirely yours, soul, body and divinity as Your Bridegroom. You know what love demands, one thing only, reciprocity. (Diary 1770) 

What she experienced during Holy Communion was a complete union with the Holy Trinity, “At that moment, I was drawn into the bosom of the Most Holy Trinity, and I was immersed in the love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit“. (Diary 1670, 1121,1129)

These times of union are a taste of Eternity she said. (Diary 969). Holy Communion was the strength and support of St. Faustina in her every day struggle of life. The Lord told her: In the Host is the power; it will defend you always. (Diary 616)

Throughout her diary, she recorded the strength she received from the Eucharist  Throughout the day she adored Jesus, praising and asking Him for graces, especially for suffering children (Diary 1821).

A regular experience for St. Faustina was the vision of the Lord during Holy Mass. Over sixty such visions are recorded in her diary, mostly of the infant Jesus, a few occasions with the Blessed Mother, and at other times, Jesus during His passion and some of His majesty.

Some dozen times she records seeing the rays of mercy as in the image of the Merciful Savior coming from the Holy Eucharist, at times covering the world. (See Diary 420, 441, 1046)

These profound experiences during the Holy Eucharist were closely associated with the vessels of mercy, namily the Feast, the Image, the Chaplet, and the Three o'Clock prayer.

Holy Communion is the most important part of the celebration of the Feast of Divine Mercy. On a number of occasions, St. Faustina saw the Eucharist radiate red and white rays, like in the Image of Divine Mercy.

The Chaplet of Divine Mercy is Eucharistic. It is an offering of the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the Father, in atonement for the sins of the world.

If you wanted to summarise the Diary of St. Faustina, you would have to come to the conclusion that all the vessels the Lord gave us through St. Faustina are Eucharistic. 

There was a very special place for the Holy Eucharist in the life of Sister Maria Faustina of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Credits : Divine Mercy Publications, Ireland 

Divine Mercy Sunday, Created By A Pope Inspired By A Saint

John Paul II instituted Divine Mercy Sunday (the second Sunday of the Easter season) in 2000.

That was 20 years after John Paul wrote the encyclical “Dives in Misericordia” (“Rich in Mercy”).

“The message of Divine Mercy has always been near and dear to me,” explained the pope who described that virtue as the answer to the world’s problems.

His establishment of Divine Mercy Sunday coincided with his canonization of Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska, known as the “Apostle of Mercy” based on her visions and conversations with Jesus, all recorded in her diary and recognized by her spiritual directors.

Pope John Paul called his fellow Pole — who reported 14 revelations concerning the message of Divine Mercy — “the great apostle of Divine Mercy in our time.” He called the day he established Mercy Sunday and canonized Sister Faustina “the happiest day of my life.”

St. Faustina:

Helena Kowalska was the third of ten children, born Aug. 25, 1905 in the village of Glogowiec, Poland. At age 20 she entered the Congregation of Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy whose members devote themselves to the care and education of troubled young women.

In the 1930s she received the Lord’s message of mercy and was asked to become the apostle for God’s plan of mercy. She received the prayer of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy through her visions and also was responsible for instructing an artist to portray the image of Christ with rays of love and mercy streaming from his heart. She died in 1938 at age 33.

In 2002, Pope John Paul entrusted the whole world to Divine Mercy when he consecrated the international Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Lagiewniki, Poland, where St. Faustina’s mortal remains are entombed. The pope frequently quoted from the diary of the saint and prayed the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy at her tomb.

It was during the vigil of the feast of Divine Mercy, on April 2, 2005, that Pope John Paul died.

Dives in Misericordia:

In this encyclical, Pope John Paul used the theme of divine mercy that “the modern world needs so much.” He included a long commentary on the Parable of the Prodigal Son that illustrates how mercy “promotes and draws good from all the forms of evil existing in the world and in man.”

The encyclical is divided into eight chapters that highlight the Messianic message, the Paschal Mystery and, finally the prayer of the church.

“At no time and in no historical period-especially at a moment as critical as our own-can the Church forget the prayer that is a cry for the mercy of God amid the many forms of evil which weigh upon humanity and threaten it. Precisely this is the fundamental right and duty of the Church in Christ Jesus, her right and duty towards God and towards humanity” (n. 15)

The Church, said John Paul, has the right and duty to appeal to the God of mercy “in an ardent prayer; in a cry that implores mercy according to the needs of man in the modern world.”

Chaplet of Divine Mercy:

The chaplet is a devotion based on the visions of Jesus reported by St. Mary Faustina and is said as a rosary-based prayer beginning with the Our Father, Hail Mary and the Apostle’s Creed. The repeated prayer of each decade is: “For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”

According to the saint’s diary, Christ said: “Encourage souls to say the Chaplet which I have given you… whoever will recite it will receive great mercy at the hour of death.”

The chaplet can also be prayed as a novena with a specific intention for each day that ends with the prayer, “Eternal Father, turn your merciful gaze upon lukewarm souls who are nonetheless enfolded in the most compassionate heart of Jesus.”

From The Bronx To Taiwan

Maryknoll Father Eugene Murray sums up the essence of his 62 years of missionary priesthood in two simple phrases: being kind to people and relying on God’s grace.

“I enjoy my mission life. I love the sacramental part of saying Mass, giving communion, helping the people in their relationship with Jesus,” he says. “As you do the missionary work, you try to keep close to our Lord and you ask for his help and his graces.”

His parishioners at Our Lady of China Church are eager to list the ways the priest’s kindness has impacted their community. “He is selfless and has a big, warm smile,” says Wei Ren Jr., who was baptized at the parish and learned about the Bible from Father Murray.

“He shares God’s love in his daily life.” Wang De Lan, a new parishioner, says she is impressed by the priest’s patience. “He never talks about others’ faults,” she says. “I really like his way of guiding us. He is a good shepherd.” In Taiwan, 88-year-old Father Murray is known as Father Dzeng Syan Dau, meaning “one who makes manifest the teaching.” Parishioners explain how he teaches by example.

“He’s found a lot of the lost sheep,” Wei says through an interpreter. “He cares about the community, going to the hospitals and the jail.” Father Murray has worked in several parishes, been director of the Maryknoll Language Center in Taichung and taught English at a high school and a Catholic university. He also worked as a prison chaplain for over 20 years, visiting inmates weekly. 

“One of them had his whole family baptized and he joined the Legion of Mary,” Father Murray says. 

Eugene Murray, who grew up with eight siblings in the Bronx, New York, was inspired to be a priest while attending Cardinal Hayes High School and hearing Maryknoll Father Joseph English speak about the missions. “He talked to us about how many people have not yet heard the name of Jesus, especially in places like China,” Father Murray recalls. “I was very moved by that.” Then 15-year-old Murray joined the Venard, Maryknoll’s junior seminary in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania. Eleven years later, he was ordained a priest. He was assigned to Taiwan in 1958. “It became my whole life,” he says. 

Transformation of Taiwan:  

Recalling the Taiwan he first encountered, Father Murray says: “It was an agricultural society,” where people worked in rice fields but had time between planting and harvesting to listen to priests and catechists. “Maybe 40 to 50 people would study the doctrine and get baptized together, and they would form a community.” 

Industrialization transformed Taiwan in the 1960s, he says, prompting young people to move to the cities to work in factories. Even though the Taichung Diocese and Maryknoll reached out to Catholics in the cities, he says, the demands of modern life made it harder for new people to get involved with the Church. “People are busy all the time, all year round,” the missioner says. Nowadays, he adds, people’s needs are not financial but spiritual. In Taiwan, about 1.5 percent of the population is Catholic. 

“People are looking for things that give more meaning to their lives,” he says. “It is not just making money and producing a lot of goods that makes you happy. It’s peace of mind coming from God.” During the three years he spent away from Taiwan, Father Murray’s work included helping the United States Catholic Conference to resettle Vietnamese refugees after the Vietnam War. He returned to Taiwan in 1976 and was assigned to Shalu parish, which did not have many practicing Catholics. Father Murray and the parish catechist visited the Catholics who were registered to invite them back to the Church. 

He remembers Tio Bi Le, a young factory worker and his first catechumen in Shalu. Before Tio Bi Le was baptized, her mother told her, “Oh, you are going to be a hungry ghost,” referring to the custom to put out food for the dead during big feast days. Father Murray adds, “She told her mother: ‘No, I won’t be a hungry ghost; I remember listening to the doctrine very carefully, and for Catholics, there is an everlasting banquet in heaven.’” She went on to become a catechist, married and raised Catholic children. “The people who believe and are baptized are rather faithful,” Father Murray says. “It’s gratifying to see how much the faith means to them.”  

Immersed in Taiwanese Culture:  

Since 1985, Father Murray has served in Our Lady of China parish in Ching Shui, Taichung. “The majority of my Catholics are mainland Chinese who came over in 1949 with Chiang Kai-shek,” he says. The nationalist Chinese army of Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan after being defeated by the communists under Mao Zedong. Soldiers and their families were living in military villages that the Taiwanese government built for them. 

Ten years ago, the government reclaimed the land, built 10-story buildings and moved the people into these apartments. The soldiers and their families — who arrived in their 20s — are now elderly and often have foreign workers taking care of them. “I visit them often with the Legion of Mary members,” he says. “We bring them communion and we anoint them, if necessary.” 

“He is just like a father figure,” says Li A Hau, a parishioner who accompanies Father Murray on his visits. “When a parishioner needs anything, he tries to fulfill all the needs of the parishioner. But Father never asks parishioners to do something for him.” Father Murray officially became a Taiwanese citizen in 2017 after the government allowed foreigners to have dual citizenship. “I applied at the encouragement of some of my Catholics,” he says. 

Many parishioners laud his fluency in the Mandarin and Taiwanese languages. “He is completely immersed in our Taiwanese culture, tradition, family and societal values,” Wei says. “Except for his appearance, he is totally Taiwanese.” Father Murray feels grateful to have been able to share God’s message in Taiwan. “The credit is to God and God’s grace,” he says. “Everything falls into place.”

Credits : UCA News 

Mary's Prayer Of Adoration

Mary devoted herself exclusively to the Eucharistic glory of Jesus. She knew that it was the desire of the Eternal Father to make the Eucharist known, loved and served by all men; that the need of Jesus’ Heart was to communicate to all men His gifts of grace and glory.  She knew, too, that it was the mission of the Holy Spirit to extend and perfect in the hearts of men the reign of Jesus Christ, and that the Church had been founded only to give Jesus to the world.

All Mary’s desire, then, was to make Him known in His Sacrament.  Her intense love for Jesus felt the need of expanding is this way, of consecrating itself—as a kind of relief, as it were—because of her own inability to glorify Him as much as she desired.

Ever since Calvary, all men were her children.  She loved them with a Mother’s tenderness and longed for their supreme good as for her own; therefore, she was consumed with the desire to make Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament known to all, to inflame all hearts with His love, to see them enchained to His loving service.

To obtain this favor, Mary passed her time at the foot of the Most Adorable Sacrament, in prayer and penance.  There she treated of the world’s salvation.  In her boundless zeal, she embraced the needs of the Faithful everywhere, for all time to come, who would inherit the Holy Eucharist and be Its adorers.

But the mission dearest to Mary’s heart was that of constant prayer for the success of the preaching and the missionary labors of the Apostles and of all the members of Jesus Christ’s priesthood.  It is not surprising, then, that those Apostolic workers so easily converted entire kingdoms, for Mary remained constantly at the foot of the Throne of Mercy, supplicating on their behalf the Savior’s benevolence.  Her prayers converted countless souls, and as every conversion is the fruit of prayer, and since Mary’s prayer could meet no refusal, the Apostles had in this Mother of Mercy their most powerful helper.  “Blessed is he for whom Mary prays!”

Reassessing Our Time In Prayer

“I know God is in my heart. And the fact that I feel Him in my heart does not interfere with my duties. Even when I am dealing with very important matters which require attention, I do not lose the presence of God in my soul, and I am closely united with Him. With Him I go to work, with Him I go for recreation, with Him I suffer, with Him I rejoice; I live in Him and He in me. I am never alone, because He is my constant companion. He is present to me at every moment” (St. Faustina’s Diary 318)


Resurrection: 

It is obvious from the Resurrection passages in the Bible that neither Mary Magdalen or the Apostles really expected Jesus to rise from the dead. When Jesus spoke Mary Magdalen’s name at the tomb on that Easter Sunday morning, it didn’t just change her life, it changed the history of the world. When Jesus spoke to her, she recognised Him. Standing in front of her, loving her, was proof of God’s love. She had come to the tomb with the women to anoint a dead body and prepare it for burial. The burial would never take place. Jesus was alive. He had risen from the dead as He had said many times during His public life. Yes, the offering of His life on the Cross had been accepted by the Father and He was raised to unending life.


St. Faustina also met the Risen Christ:

For St. Faustina, Jesus was not a dead body in a tomb on Easter Sunday morning. For her, He was truly risen. She believed the promise made by God to humanity to send a saviour and that He would rise from the dead. Her evidence was not just on the testimony of others. No, she believed in the Risen Lord because she had met Him herself.


St. Faustina’s Soul:

She had experienced His intimate presence in her prayer and, like Mary Magdalen, had heard Him speak her name. In her prayer, her eyes were opened and she recognised Him. What St. Faustina experienced in her prayer time, she took with her so that even outside her time of formal prayer, she remained in that loving gaze of God and even in the activities of her day her heart was united with His.

Jesus calls to us too:

When we enter into the mystery of prayer and listen closely, the Lord speaks our name too, as He did to Mary on Easter morning. He does so that we may believe that He is alive and that He dwells among us and that He is within the human heart, calling us to the same life that He has.


Prayer Time too Busy:

It is hard to hear the voice of Jesus speak our name in prayer if our prayer time is too busy. What do I mean by too busy? Well, when we are doing all the talking. When we fill our prayer time with words. Yes, it is so important to pray the Chaplet, the Rosary and other such prayers, but how are you really going to hear that loving caring voice of Christ in your prayer unless you listen?


Silence in your prayer time:

Silence in your prayer time is as important as saying prayers. Maybe even more so. It is in the silence that St Faustina reflected on the image of the Christ. It is in silence that Mary, our Mother, pondered all that was happening in her heart. It is in the silence that you too will encounter the Risen Lord.


Re-Thinking Our Time for Prayer:

If you find that your own prayer time is full of prayers, maybe it’s time to create a little time for silence. If you find that in prayer you are doing all the work, then maybe it’s time to create a time just to relax in the presence of the Risen One who loves you dearly and who wants to speak your name. Make that beautiful line ‘speak Lord your servant is listening’ the hallmark of your prayer. Persevere in silence and you too will find that not only do you experience the Risen Lord in your prayer time but that you will feel Him present to you at every moment, just like St Faustina did.

Credits : Divine Mercy Publications, Ireland 

The Divine Mercy Image and The Shroud Of Turin Match Completely

The sacred image of The Divine Mercy was commissioned by our Lord, who appeared in a vision to Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska on February 22, 1931.

What Saint Faustina witnessed she described in her spiritual journal in these words: “In the evening, when I was in my cell, I saw the Lord Jesus clothed in a white robe. One hand was raised in the gesture of blessing, the other was touching the garment at the breast. From beneath the garment, slightly drawn aside at the breast there were emanating two large rays, one red the other pale…” In Christ’s own words, “The two rays denote blood and water.

The pale ray stands for the water, which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the blood which is the life of souls” (§299). These represent the basic sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist which operate in believers the fruit of the paschal mysteries.

Along with the vision came this command: “I desire that there be a Feast of Mercy. I want this image, which you will paint with a brush, to be solemnly blessed on the first Sunday after Easter; that Sunday is to be the Feast of Mercy” (§49).

The Face:

There exists a hand-written letter in which a “Sister Julianna” recorded a conference on the origins of The Divine Mercy message, image, and devotion given by Saint Faustina’s spiritual director, the Servant of God Reverend Michael Sopoeko, in May of 1940.

From it we learn that Sister Faustina was never pleased with the image, maintaining that it was ugly. But one day, after the artist had already repainted the face of Christ for at least the tenth time, she came to the studio and announced that Jesus said to leave the image in the state it was in. Quoting the Lord she added: “It isn’t good, but it will do; you don’t have to change it anymore.”

The reason for the strenuous effort that was required to depict the Lord’s face in this particular image would remain locked in mystery for two generations. For it was only recently [1996] that a larger image, printed from the 1931 photographic plates of the Shroud of Turin, was placed by chance on top of a comparably-sized poster of the Divine Mercy image painted in Vilnius in 1934 with the result that, when the superimposed images were unexpectedly backlit, they revealed a startling coincidence.

By an eminent photographer’s calculations, the face on the original Divine Mercy image was discerned to be smaller in size than that on the shroud.

But, when the photo of the Divine Mercy painting was enlarged so that the outer line of the hair on the head matched the same line on the shroud image, the result was remarkable. It was found that on both images there is the same distance between the pupils; the nose is of practically the same length; the form of the lips is identical; the moustache and the beard are of the same cut; the hair falls at the sides in the same way. All these points allow for a practically perfect correspondence between the two faces.

It does not appear that the Vilnius artist had a copy of the photo of the Shroud of Turin taken in 1931, the same year Saint Faustina was granted her vision and the mission associated with it. His need continually to alter the countenance on the painting because of the visionary’s disapproval of his attempts would attest to that. How, then, could an image, completed in 1934 after repeated alterations to the face, have features that matched so well those of “the man of the shroud of Turin,” found on a burial cloth now known to be at least two thousand years old?

The Turin photographer, who verified this surprising match, felt that a composite photo of it would not be liked, because the eyes appeared to be directed downward.

Made aware of the fact that in her directions Saint Faustina insisted on the feature and that in her Diary our Lord is quoted as saying, “My gaze from this image is like the gaze from the cross,” he changed his mind and declared the divine mercy image “miraculous.”

This special image shows the Lord’s right hand raised in a gesture of blessing and absolution – priestly ministries. The eyes of the Lord in the painting and the composite image gaze upon us as from the cross, compassionately – “Father, forgive them…

” Jesus offers us the life-giving and light-bearing rays of his mercy. They emerge from his wounded side and from his opened heart – so prominently evident on the shroud – to replace, to transform out hearts of stone.

For the Savior offers to the recipients of his paschal sacraments on Divine Mercy Sunday the promised fruits of his passion and the glory of his resurrection – the complete remission of sins and punishment – at-one-moment with God, the assurance of his unending love for us.