Happy Easter everyone!
Jesus Christ has risen! He has truly risen. I write these words in what has been a beautiful Easter week of sunshine and warm temperatures. Hopefully, soon and very soon we will be able to gather again as the body of Christ to give God all the glory and praise we can muster. Until then, let’s continue to use this time in quarantine and be open to all that the Lord is doing for us and offering us. God offers many graces to us. Let’s keep open minds and hearts to all that is there for us. Let’s not squander any of these days so that each one we have endured may bear fruit in our lives going forward.
Spiritual Reflection
We will continue to livestream all of our Sunday Masses. This Sunday is the Second Sunday of Easter, or what is now called Divine Mercy Sunday. Divine Mercy is the reality that the Lord’s Paschal Mystery, that is His suffering, death, and resurrection, is a living reality and bears fruit in our lives and in the world. What is the fruit of the Paschal Mystery? It is Divine Mercy.
The Divine Mercy of God became a popular devotion after the private revelations of St. Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun who wrote of her mystical encounters with Jesus. Jesus spoke to her about his infinite mercy for souls and asked that she make this devotion known so all people may be open and receive the Lord’s merciful love in their lives. Even though these were private revelations just for her, they contained sound theological beliefs that we can all rely upon. So much so, that the Church officially pronounced that the Second Sunday after Easter would be a celebration of Divine Mercy!
What is Divine Mercy? A few years ago, Pope Francis gave us a great definition of mercy. He said “mercy is that form that God’s love takes when it meets our misery.” If that’s the case, then Divine Mercy is the specific form of God’s sacrificial love, from the Paschal Mystery, that meets our misery. And what is our misery? Well, that’s all of our sins, dysfunctions, addictions, disorders, and the consequences of our fallen human condition. When our hearts are ready to leave all that behind us, when we repent, then God’s Divine Mercy showers down as that love that restores us to our God-given human dignity. That is the beauty of God’s grace! We partake in the fruit of the Paschal Mystery as we are forgiven, restored and renewed.
A form of contemplative prayer that helps us open our hearts, and the hearts of the entire world, to Divine Mercy is the Divine Mercy chaplet. To learn more about the chaplet and how to pray it,
click here
. All you need are your rosary beads!
This Sunday afternoon, we will livestream a Holy Hour of Eucharistic Adoration at Saint Patrick’s from 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. At 3:00 p.m., we will sing the prayer of the chaplet.
Click here
to turn on your reminder. We will also recite the prayer of the Perfect Act of Contrition to express our repentance from sin. To look at that prayer
click here
. This will be a wonderful way to end the first week of the Easter Season!
Prayer Intentions
In this final phase of the
Stay Home, Stay Healthy
period, I think it’s good that we continue to lift each other up in prayer. There are so many folks suffering from this crisis and in so many different ways. Please pray for your family, friends, neighbors, and parishioners. Pray that hearts might be open to the grace of God during this time; that we may always rely upon Him and not ourselves.
Blessing for the Easter Season,
Fr. David Mulholland
Pastor
