Today, is Divine Mercy Sunday. This is one of my favorite celebrations. And in this Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy it seems that it will be an even greater celebration. Like last year, we will have the Deanery Divine Mercy celebration in Coleraine. Please come down, we want to pack the church. There are going to be five confessors and there is a reception afterwards. It should be a beautiful Deanery celebration of Divine Mercy.
We all need Divine Mercy, we need it everyday. We wouldn’t exist without it. Mercy is God’s love being poured over and into us. We should be able to look at a crucifix and see mercy and love. That is what it is. Jesus, the innocent Lamb led to the slaughter, who did nothing deserving of death, is murdered, killed, put to death for our sins. And in His mercy He dies for each of our sins. But it is not enough for us to tell God that we are sorry, that doesn’t remove the stains of our sins. We are called to confess our sins. We are called to get into the confessional and tell God that we are sorry and that we are going to do better. See, Jesus did die for our sins, but we have to put forth our response to Him. Confession is our response, it is where we are honest with God about what we did, and that we are going to try to do better with the grace that God gives us. Divine Mercy is beautiful, but we must be willing to except it under God’s terms, not our own. Too often we want God to work in the way we want Him too, that isn’t accepting His mercy, rather, that is controlling Him, and controlling God is not going to get us to Heaven. Receive His Mercy, be resurrected, because that is what confession does, it resurrects us because we were DEAD IN OUR SIN!!!!
Fr. Thomas P. Galarneault