My Favorite Day of the Year
Every year on Divine Mercy Sunday something beautiful happens.
Ever since I truly understood and believed Jesus’s promise to St. Faustina about Divine Mercy Sunday, it’s been my favorite day of the year. In her diary, it states that the person who receives Holy Communion on Divine Mercy Sunday and goes to confession will receive not only forgiveness of sins, but forgiveness of sins and punishment. Not only am I forgiven (an everyday miracle in itself) but the punishment that is due to me for these sins— aka what we would typically have to square away by being purified and healed in purgatory— this is wiped clean. I am restored to my Baptismal innocence. Excuse me. WHAT? Surely a comforting thought as one reads about Mary telling the Fatima children that someone they know will be in purgatory until the end of time… For further reference if you think I am crazy, the website of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, who are officially in charge of promoting Divine Mercy is here.
Because this blew my mind so completely, I began to see Divine Mercy Sunday as the BEST day. And just because God goes so completely over the top with his gratuitousness and generosity, it seems something great always happens to me on this day, on TOP of the aforementioned cannot-be-topped grace. It’s like a lovely little game between myself and the Almighty creator of heaven— I expect great gifts on Divine Mercy Sunday, and faithfully God surprises me with little winks, surprises, graces, and joys.
One year, it was Divine Mercy Sunday when it became clear to me that Brian was ‘the one.’ We had been dating for about 2 months. It was April and so was our love. Blooming and increasingly vivid, little by little like the beige grass of March which transforms so that one day you look around in wonder that after yearning and waiting for so long, it’s really spring. And the delight of sunshine and buds, misty days and faintly wafting floral smells in the air seems again like a surprise. Something that was promised, but you almost didn’t believe would ever arrive. Sometimes that’s how it is to fall in love.
I know, it’s hard to believe they are real.
On Divine Mercy weekend we road tripped down to a family wedding in which Brian was a last minute Eucharistic minister— practically part of the family already. The following day we went to Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Kansas City, which is KC’s Diocesan shrine to the Divine Mercy and St. Faustina. Of course, it was beautiful. And yet it isn’t the liturgy or chant that stand out in my mind, but just one moment.
Seriously, this is the only photo we got of this wedding?
Rosary road trip.
Everyone needs their quintessential ‘just started dating,’ grainy picture with scary red eyes
Brian and I both got to go to Confession that day. He went first, and as I walked out of the confessional, down the crowded aisle, my sight rested on Brian, kneeling, eyes closed in prayer. In my heart echoed clearly, ‘This is the man who will make you holy.’
It was a moment that seemed in slow motion. His stillness as I walked toward him. The crowded church. My response of near confusion.
What? Really? But he is so good looking.
Perhaps this is in some way like how Our Lady felt when the Angel Gabriel told her of becoming the mother of the Savior at the Annunciation. What? How can this be? It’s too good. This is too good to fathom.
At the time I couldn’t quite tell if this sense was from God or just my own thoughts. But I guess as is natural of woman, I ‘kept these things and pondered them in my heart.’ And about a year later, we were married.
The way the Lord revealed my Vocation to me was indeed a huge mercy through and through. For some time prior to dating Brian I was fairly convinced religious life was to be my call in life. But no matter how beautiful I found the life, no matter how lovely and wonderful any particular order was, there was never a call. Jesus was smiling down at me— silently. I sensed it was something beautiful for another. And looking back, finding a baby pacifier on the floor of a convent church during a discernment retreat may have been a little joke from God to me.
The fact that our entire dating relationship was so smooth and easy was a mercy I do not take for granted. Once we began talking about marriage that summer, my heart was never anywhere else. Other couples whom I know who have beautiful marriages struggled mightily in their dating phase or suffered incredible confusion or doubts over their vocation. God can move in this way, too. But, I count as one of the great graces of my life the way our love story unfolded. Thank you, Jesus, that this pivotal decision was so clear, and I pray for each of my children’s vocations to be so clear, peaceful, and joy-led!
On another Divine Mercy Sunday I remember being able to go visit two dear friends, one of whom had just had a new baby, and the other who had entered the Little Sisters of the Lamb. We were able to have mass with their religious community, which put me on cloud nine. Their simplicity was not only beautiful because it is simple, but because they actually make it beautiful— masses of tiny white, fragrant flowers from bridal veil bushes were trimmed and placed in beautiful displays in the austere, wood sanctuary. The floors were concrete in much of their living spaces, but in more of a French chic way than warehouse way. Large icons adorned the front of the lovely chapel. It was sunny that day, too, I know from the squinty photos we have with our friend in the blue habit and our wiggly 1 year old in his Easter best.
It’s perfect. And their singing! Glorious.
A joyful reunion and first meeting. Funny to think about how mass with one 1 year old was really stressful and hard. And now with multiple other children plus a 1 year old, we have grown so used to taking children to mass that it’s definitely less hard and stressful than those first years of motherhood!
There have been quite a few other Divine Mercy Sundays, yet most apparently I don’t remember. As is my right as a mother of four, I blame pregnancy, mothering, sleep deprivation and any ambiguous hormonal things.
This year’s special grace likely would have become forgotten among the other synapses in the overgrown hedge of whatever area of the brain is supposed to hold memories. But this year may be different. Perhaps if I share the grace I receive, I will be able to keep it? A very ironic thought, yet seems to me to be true enough.
Gratitude: Basis of Trust
This past Divine Mercy Sunday we were visiting family for Easter, and a thought came fleeting through my mind during mass— oh yes, my little Divine Mercy miracle! What wonder is in store for me this year? The church we went to for Sunday mass is currently being renovated, so there I was with a different wiggly 1 year old (why must they always want to escape your arms and yet want to be held simultaneously? maybe that’s an analogy for another blog post…) walking, walking, walking behind the sea of folding chairs in the back of the school gymnasium.
What started as an attentiveness due to my heightened awareness of it being Divine Mercy Sunday day grew into an unusually focused time of prayer as the offertory and Eucharistic prayer unfolded. Usually during this point of the mass, I attempt to exert some sort of mental effort to offer up the particulars of the week, a practice that, when explained to me (years after my conversion!) completely changed everything about the way I see the mass. And not only the mass, but what it means to ‘live the mass,’ or ‘pray always,’ making an offering of my dishes, my frustrations, my sleepless nights, my reading or eating or laughing or even my weaknesses offered up to be united with Christ’s sacrifice for the salvation of the world. And so, in my pacing back and forth, now with a sleeping baby in the ergo on my back, I brought to mind as many of these little offerings as I could think of that had happened since the previous mass last Sunday. During the Eucharistic prayer I typically try to pray for all of the intentions that are near and dear to my heart— Lord, I give you my children, Brian, my family members, etc.
At this point, looking back on this time, I would say I was praying well. Even fervently! This in itself would have been a great grace! With my heart I was laying down all of these needs and bringing them to the Lord. Which is perfectly good. And yet, at that moment I feel like I was graced with a deeper way forward in prayer.
There is a place for begging. For engaging the heart in humility and feeling the full weight of our need and dependence on God. But here under the fluorescent lights of the gym, now kneeling in the back on the shiny gym floor, a thought. Wait. Eucharist means thanksgiving. I should be offering first and foremost my thanksgiving!
Eucharist means thanksgiving.
This little seed of a thought entered in and my intercession began to change. Thank you, God, for Theo. Thank you for the way he makes forts and loves to show me how he can jump off swings and monkey bars, even if his risk taking makes me cringe. Thank you for his defiance of limits, which when guided toward virtue can be the makings of greatness. Thank you for exactly how you created him! And so on for each of my cherished children. Instead of just praying and pleading with God for struggling friends or my extended family in a particular struggle— “Thank you, Lord, for my brother, my sister in law, my neices and nephew,” bringing to mind these faces with a surge of new affection, knowing deep in my heart God is holding them in his hand and that he knows.
I found this shift happening as the Holy Spirit (for what else could it have been to cause such a difference? And peace?) continued to inspire me to bring more and deepening gratitudes. Not just thank you for the pleasant and easy, but thank you, Lord for the intensity of fear and dread I feel at losing those I love, because I am human in this beautiful and intense life and I have loved deeply. Thank you for these strong ties which I can not imagine breaking without breaking me, but Jesus, I trust in You! Thank you for the breathtaking beauty of this drama called life. Thank you for all you do or will do, for all you give and take, because Jesus, I trust You to know exactly what I need. And I trust that you love me and are making me in this very moment. This was a grace. And in this movement of my heart there was immense freedom.
It was then that it really hit me. Gratitude is the basis of trust. What does it mean to trust? Is ‘Jesus, I trust in You’ just a nice thing to say when I am worried? Certainly, it truly is a helpful phrase for any uncertain situations and it does tend to be my go to. But, what am I really saying? In entering into thanksgiving and gratitude I felt I was saying yes to life. Yes to my life. Yes to the way things are right now, the way people are right now, not as I would change them, but yes to loving what is good and beautiful in them, with the hope that God knows what they need. God knows. God knows and I can rest in his power to draw good out of the darkness. It’s almost scandalous, being thankful and giving in to resting in what is. Thankful for this sinful world or the imperfect people or situations I find? It stands completely on the trust that God can and will bring good from every evil. O happy fault. Almost as scandalous as being thankful for the cross.
Since then, I have gone back to this realization. Intercession is not a bad thing. It certainly isn’t bad to pray like an incessant and overbearing mother, ‘Lord, don’t forget my child! Don’t forget this intention!’ In many ways, that is called faithfulness. Constantly bringing before God those we love, the hard and tragic situations we have encountered. Prayers for peace and against evil and natural disasters and for conversions of all kinds. But for me in this time, praying in thanksgiving has been a gift that is actually forming me. It’s giving me peace, as it reminds me that the Creator of all actually has it all under control, and that I can simply say thank you. I don’t have to tell him how to do things. Thank you is enough.
“Thank God ahead of time”