FOR the 5th Asian Apostolic Congress on Mercy (Aacom) on October 14 to 19 in Cebu City’s convention center, the opening event was held elsewhere. Delegates from several countries gathered for the 3 p.m. Divine Mercy chaplet prayer and 4 p.m. concelebrated Mass at the open-air arena of the Minor Basilica of Santo Niño de Cebu. It venerates the 30-centimeter Holy Child wooden statue given in 1521 by explorer Ferdinand Magellan to island chieftain Rajah Humabon and his wife on their baptism as the first Christians of the archipelago.
Lead Mass celebrant was Archbishop Charles Brown, the Apostolic Nuncio representing Pope Francis in the Philippines, who flew in at lunchtime and left soon after the Mass, accommodating in his hectic schedule the conference on the Divine Mercy devotion given by Jesus Christ to Polish nun St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938) in the 1930s, recounted in her diary along with visions, messages, miracles and hidden stigmata, the wounds of Christ crucified.
The Divine Mercy devotion, which includes the daily 3 o’clock prayer and the yearly feast on the Sunday after Easter, was spread worldwide by Pope St. John Paul II in the years before canonizing his fellow Pole St. Faustina in 2000. As archbishop of Krakow, he had also campaigned to reverse the Vatican’s disapproval of her diary, partly owing to a faulty Italian translation, until Pope St. Paul VI ended it in 1978.
We need mercy now
What gives this week’s Divine Mercy forum world-saving significance are calamities and conflicts in our time, not unlike during the years of St. Faustina’s visions, when Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, the Spanish Civil War and rising big-power rivalry across Europe presaged the Second World War.
The October 20 Mass readings for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time also extol God’s mercy. The first passage from the Prophet Isaiah (Is 53:10–11), prophesying Jesus’ redeeming sacrifice, speaks of the infinity of God’s mercy in suffering the greatest pain — His Son’s earthly life, death and resurrection — to free us from sin and obtain for us eternal life:
The Responsorial Psalm 33 (Ps 33:4–5, 18–20, 22) prefigures the Divine Mercy mantra of trust in Christ — “Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you” — for the salvation God wishes for all: “To deliver them from death and preserve them in spite of famine. Our soul waits for the Lord, who is our help and our shield. May your kindness, O Lord, be upon us who have put our hope in you.”
The second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews (Heb 4:14–16) extols “a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, … who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.”
All fine and comforting — yet for billions of people today fearful of tomorrow’s headlines far more than eternity after flatlines, there may not be much comfort in Divine Mercy sweeping away sins and purifying souls for heaven. For those worrying about our world today, the big question is still: Will God’s mercy stop calamity, contagion and conflict?
No mercy, no peace
At the opening Mass for the Divine Mercy conference in Cebu, Archbishop Brown reflected on God’s merciful love from the heights of the mountainous Moriah region, where Abraham proved his faith in nearly sacrificing his son Isaac, the Israelites worshipped in Solomon’s grand temple, and Jesus died on Calvary for our salvation, with blood and water streaming from his speared side — symbolized by the white and red rays of the Divine Mercy apparition to St. Faustina.
The message then is that God has been pouring out His mercy from above since ancient times without end for our salvation. And that mercy cannot but be crucial in saving us from the grave transgressions crushing and threatening life in our world.
Fr. Kazimierz Chawalek is a Divine Mercy scholar and advocate since 1980 who has addressed several congresses. A stalwart of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception (MIC), which combines Marian and Divine Mercy spiritualities, replied to this writer asking what the devotion could do amid our global crises.
“Without God’s mercy our world cannot have peace,” said Fr. Chawalek, echoing St. Faustina’s diary, which he had closely edited for his MIC congregation, along with an English translation.
Indeed, take away mercy and nothing restrains our urge for violence and calms our tortured hearts.
Another Congress speaker was Florida-based Filipino nun Teresa de la Fuente of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, the same congregation to which St. Faustina belonged. De la Fuente spoke on trusting God amid our woes. St. Faustina, the nun recounted, entered Jesus’ wounds in her darkest hours and held fast just as the crucified Christ trusted God, crying at his last breath: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
The Divine Mercy visionary, Sister Teresa summed up, loved Jesus, trusted in him and surrendered all to his divine will.
But can this devotion address the crises, ills and threats in our world?
The nun said that while prayer, devotion and holy life may seem to nonbelievers to have nil impact on big world events, in fact, turning to God taps into the greatest power on earth and beyond. Hence, religious communities devoting their lives to prayer cannot but bring more of the change needed by our wayward world: holiness. As St. Francis said, “Sanctify yourself and you sanctify society.”
“Those who truly pray are the columns of the world, without which all will collapse,” agreed Congress speaker Fr. Bonaventure Valles, a former engineer who joined the Conventual Franciscans order, then after years of ministry in Brazil, founded his own Franciscans of the Divine Mercy group in Samar.
So, can God’s mercy save the world? Yes, if we pray and trust in Him. If not, no surprise if we don’t get what we don’t even believe.