Month: April 2022

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Pope Francis comments on his knee pain

April 25, 2022 Catholic News Agency 1
Pope Francis greets a representative of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Captives at the Vatican’s Clementine Hall, April 25, 2022. / Vatican Media

Vatican City, Apr 25, 2022 / 13:28 pm (CNA).

While meeting with members of the Trinitarian order on Monday, Pope Francis referred to his knee ailment, which kept him from standing to greet all of them.

“After the photo I will greet you, but excuse me, I have to do it sitting, not on foot, because of the knee … It is that malady that was once called ‘nun’s pain’, because it was the time in which the nuns prayed, and for so much praying on their knees they got sick! This will heal, but in the meantime we have to do things right,” he said April 25 in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall to participants in the International Trinitarian Solidarity Conference.

The Trinitarians are a mendicant order founded in the 12th century by St. John of Matha to ransom Christian captives.

Francis, 85, has been suffering from pain in his right knee, causing him to take smaller roles in some liturgies and to remain seated more often.

His agenda was cleared April 22 for medical checkups, and he preached at, but did not preside over, Mass for the Octave Day of Easter on April 24.

The pope’s movements have been visibly more limited since the start of the year.

At the general audience on Jan. 26, he said the reason he was unable to greet pilgrims as usual was because of a temporary “problem with my right leg,” an inflamed knee ligament.

With a smile, he added: “They say this only comes to old people, and I don’t know why it has come to me, but … I don’t know.”

On Good Friday, Pope Francis did not prostrate himself before the cross.

The pope also opted to not celebrate the Easter Vigil Mass, though he attended, delivered the homily, and performed several baptism.

And on Easter Sunday, he had to sit down part way through his delivery of the Urbi et Orbi message and blessing.

Pope Francis has also received more assistance walking and going up and down stairs in recent weeks.

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Divine Mercy Sunday 2022: Pope Francis preaches on the peace that God’s mercy brings

April 24, 2022 Catholic News Agency 0
Pope Francis at the Divine Mercy Sunday Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica on April 24, 2022. / Vatican Media

Denver Newsroom, Apr 24, 2022 / 06:14 am (CNA).

Pope Francis in his homily for Divine Mercy Sunday encouraged everyone, especially priests, to remember the moments in their lives when they have experienced God’s forgiveness, and the joy and peace that God’s forgiveness brings.

“The joy God gives is indeed born of forgiveness. It bestows peace. It is a joy that raises us up without humiliating us,” Pope Francis said during his homily at the Mass celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica.

“Brothers and sisters, let us think of all those times when we received the pardon and peace of Jesus. Each one of us has received them; each one of us has had that experience. It is good for us to remember those moments. Let us put the memory of God’s warm embrace before the memory of our own mistakes and failings. In this way, we will grow in joy.”

The pope urged meditation on the three times in the Gospels when Jesus uses the greeting: “Peace be with you,” the first of which being Jesus’ first encounter with his disciples following his resurrection.

When Jesus’ disciples first encounter the risen Jesus, they react joyfully, despite having abandoned their master during his Passion and death. Despite courageously following Jesus in the past, “They had good reason to feel not only afraid, but useless; they had failed,” the pope said.

“In this climate, they hear for the first time, ‘Peace be with you!’ The disciples ought to have felt shame, yet they rejoice. Why? Because seeing his face and hearing his greeting turned their attention away from themselves and towards Jesus,” Pope Francis said.

“They were distracted from themselves and their failures and attracted by his gaze, that brimmed not with severity but with mercy. Christ did not reproach them for what they had done, but showed them his usual kindness. And this revives them, fills their hearts with the peace they had lost and makes them new persons, purified by a forgiveness that is utterly unmerited.”

The forgiveness that Jesus shows to his disciples in the Gospels is the same forgiveness He extends through the sacrament of Confession, the pope said.

The second time Jesus says “Peace be with you” is when he gives his disciples the Holy Spirit, giving them the ability to forgive sins and thus making them “dispensers of the mercy that they themselves received.”

Speaking to priests, the pope told them to they must first accept God’s forgiveness if they are to extend that forgiveness to others.

“I am now speaking to you, missionaries of mercy: if you do not feel forgiven, do not carry out your service as a missionary of mercy until you feel that forgiveness,” the pope said.

“The mercy that we have received enables us to dispense a great deal of mercy and forgiveness. Today and every day, in the Church forgiveness must be received in this same way, through the humble goodness of a merciful confessor who sees himself not as the holder of some power but as a channel of mercy, who pours out upon others the forgiveness that he himself first received. From this arises the ability to forgive everything because God always forgives everything.”

There is no need to “torment” the faithful when they come to Confession, the pope said.

“It is necessary to understand their situation, to listen, to forgive and to offer good counsel so that they can move forward. God forgives everything and we must not close that door to people,” he said.

Finally, the pope noted, Jesus says “Peace be with you” to the Apostle Thomas, who doubted the Lord’s resurrection until he was able to put his hand in Jesus’ wounds.

“There are times of difficulty when life seems to belie faith, moments of crisis when we need to touch and see. Like Thomas, it is precisely in those moments that we rediscover the heart of Christ, the Lord’s mercy,” Pope Francis said.

“In those situations, Jesus does not approach us in triumph and with overwhelming proofs. He does not perform earth-shattering miracles, but instead offers us heartwarming signs of his mercy. He comforts us in the same way he did in today’s Gospel: he offers us his wounds. We must not forget this fact. In response to our sin, the Lord is always present offering us his wounds.”

God’s mercy often makes us more aware of our neighbors’ wounds, the pope said, encouraging everyone to seek to help those suffering in mind or body, to bring peace to those suffering spiritually or physically, and to listen and bring comfort to another person. For in doing such things we “encounter Jesus,” the pope said.

“We think that we are experiencing unbearable pain and situations of suffering, and we suddenly discover that others around us are silently enduring even worse things. If we care for the wounds of our neighbour and pour upon them the balm of mercy, we find being reborn within us a hope that comforts us in our weariness,” the pope said.

Divine Mercy Sunday, celebrated the Sunday after Easter each year, was instituted by Pope St. John Paul II in 2000.

St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, a 20th-century Polish nun who received prophetic messages from Christ, received revelations about the infinite mercy of God – coined the “Divine Mercy” – and her obligation to spread the message to the world, as recorded in her diary, “Divine Mercy in my soul.”

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The original Image of Divine Mercy: It’s not where you might think

April 24, 2022 Catholic News Agency 1
Original painting of the Divine Mercy, by Eugeniusz Kazimirowski in 1934. Wikimedia Commons 4.0.

Vilnius, Lithuania, Apr 24, 2022 / 06:03 am (CNA).

Among Catholic devotions, the Divine Mercy message is well-known: the iconic image of Christ, with rays of red and white pouring from his heart; St. Faustina, called the “Apostle of Divine Mercy;” and the Basilica of Divine Mercy in Krakow, Poland.

But what you might not know is that more than 450 miles north of Krakow, in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, there is another Sanctuary of Divine Mercy, one which houses the first image of the merciful Jesus created, and the only Image of Divine Mercy St. Faustina herself ever saw.

Archbishop Gintaras Grusas of Vilnius told CNA that the city, often called the “City of Mercy,” is not only “a place of the Divine Mercy revelations, but also a place that is in need of mercy, throughout history, and a place that in the last couple decades has been a place where we need to show mercy.”

Since long before St. Faustina and the Divine Mercy revelations, the Mother of Mercy has been the patroness of Vilnius, Grusas said.

In fact, in the 1600s, a painting of Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn was created and placed in a niche above one of the prominent city gates. Many miracles are attributed to the image, which was canonically crowned Mother of Mercy by Pope Pius XI in 1927.

It was in this small chapel of the Mother of Mercy, above the gate, that the image of Divine Mercy was first displayed. So Vilnius has had “mercy upon mercy,” Grusas noted.

The story of St. Faustina and Divine Mercy

St. Faustina Kowalska was a young Polish nun born at the beginning of the 20th century. Over the course of several years she had visions of Jesus, whereby she was directed to create an image and to share with the world revelations of Jesus’ love and mercy.

St. Faustina received her first revelation of the merciful Jesus in Plock, Poland in February 1931. At the time, she had made her first vows as one of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy.

In 1933, after she made her perpetual vows, her superior directed her to move to the convent house in Vilnius. She stayed there for three years and this is where she received many more visions of Jesus. Vilnius is also where she found a priest to be her spiritual director, the now-Bl. Michael Sopocko.

With the help of Fr. Sopocko, St. Faustina found a painter to fulfill the request Jesus had made to her in one of the visions – to “paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the signature: Jesus, I trust in You” – and in 1934 the painter Eugene Kazimierowski created the original Divine Mercy painting under St. Faustina’s direction.

In its creation, St. Faustina “was instrumental in making all the adjustments with the painter,” Archbishop Grusas said.

The image shows Christ with his right hand raised as if giving a blessing, and the left touching his chest. Two rays, one pale, one red – which Jesus said are to signify water and blood – are descending from his heart.

St. Faustina recorded all of her visions and conversations with Jesus in her diary, called Divine Mercy in My Soul. Here she wrote the words of Jesus about the graces that would pour out on anyone who prayed before the image:

“I promise that the soul that will venerate this image will not perish. I also promise victory over [its] enemies already here on earth, especially at the hour of death. I Myself will defend [that soul] as My own glory.”

When the image was completed, it was first kept in the corridor of the convent of the Bernardine Sisters, which was beside the Church of St. Michael where Fr. Sopocko was rector.

In March 1936 St. Faustina became sick, with what is believed to have been tuberculosis, and was transferred back to Poland by her superiors. She died near Krakow in October 1938, at the age of 33.

“St. Faustina, because of her illness, was brought back to Krakow by her superiors. But she left the painting in Vilnius because it was the property of her spiritual director, who paid for the painting,” Grusas explained.

Jesus, in one of St. Faustina’s visions, had expressed his wish that the image be put in a place of honor, above the main altar of the church. And so, though St. Faustina had already returned to Poland, on the first Sunday after Easter in 1937, they hung the image of Merciful Jesus next to the main altar in the Church of St. Michael.

The history of the image

Archbishop Grusas explained that many people have only recently learned about the image because it was hidden for many years, and it was only rediscovered and restored within the last 15 years.

During World War II, Lithuania was under Soviet occupation and in 1948, the communist government closed the Church of St. Michael and abolished the convent. Many of the sacred objects and artworks were moved to another church to be saved from Soviet hands, but the Divine Mercy image was left undisturbed in St. Michael’s for several years.

In 1951, two women were able to pay the keeper of St. Michael’s church and save the image. Since it couldn’t be taken across the border to Poland, they gave it to the priest in charge of the Church of the Holy Spirit for safekeeping.

Five years later it was moved to a church in Belarus, where it remained for over a decade. In 1970 this church too was shut down by the government and looted, but miraculously, again the Image of Divine Mercy was untouched.

Eventually it was brought back to Lithuania in secret and again given to the Church of the Holy Spirit. In the early 2000s its significance was rediscovered and after a professional restoration it was rehung in the nearby Church of the Holy Trinity in 2005, which is now the Shrine of Divine Mercy.

So though it is a more recent arrival on the international scene, the painting “is also probably the most profound of the Divine Mercy paintings,” Grusas said. “It has a very deep theology, very closely tied with St. Faustina’s diary.”

The Shrine of Divine Mercy

Today in Vilnius the archdiocese has begun to set up a guide for pilgrims who come and wish to visit the holy sites, such as the place where St. Faustina lived, the room where the image was painted, and the several churches which all held the painting at different points.

The Shrine of Divine Mercy itself is not a large place, since it’s only a converted parish church, but its sacramental life “is really quite something,” said Justin Gough, an American seminarian studying in Rome who spent a summer working in the Archdiocese’s pilgrim office in Vilnius.

He said that “between Mass, the Divine Mercy chaplet every day in Lithuanian and Polish, adoration 24/7… vespers every Sunday night led by the youth of Vilnius,” the rosary and the sacrament of Confession, there is always some sort of prayer or sacrament taking place.

Of course the original Image of Divine Mercy is also there, he pointed out, and yet the shrine is not just about the image, but about connecting the image and what it represents to prayer and the reception of God’s mercy through the sacraments.

“I think it’s ironic in a certain sense that God teaches us about his mercy through a holy woman who died at the age of 33,” he said. “She lived a very devout life, endured great sufferings for the sake of Christ, and yet it’s through people like her that we’re taught, great sinners that we are, how to actually receive God’s mercy and to be merciful to others.”

In Vilnius, it’s a great blessing “to know a saint of the 20th century walked here, prayed here, and experienced Christ here, and that we can do that as well.”
 

This article was originally published on CNA Nov. 26, 2017.

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