Reflection on Divine Mercy By Monsignor Anthony La Femina

REFLECTION ON DIVINE MERCY

  

                  Rev. Msgr. Anthony A. La Femina, S.T.L., J.C.D.

Introduction by Matthew J. Bellisario O.P. 2020

This is the final installment of the writings of my late friend Monsignor Anthony La Femina. Monsignor had a great love for Sister Faustina and the Divine Mercy devotion. He referenced her writings in his book 'Eucharist and Covenant in John's Last Supper Account' in reference to the Eucharist and the Sacrifice of Christ being present at the Last Supper as a "pre-presentation." This fact is also a point of importance in this reflection. As you will see here, the Eucharist and the reality of the actual presence of Christ's sacrifice as an event in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was of central importance in his writings and reflections. 

The state of the Church and the crisis of catechesis was of immense importance to Monsignor and in this reflection, he drives home a few important realities that are often dismissed or ignored in the Church today. The first is the reality of original sin caused by the fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve. The second is the reality of the devil as "prince of this world." The third is the balance between justice and mercy. The fourth is the realization that we must recognize our sins and repent of them. Finally, the Eucharist and the Holy Mass are presented as the ultimate culmination of God's mercy and hence our salvation. Considering our present situation of having the Mass taken from us we must ask an important question. Have we taken the Mass for granted? 

One of the things that struck me in reading this was the paragraph where Monsignor warns us of treating God like a fool. He warns us of asking God for things all the while ignoring the many ways in which we offend Him. He writes, "God is merciful, yes, but he is not a fool. Disobeying God and not seeking his forgiveness while asking for his gifts is treating God precisely as a fool. The attitude of one seeking God’s mercy must that of a loving child who fears to offend, and, when he or she does, seeks God’s pardon in the Sacrament of Penance, while asking God to strengthen our hate for sin as the greatest evil. We must have priorities in seeking God’s mercy. And our first priority must be our eternal salvation … all the other requests for his help must be dependent upon this first priority: our salvation."

How often do we approach God with this disposition? Its an important question. I often wish Monsignor was still here with us, especially during this crisis where the Sacraments have almost vanished from the face of the earth! How I wish I could pick up the phone and ask him for his thoughts. Yet, within this reflection may very well be the advice that he might give, we must say, "MY JESUS I TRUST IN YOU!"   

REFLECTION ON DIVINE MERCY
Rev. Msgr. Anthony A. La Femina, S.T.L., J.C.D.

By their sin of pride and disobedience in the garden of Paradise our first parents defied God’s sovereignty. Adam and Eve - by their own deliberate choice - subtracted themselves from his loving fatherly care in order to judge for themselves what was best for their lives. They decided to live their lives by their own standards.

Adam and Eve willingly succumbed to the trickery of Satan, “the Father of lies and murderer from the beginning”. They no longer belonged to God’s kingdom but to Satan’s. After their fall the world became a hostile place for them because they enthroned Satan as prince of their world.

 Immediately after their sin, Adam and Eve realized their folly. They deeply regretted their action. The Bible tells us that in their shame they clothed their nakedness. However, all was irretrievably lost for them and their posterity.

Though Adam and Eve bitterly regretted their foolish action, they were filled with dark despair because they knew full well that they could never make fitting reparation for their immeasurably outrageous and insolent action against their Creator, who loved them as a father. They simply had no way of ever satisfying the demands of justice. They were absolutely powerless to restore their lost relationship with God. No human being could ever be capable of making adequate reparation for sin against the Supreme Being.

God made our first parents holy and pleasing to himself, but they destroyed his work in them. They lost forever their most precious supernatural gift of grace that once established a personal relationship between them and God. They lost this gift not only for themselves, but for all their posterity. It was this gift that made them holy and pleasing to God. It was the gift of sanctifying grace. Without this grace and in blackest despair, Adam and Eve did the only thing they could think of … they tried to hide themselves in the garden from the presence of the Lord. But when they found that it is impossible to hide themselves from his presence, all they could do was offer God feeble excuses for their evil behavior: Adam blamed his wife, and Eve blamed the devil. But they were to blame; and God held them accountable, despite their excuses. God’s justice could not tolerate their grievous sin. He exiled them from Paradise forever and withdrew from them his special preternatural gifts. Suffering and death - the consequences of sin - would be their earthly plight and that of all their children until the end of time.

Why recall this blackest moment of our human history?  … To remind us of an extremely important truth, a truth that we do well to reflect upon today on this Feast of Jesus, the Font of Divine Mercy! 

          Even at the blackest moment of human history when Adam fell and he and his children had to face the consequences of both original and personal sin, God’s mercy was manifested in the great promise of hope, the future redemption of the human race by the seed of the woman who, while her seed would be attacked by Satan, would conquer Satan by crushing his head. Jesus the Messiah, the God-Man, would be the instrument of God’s Mercy, and he would come to us through his mother Mary, whom he preserved ever free from the dominion of Satan by the privilege of her Immaculate Conception.

Pope John Paul II gave us a basic idea of mercy in his Encyclical Letter, Dives in misericordia. Mercy is justice made less burdensome by love. However, we must always remember that God’s love cannot do away with his justice because God is both infinite justice and infinite love.  Nonetheless, love can condition justice so that justice may serve love. Thus, when it is necessary to go beyond the norm of justice, justice, conditioned by love, becomes mercy. The relationship between justice and love is manifested precisely in mercy. The important truth for us to ponder today follows from this authentic notion of mercy.

The truth for us to ponder today is this: God’s justice is the only true context for us to understand and beg for God’s mercy.  When we speak of God’s mercy, it is imperative that we realize the requirements and consequences of God’s justice. Otherwise, we cannot possibly appreciate and be truly grateful to God for the favor of his mercy. Only by realizing the abyss of our sinful and ungrateful nothingness and the depth of our true helplessness to make adequate reparation for our sins, can we sincerely cry out: “LORD, HAVE MERCY!”

When we ask for God’s mercy we must always keep in mind two things: who we are. and who God is. Our minds must be very clear on this. Jesus made our relationship with God very clear to St. Catherine of Siena when he said: “I am who am; you are: she who is not.  However, you think about me, and I shall think about you.”

Many people today often err grievously on this point. They do not talk about God’s justice but speak almost exclusively about God’s mercy and love. They take God’s mercy and love for granted. This is the sin of presumption.

 Pope Pius XII stated: “the gravest sin of our generation is that it no longer believes in sin”. This is most evident in those who should be most aware of the horror of sin and its gravity. We see that while almost everyone in our churches goes to Holy Communion, very few ever go to ask God’s forgiveness for their sins in the Sacrament of God’s mercy … the Sacrament of Penance. One cannot ignore God’s commands and the Sacrament of his Mercy and, at the same time, ask for his mercy. Such a person does not recognize his or her place before God and is brazenly presumptuous. The Bible tells us: "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (Jms 4:6).

God is merciful, yes, but he is not a fool. Disobeying God and not seeking his forgiveness while asking for his gifts is treating God precisely as a fool. The attitude of one seeking God’s mercy must that of a loving child who fears to offend, and, when he or she does, seeks God’s pardon in the Sacrament of Penance, while asking God to strengthen our hate for sin as the greatest evil. We must have priorities in seeking God’s mercy. And our first priority must be our eternal salvation … all the other requests for his help must be dependent upon this first priority: our salvation.

After their sin, our first parents’ eyes were opened to their truly hopeless situation. But God was the first to be aware of their plight. And while he imposed upon them the curse of his sentence, God’s love tempered his justice. He mercifully offered them a bright ray of hope, a remedy for an otherwise impossible situation. These words of God are called the “Proto-gospel” or the first Good News. God cursed the devil saying: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, while you strike at his heel.” (Gn 3:15)

In these words the Lord promised to send a man who would be born of a woman. These persons – Jesus and Mary - would be the messengers and instruments of God’s mercy for the human race.  Jesus of Nazareth, the only-begotten Son of God made Man, the God-Man who is mercy incarnate; and the woman from whom he was born: the immaculate virgin of Nazareth, the mother of Mercy-in-the-flesh. Jesus would destroy the devil and his kingdom by crushing Satan’s head, and though Satan would strike at Jesus by instigating his crucifixion and death, Jesus Christ our Messiah would triumph.

St. John tells us in his Last Supper account about the final battle between Jesus and the devil, a battle from which man would arise the victor through Jesus, God’s mercy incarnate. On that first Holy Thursday, the two sovereigns, Jesus the Messiah, whose mother was Mary, and Satan, the Prince of this world, were locked in mortal battle. The Last Supper was the battle scene; and the weapon of the Victor, Jesus Christ, was the Eucharist: the Sacrifice of the New and Everlasting Covenant. You ask: “What about Calvary if the victory was accomplished on Holy Thursday?” St. Faustina has the answer.  

Let us listen to her:

“Holy Hour – Thursday.  During this hour of prayer, Jesus allowed me to enter the Cenacle (i.e. the upper room of the Last Supper on the first Holy Thursday), and I was a witness to what happened there.  However, I was most deeply moved when, before the Consecration, Jesus raised His eyes to heaven and entered into a mysterious conversation with His Father.  It is only in eternity that we shall really understand that moment.  His eyes were like two flames; His face was radiant, white as snow; His whole personage full of majesty, His soul full of longing. At the moments of Consecration, love rested satiated – the sacrifice fully consummated.  Now only the external ceremony of death will be carried out – external destruction, the essence of the sacrifice is in the Cenacle.  Never in my whole life had I understood this mystery so profoundly as during that hour of adoration. Oh, how ardently I desire that the whole world would come to know this unfathomable mystery!”

This “unfathomable mystery” is the Holy Eucharist: the ineffable Sacrament that took Jesus, the God-Man and eternal High Priest, to invent!  St. Faustina tells us that the death of Our Lord indeed mystically and sacramentally preceded that bloody scene on Calvary. She tells us that just as we know the Mass to be the re-presentation of Jesus’ death on Calvary, so the first Eucharist in the Cenacle was the pre-presentation of that very same saving sacrifice. The Eucharist of the Last Supper made Calvary pre-exist in our time as the Mass makes it post-exist in our time. Our Lord willed to make his death truly – not figuratively - present through the Eucharist on the First Holy Thursday – before he suffered – so that the Church would owe her very origin directly to the Eucharist. The Church not only lives on the Eucharist; she first received he life, she was born, through the Eucharist of the first Holy Thursday. Jesus instituted the Eucharist so that through this means he would establish the New Covenant of God’s paternal love and so that those who have the faith can be in real contact with this greatest act of his merciful love for us every time they attend Mass.

Because the Eucharist truly makes Calvary present at the Consecration of the Mass, it means that we have no further to go than to Mass to be truly present at the foot of the cross on Calvary.  At Mass we are as truly present on Calvary as Mary and John were present there two thousand years ago!  This is a secret that only those with the Catholic faith know. We do not look to an “old rugged cross on a hill far away” to reflect upon the saving action of God for us. Instead, we who have the Eucharistic Sacrifice have only to kneel in silent adoration and wonder on Mount Calvary as we assist at the Consecration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and bend low as the Precious Blood of our Savior pours out upon us in a veritable flood of divine mercy and redemption.

Jesus in the Eucharist is the very source of God’s mercy.  He came as man to stand in our place before God, and as the God-Man he was able to make in our stead that infinite apology and adequate reparation for the infinitely grievous sin of our first parents and all other sin: Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Let us approach our Divine Savior, especially through his beloved Mother, to receive his mercy in our need.  He desires that we come, but he also desires that we approach him humbly and contritely realizing as he told St. Catherine of Siena: “I am who am”, you are “she who is not”. 

Lord Jesus, through your holy Mother, grant me the grace of reverencing and loving you as I should and of being your instrument to bring your love to others through the practice of the works of mercy, both spiritual and corporal.

Heavenly Father, you made me your child through your Son’s blood of the New and Everlasting Covenant, shed for the forgiveness of sin. Blessed and loving Father, grant that I may always esteem and possess the gift of sanctifying grace. May this gift of being your child in your Son always be my most precious possession. May I place it above everyone else and everything else. May you always be the center of my heart and life, and may I always be your faithful and obedient child.  MY JESUS I TRUST IN YOU!  

Monsignor At Our Men's Group