Bronx Divine Mercy Conference: 2014 Scott Hahn

hello hi if I didn't know me I might be impressed Oh tough act to follow tough student to teach too I gave up puns for Lent after all it's a season of penance terrible let's pray in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen Almighty God our Heavenly Father we love you and we thank you for the gift of Jesus Christ who is your love incarnate and in his name we pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit to come down upon us and our loved ones and throughout the whole world to all of those that you love we also pray Lord that in this time you would illuminate our minds with the light of truth that you wouldn't indle our hearts with the fire of your love that you would empower us to live out the mercy that you have showered upon us and that you would hear us as we pray our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death Saint Joseph st. arez little flower in this hour show thy power in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen my favorite prayer the title of my talk is the father of mercies and I'd like to begin with the text of Scripture taken from Romans chapter 12 verse 1 I appeal to you therefore brethren by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you may prove what is the will of God what is good and acceptable and perfect the Father of mercies now when you hear that you hear many things for example you hear an echo of what Jesus taught his disciples in Matthew we hear be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect but in Luke chapter 6 we read in verse 36 be merciful just as your father is merciful why well there is no tension between Matthew and Luke it's just really two ways of saying the same thing but also it's helpful for me at least because Luke helps me understand more properly what Matthew is talking about when Jesus says be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect it is not some impossible unattainable perfectionist ideal what it means to be perfect as God is perfect is to receive His mercy and then to share that mercy with others and that makes it so much more attainable and so much more realistic and I think irresistible as well we're also aware of the fact that Paul frequently addresses God as the father of mercies as he does in 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 3 praise to God the father of mercies now when we hear the word mercy we've got to clarify what we mean because if you go online like I did and look up mercy and check out synonyms the first word that you find is leniency another synonym is a stroke of good luck another synonym is mere pity or indulgence and while God's mercy includes all of those things he is lenient he is Clement and we are lucky to be so blessed nevertheless I think we have to recognize that mercy is much more than pity just as grace is much more than favor one of the big discoveries that I made years ago that made me leave my own Protestant legacy and my own Presbyterian pastor and to become a Catholic was to recognize that in the writings of st. Paul the grace of God is more than just undeserved favor it is nothing less than God's own life power that he gives to us and He pours into us in order to make us more than forgiving more than pardoned but truly adopted and truly holy so that he's not just pardoning criminals he's transforming sinners in the Saints which is a greater work of God than transforming bread and wine into the body blood soul and divinity of Jesus in fact the Eucharist that he gives us is ordered to this end to transubstantiation earth in two beloved sons and daughters who are holy that is mercy and nothing less when we hear mercy we think of well I know in my own scholarship I think of what the early church fathers loved to emphasize they use this word over and over and again in the Greek it's assumed katha basis now when you come across that word it's often translated condescension and that's half the truth but the fact is that word which is better rendered a combination God accommodates himself to us it really shows us that God Stoops down to us in our weakness no matter how far he has to go now amount no matter how low he has to stoop he will find us in our weakness and yet at the same time that term talks about how God in his power will raise us to his holiness and empower us to share in nothing less than Christ's own divine sonship this is what it means for us to come to God and discover the father of mercies now when we hear father you know that's a term that I think we all kind of understand at least at one level I'd like to propose to you that the term father is one of those misleading terms that seems very easy to understand on the surface and yet below the surface it really reveals a whole lot more I mean we we hear God is the father and immediately we can relate because we all have had fathers we all know father's and we know what it means to be a father it means to be well it means to be a male it means to have a body that reflects your maleness it means to have a particular organ to perform a particular act in a marriage we're about you become a father except for one thing God does not have any gender he doesn't have a body he doesn't have an organ he doesn't perform an act and he's not married so therefore we must conclude he's not really a father right wrong what we have to conclude is that fatherhood is not reducible to the merely physical or biological when in fact in God it is more truly spiritual and theological because God is not less of a father than me he's much more and so the notion the mystery of fatherhood has to be in a certain sense purified but this is exactly what theologians do when they use the word analogy because analogy is a comparison it shows similarities in yet it also recognizes this similarities and when we use analogies for God we're reminded of what was taught way back in 1215 at the fourth Lateran Council that no matter what similarities you find in God between God and the creatures the dissimilarities are immeasurably greater and so when we think of God as father we really land upon the single most important thing that we have in our faith our Father who art in heaven I believe in God the Father Almighty glory be to the Father and so God has given us all father's so that we might come to know him for who he really is because more than a Creator God is a father because the creation is not eternal but Jesus is God is an eternal father he's eternally fathering that's why the Sun is not younger than the father he's not smaller than the father he's God from alot God light from light true God from True God precisely because he is eternally begotten not made he is consubstantial with the father and so I mean at one level you might be thinking boy father get Lee's testimony was so much more understandable than this but what did he say Camus neo is the key Camus neo and that is family he was quoting John Paul he was quoting Benedict he was quoting Francis granted I was his professor once and so I'm naturally going to come up here and take it a couple notches higher than its esta mone but what John Paul said is what exactly what father Michael was saying one cannot truly protect the family without getting to its roots it's profound reality its intimate nature its intimate nature is the communion of persons in the image and likeness of the divine community this divine communion that's exactly what his book this one is three is all about and it wasn't just there I mean John Paul goes elsewhere and in many other places he talks about this you know in fact in his last book or one of his last books crossing the threshold of Hope he he talks about what affects sin has upon our perception of God sin makes it much easier for us to think of God as the Creator the Lord the lawgiver the judge the employer the angry boss and all of those things in fact he says this original sin attempts to abolish fatherhood not by making us atheists he goes on to clarify what sin does is to place in doubt the truth about God who is love leaving us only with a sense of the master/slave relationship so that God is the Lord the master and we are merely slaves and servants we're its property and in a certain sense all of that is true but the fact is you know masters have servants because either they can't get the job done themselves or they prefer not to whereas we don't do anything that God can't do and everything we do God is really doing in US and through us so it isn't like a master sitting around the universe's room we don't not wanting to work in so he creates slaves the Fatherhood of God is the only thing that explains everything that God does because it's the one thing that explains who God eternally is he is eternally fathering it isn't just a noun it's a verb and the result of attorney eternal fathering is the Eternity of the son and the love the father has for the son is the same as the love the son has for the father and it's not just a force it's a face it's not just a power it's a person it's the third person the Holy Spirit who empowers us to be more than creatures to do more than the Bri that enables us to become children of God and to receive the mercy of God and to recognize we're breathing the breath of God we are breathing the life of God we have been fashioned for something much more than just temporal happiness we have been fashioned to discover this joy of knowing ourselves to be the beloved sons and daughters of God I am convinced that divine mercy is what makes joy possible and joy is the one thing that is the most indispensable key to unlock our life mysteries our struggles our challenges but even more as we read in Nehemiah chapter 8 verse 10 the joy of the Lord is our strength and as Pope Francis recently reminded us evangelization in our time will only take place as the result of contagious joy what was that document called evangelii gaudium the joy of the gospel you can tell whether or not you really under standing divine mercy you're really receiving it you're really grasping it is you can tell whether it's gripping you by whether or not you have joy joy is the supernatural and the natural result of opening ourselves to receive the grace of divine mercy and as Pope Francis reminds us it is the key to the New Evangelization why because most people are never going to reach the point where they can explain every doctrine or prove it all from the Bible or defend the faith by clearing away every single possible objection but what all of us can do and what all of us are called to do is simply enjoy being Catholic that is the single that is the single most effective way to evangelize our friends and our family members our co-workers and everybody else and why because the world offers countless pleasures but not one single lasting joy and yet it is the one thing Jesus gives us even in the midst of hardship and sorrow and sometimes especially through hardship and sorrow joy is what we all want joy is what we all need with it we can stand up to any challenge any difficulty without it we will cave in under any pressure and we will go along with the world joy is what we all want joy is what we all need and joy is also what others find irresistible as well as irrefutable because it's not an argument to rebut it's an experience that we're all looking for and it's really a search that only ends up in the face of Christ and with the gift of mercy and whenever we find ourselves without it and then for me that's true every day it's simply a reminder to us of another key to the New Evangelization the conversion is ongoing it's ever deepening it's lifelong it's not simply what I was taught way back at the age of 14 when I ended experience the initial grace of conversion that grace of initial conversion that got me out of Cinna got me out of the juvenile court system of Allegheny County and got me out of drugs and a lot of things my mom would prefer me not to even mention what this really does what this really did is to draw me into something so big and so beautiful but conversion is not over and done in the past it's not something that happened just once to me when I was 14 or even earlier when I was baptized as an infant but my Presbyterian parents conversion is something that we wake up to and need every morning and so when I wake up in the morning I don't necessarily feel joy I necessarily don't and so it's a reminder to me that I need not only breakfast you know not only a cup of coffee I need to pray prayer is to the soul what food and breath are to the body it nourishes and sustains us but even more it takes us from being mere children of God to becoming full-grown sons and daughters God loves us as we are we've heard that a thousand times but he loves us too much to leave us the way we are he wants saints not spoiled brats and so His mercy is never reducible to leniency his mercy is what reaches down to us in our own self-centered rexis wretchedness but it raises us up and empowers us to bear crosses we've heard it before no pain no gain no cross no crown Jesus didn't simply bear the cross for us he bestows a cross on us but before he took up his own cross he instituted the Eucharist before he bestows crosses upon us he gives us the Holy Eucharist so that when we receive the power and the love and the mercy of the crucified and resurrected the ascendant and enthroned lord of lords the king of kings because that's what the Eucharist is that's who we receive we get the power to do what we could never do on our own we get the power to do what only Christ could do on his own he didn't do it instead of us he did it not as a substitute but as a representative not so that we wouldn't have to but so that finally now at long last we can and we shall because he loves us and we have to reflect upon this fact again because God gives us all father's so that we can come to know him for who he is but it gave us all fathers who have faults who have flaws so that we'll never settle for anything less than the best because God is the only perfect father it's the only thing he is from all eternity this communion of persons that originates in the eternal eternity of God is at once a lofty mystery that theologians can never master and yet at the same time it's one of those mysteries that you don't even need to graduate from the third grade to grasp because it grasps you not primarily in the mind but in the heart and this is where we experience joy again and again the joy of discovering that God is not only a perfect father but a merciful one and he calls us to perfection but that perfection is embodied in his own divine mercy and so it's something again that isn't over and done in the past it's something that is new every day and the joy of the gospel is precisely what will make us contagious Catholics you can go out and read the books that are available and I would encourage you especially for the gate leads and all the others too but at the end of the day don't look in the mirror and say I I can't answer every question I'm not ready because at the end of the day if you look in the mirror and say finally I'm ready you better duck because God will show you out of his mercy just how ready you never are I got one PhD I could get five more and I would not be ready and it's why before I get up I sweat I get so nervous before these talks you have no idea I don't know about father Michael but others I've talked to I mean who is adequate to communicate these mysteries and yet I have too much fun to stop just because I'm so inadequate God's strength is made perfect in our PhD in no way God's strength is made perfect in our weakness we hear that we know it we believe it but deep down we still Harbor the suspicion that if God's strength is made perfect in our weakness just how much stronger would he be when I'm no longer weak but I am strong that'll be like you know - no it doesn't work that way God is not my co-pilot I'm his passenger I'm his cargo he is carrying me as a shepherd carries the sheep but at the same time he is healing me and you as well and then he's using us to turn around and share this with others I remember when I first experienced the grace of conversion at the age of 14 I went out and bought a Bible and the first thing I wrote in the Bible was Scott Hahn sharing the gospel is just one beggar telling other beggars where he found the bread and for us to withhold that information you know is not humility it's not modesty it's not sensitivity it's not respect for the belief of others it's really selfishness masquerading as sensitivity we have got to take risks in loving our family members our co-workers and we do it especially when we pray for them and then when we show them the joy that God restores in us I remember being here two years ago and something that I said come came back to me and that is if you show up for work on Monday and you're there you know at the coffee break around 10:00 a.m. and you're over there by the the coffee and the water cooler and you and you and you mentioned to your co-workers the fact that you know I went to this restaurant on Friday night my wife and I own the cuisine was great I really recommend it especially this particular dish nobody's gonna say to you who do you think you are to shove your culinary tastes down our throats how insensitive you know and if you went on to see a movie that you really enjoyed and you recommend it nobody to say who do you think you are now to shove your theatres down our throats because friends do that and co-workers expect it and the fact is what you do with friends is to share the joys of life as well as to acknowledge the sorrows and share them as well this is why evangelization the New Evangelization is based upon our experience of divine mercy which brings us joy which deepens our friendships because in the context of friendship we can share what brings us joy because the withhold that is to betray friendship and the share it is the deepened friendship and then we can stand back and watch how the Holy Spirit has prepped those friends of ours our family members our co-workers even the people we don't necessarily get along with and we can really see the Grace and how infectious the faith can be and this is what we're called to be contagious Catholics and it has to begin and end with our experience of God's mercy God loves us but not because he's really good at tolerating us God loves us because he desires us he doesn't desire us because we make up for something that is lacking in us we need God he doesn't need us he desires us even when we don't desire him not to make up for what is lacking in him he desires us for the purpose of making up for all that is lacking in us and that's why he doesn't love us because of how good we are and then he loves us a little bit less when we fall back into sin God's love is not caused by our goodness our goodness is not the cause of his love our goodness is the result of his love God has loved us all into existence out of nothing we now exist God has loved us to this present moment God has loved us to whatever degree of goodness and virtue and holiness we have and we can entrust our weaknesses and sins to that same love because he will love us all the way home till we move from grace to glory do we move from faith to being in the presence of God's own glorious face this is who we are as Catholics but this is also what we were when we became humans it is the purpose and plan of God and we can only understand it when we trace it back to the radiation of God the Father of mercies God is a merciful father this is beyond crucial this is that sort of life-or-death thing that if we get it everything else makes sense and if we don't nothing makes sense it isn't as though for a series of days and weeks and months God has continually gotten on the right side of the bed you know and he's in a good mood and that is called mercy know God's mercy is one of those abiding unchangeable realities it isn't our favorite attribute it is God's greatest attribute because it is the coordination of all of us attributes God's mercy is God's love his power his knowledge his goodness coordinated in action God loves us but mercy is God's love in action reaching down to us in our misery raising us up to his own glory and making us Saints all along the way this is the key to understanding why God hates our sin and God punishes it and at the same time God forgives our sin and he takes away the sin of the world well which is it God do you hate sin or do you forgive sin and the answer is see both and be well how can it be because God hates sin and punishes it God forgives sin and takes it away for the same reason because He loves us if he didn't hate our sin that would prove that he doesn't really love us if he didn't punish our sin that would also prove he doesn't really love us if you came home with me this afternoon you know we have two teenagers in my family still we have six kids and by the way let me correct the introduction we've got nine grandkids now but if you came home you discover that I punish my kids and not the neighbors kids although those neighbors kids it's how are you cool but I punish my kids not because I stopped loving them or not because I start loving them a little bit less it's because I can't stop loving them and even though they might not feel it the punishments are an expression of my love not perfect yeah they would assure you of that they've got a father with fault you know with faults and flaws and failings and all of the rest but God the Father has no faults no failings he doesn't go through good and bad moods he doesn't ever give in to anger what we call the anger of God is how we experience his love as st. Thomas Aquinas said God's wrath is a metaphor but it's a it's a sign that points to something real it's how we experience his abiding love when we've turned our back on him he loves us too much to let us get away with that he wants more for us than we are willing to settle for ourselves and so you know as we here throughout the tradition God punishes sin not because he stops loving us not because he starts loving us less because he can't stop loving us but more than just punishing it more than just hating it God forgives it God takes it away because that's just who he is as a father of mercy and that's explaining what he does in our lives we don't suffer in spite of the fact that He loves us we suffer precisely because He loves us so much he needs to take us out of our comfort zone he needs to pull us out of ourselves as we here in Hebrews 5 about Jesus himself though a son he learned obedience through what he suffered and that's how he became perfected in his sacred humanity and the source of eternal salvation for all of us who obey who believe who trust him Jesus I trust in you which means Jesus give me your divine mercy give to me your Divine Son give to me your capacity to law of God as a father give to me the capacity to receive the Holy Eucharist so that I might bear my crosses and help others bear their burdens as well this is what God wants for us more than we want for ourselves this is what God wants for our loved ones even more than we wanted for them Christ was dying to get it to us now he is risen now he's interceding for us now he is coming to us resting on her tongues for a moment entering our bodies infiltrating our souls permeating our brains transforming our hearts to make us saints to do for us what we could never do for ourselves in order to enable us to become the only thing for which we were made saints we are called to be Saints in nothing less and at the end of the day at the end of your life at the end of my life it's the only thing that matters as Father Gately reminded us to fail to become a saint is the only real failure you know if you never graduated from high school much less that went off to college or got advanced degrees if you couldn't even hold down a job if your reputation has always been sort of you know in the lower end of things but through it all God's mercy reaches you and at the end you become a saint and behold the face of the Father at mercy for all eternity 490 billion trillion years which is really the first second of eternity you will look back on every apparent failure and realize God's fatherly plan was being fulfilled most especially and what appeared to be failings whereas if you succeed according to worldly measures and get those degrees and get the applause and get all the notoriety and everything else that people long for stupidly these days and in the end you succumb to pride and fail to make it home to heaven you'll look back and realize that every success was a demonic seduction we as Catholics at this point in history have got to be especially aware of this why because conferences like this you know people come to speak and others come to hear and we've got this cult of Catholic celebrities we don't need celebrities we've got Saints and those Saints are the older brothers and sisters that God the Father has stocked the family full of so that we can become Saints ourselves and pray for us poor souls not just the ones in purgatory but the ones who are for now celebrities because they we are especially burdened and vulnerable I greatly appreciate your prayers you know and it's so much easier to talk about the faith than it is to go home this evening and you know walk the talk that's where your prayers come in I'll owe you for all eternity if you pray for me and especially for my bride of 35 years Kimberly who has to put up with me and those six kids and the grandkids I'll pray for you as well but I mean when we look around and see this world we might wonder deep down God if I were all-powerful I wouldn't do it this way notice I wasn't struck by lightning this is the way God wants us to pray you can tell because the only book of the Bible that the church prays 24/7 is what the Book of Psalms it's not in the New Testament it's in the old a hundred and fifty prayers I've taught a course for graduate students and seminarians on the Psalms and I can tell you what the experts taught me and that is out of 150 42 percent of those Psalms those prayers that Jesus quotes from more than any other Old Testament book that he was memorizing as a kid and praying throughout his whole life just as the mystical body of Christ continually prays 42 percent of those 150 Psalms or what scholars call Psalms of complaint or we can soften it by calling it Psalms of lament now you might hear that and say what do you talk you I would never complain you know and you think back to Israel in the waters for 40 years they weren't complaining to God they were complaining about God the psalmist however teaches us to complain to God and why because you don't complain to someone unless you really believe deep down they care you believe deep down they're ready willing and able to do something about it my kids complain to me why because they're my kids and I'm their father and they expect me to care and do something about it those Psalms are not just prayers have complained their expressions of trust Jesus I trust in you therefore I am going to say to you if I were all-powerful all-loving I wouldn't run the world the way you do as the Lord of lords the king of kings but the one thing that makes sense out of everything is that God is the father of mercies and so he does more with our lusts where sin abounds st. Paul and father Michael remind us grace abounds all the more God will never be outdone by sinners don't ever think that your sin is any match for God's mercy never not one of them not all of them God's mercy eradicate sar sin he's not just involved in some kind of divine cover-up he covers us because of the shame of our nakedness but he transforms us after clothing us with Christ God's mercy eradicate sin like warm sunlight melts ice it's not just what he's doing for a little while it's who he is and we never have to fear that someday he might wake up on the wrong side and be in a bad mood and when the sufferings come don't misunderstand them as though oops the time of Mercy is over no when we come into deep suffering like father Michaels dad and then he encounters divine mercy what we discover through our deep suffering is deep mercy and what we encounter through the crosses that are really heavy our deeper mercies until it leads us back to the cross where we see mercy at its deepest this isn't just leniency this isn't just a stroke of good luck this isn't just divine indulgence this is God's love in action this is God coordinating all of his power and all of his knowledge and all of his goodness and all of his love to do for us what goes beyond our capacity to ask him to do it goes beyond our imagination and yet it isn't Plan B it isn't what God decided to do on account of what we decided to do when we sinned God writes straight with our crooked lines when his children fall they end up falling into his mercy I end up falling upward again and again we wrote up you know a story of our conversion called Rome sweet home if I ever write a memoirs at the end of my life it'll be called falling upward because that's all I ever do I keep falling and God's mercy keeps catching me and not putting me back to the point from whence I fell but raising me up higher and higher that's the only thing that makes sense out of why at this point in my life one of 56 and I'm getting older I'm discovering I need his mercy now more than I did it isn't just that I realize it more it's that I needed more I remember reading san agustin years ago and as he got older he explained that he needed grace from God more now than he did when he first converted more now than at any point along the path and I'm thinking well that's humility I've discovered no it wasn't it's simple honesty as we get older we get weaker and as we get weaker God gets stronger and we need him too and we need to trust that he never will stop and he can't because he's immutable he's not capable of changing whatever could change God would have to be God because it just doesn't work any other way God is immutable and he's immutably merciful and he's immutably omnipotent in that mercy all-powerful so we can trust him even as we parent our families even as I father my kids even as I grandfather my grandkids you know more than any book in fact Kimberly says more than all the books put together the one thing that transformed my life the thing that really transformed my faith so that I was a Bible believing Evangelical Protestant now I'm a Bible believing evangelical Catholic not less evangelical arguably much more because the Catholic faith takes the Evangel the gospel it's like the gospel on steroids the good news just gets beyond belief it's so much better than I ever imagined but I know Kimberly is right that the experience that converted me more than all of the books was going through more than 30 hours of labor with her and at the end I got jostle awake didn't realize I'd fallen asleep I looked up to see her eyes and to support and encourage her but I looked into the face of this oriental anesthesiologist instead who said we took your wife down to eat off or caesarean section like what I dozed off and she hadn't awakened me they took her down too quickly so half asleep half alive down the hallway into the ER where they're prepping her they had strapped her cruciform on a gurney they wheeled her down and there I was standing next to her and then I saw the tears and I wiped them away and I knelt down beside her and I began to pray and then I just offered her words of comfort and encouragement she said I'm sorry I'm like don't you dare apologize this is the sacrifice I mean she was laying down her life for our our beloved infant who hadn't even been born yet and I was just trying to comfort it for like five ten minutes and then I did something really stupid I stood up and I looked over the sheet when I tell my wife I love your guts I know what I am talking about I saw every major organ up close I mean my stomach turned I got dizzy I just got back on my knees and offered words of comfort and encouragement and I never stood up again not until I heard the suctioning you know and and suddenly when I stood up they handed me this big bundle of baby boy and I'm holding our little baby Michael our firstborn looking into the eyes that were still shut you know of this infant you know as we as we like to tell her so as we as we would tell each other you know the two become one and the one we became was so real that nine months later we had to come up with a name and that little Michael was the incarnation of our love and of our oneness and now of our three nests in one we became like a human icon of the divine family the Holy Trinity and I'm holding him and they're helping me cut the umbilical cord I held him while they cut it really you know and then all his sudden he starts to squirm and then fuss and then cry and I realized this is not my call you know so I handed him off to her and proceeded to have this moment of Revelation where I discovered that certain body parts of her Anatomy were for him as much as they were for me to take the light in and it was so cool to see that connection and it was so wonderful to try to help for the next 3 or 4 days because like any man I'm looking for a problem to solve something to fix but the nurses and the doctors were taking care of everything it wasn't until the fourth day that I got the wheelchair I got her to the elevator I took her to the car I had the baby seat all strapped I put the baby I could fix some problems now we got home there wasn't much else that I could do because I still wasn't ready yet to change a doopy diaper that was my second week but that night our first night home around 3 a.m. I could I could hear her nursing him and I watched in the shadows as she hoisted him up to her shoulder and began burping him and I'm thinking that's something I can do so I said hey Kimberly why don't I burp him and take him down lay him down and you just get to sleep and you could just hear her he this sigh relief she was exhausted she handed him off to me I took him from her walk down the hall doing with him what I had seen her do you know many times in the last few days but I must have done a little harder because by the time I got into the baby room and he burp I felt something warm and wet going down my back oh it's one of those moments where you're like whoa Kay you know and III take him down I look into his face and he obviously looks comfortable you know he looks so I'm like it's okay you know and I'm looking into the face of the only person on planet earth who was ever vomited on me you know and if you'd rewind the tape and ask me one year earlier how do you think you'll feel well you know has anybody ever thrown up on you I would have said no and if you'd asked me how do you think you'll feel the first time somebody does and I'd say frustration anger maybe even rage you know but one year later I'm looking into the face of the only person who's ever thrown up on me and I am feeling no frustration no anger no rage your irritation I am feeling a love for which words couldn't be found to describe it I'm like it's okay it's so alright you know and his eyes are drooping and I'm sitting now in that little wooden rocking chair going back and forth as that is getting colder and clammy or down my back and his eyes are almost drooping all the way shut when I thought a presence in the room and I didn't see a face I didn't hear a voice but I knew it was God and I could feel that he was trying to get something across to me and I wasn't sure what it was and so it was like what is it and I felt that he was trying to say to me do you see how much you love your child I'm like God words don't begin to describe such love and I realized he was trying to get something even more across than that and I wasn't sure what it was at first and then he was like do you think it's possible for you to love your child more than I love my children and I'm thinking no I mean that's him but that's absurd theologically I mean your god I'm not so you you love your children perfectly I own and I stopped rocky I'm like wait a minute what are you saying are you trying to tell me that you love me like I love him that was exactly what he was trying to say and like whoa I would have circled true God loves me but I would never have known before that night that he'd love me like this I went back to rocking and contemplating the face of my child the only person on the planet who would ever vomit on me thinking of all the times were metaphorically speaking I had vomited on God and just assumed that he loved me less for that realizing that no in His mercy he was fathering me in a way that I couldn't even imagine or begin to ask for an hour later I didn't want to stop I wasn't ready to put him down but I knew the morning was coming and so reluctantly I did after having bashed for more than an hour not in moonlight but in this divine light of mercy of love that I never experienced when I finally woke up in the morning I'm like Kimberly you won't believe what happened last night when I burp them he threw up and I felt God unconditional love mercy she's like that's nice like nice it's radical its revolutionary and she explained that she had grown up in a warm loving Christian family where her father had made her wrapped in that sort of reality honor light well I've got a good mom and dad but not like that you know I need it and I'll be honest that experience has loomed ever larger in my life as I've gotten older as I have fathered six kids that have never stopped it never went away it never diminished and now to see my kids have kids and pray for our 22 year old we'll be entering the seminary this fall because he wants to be a spiritual father and for our 19 year old who's also thinking about it as well this is who we are as Catholic Christians this is what we do in the family of God we are not celebrating a new contract it's a new covenant we're not a part of a factory but a family we are not employees we are beloved sons and daughters and we do not yet see what we will be but we do see that we are loved in a way that words fail to express and at the end of the day what better things do we have to struggle with to find words to express than this mercy but at the end of the day let's just ask God to him to empower us with that mercy to wrap us in that as well and to renew those mercies every day in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil amen hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death amen in the name of the Father the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen real briefly let me just do what father Michael did before me and that is recommend some of these resources don't just go home with warm memories I want to encourage you resources back there in the gym I have a book called many are called rediscovering the glory of the priesthood I wrote it in the year of priests and I am convinced that there are many young men who are being called but who haven't heard it yet because they haven't been shown what the glory of the priesthood is so I want to recommend this to you if you know any of them we also have a few more weeks in Lent and so here's a really slim book called lengthen reflections based on a father who keeps his promises which is this book on God's covenant love in Scripture entitled a father who keeps his promises this talk this morning was drawn from a book I wrote called first comes love finding your family in finding your family in the church and the Holy Trinity the most recent book that I came out with since I was here last is called consuming the word the New Testament and the Eucharist in the early church it's basically the sequel to the lamb supper it picks up right where the lamb supper leaves off and so I wanted to recommend that but also lord have mercy which shows us that the sacrament of mercy is what confession is all about I know you've got family members and friends who have questions and objections I wrote a book called reasons to believe how to understand explain and defend the Catholic faith just so you can help with people who say what about marry the Pope Birgit Orry the Saints the sacraments and all of that and lastly a book called signs of life forty Catholic customs and their biblical roots why do we use holy water why to sign the cross why lens why Advent why we genuflect why do we do all of the things that we do as Catholics it's all rooted in Scripture and tradition and we see when we discover just how deeply rooted all of this is it becomes so much more meaningful I should mention one more book my favorite it's called understanding the scriptures a complete course on Bible study I've never been asked by an archbishop to write a book before and when you are it's sort of hard to say no and in this case Archbishop chef Hugh was kind enough to write the foreword as well but I spent a year working on it and then I spent another year waiting for it wondering why are they taking forever until this manuscript came back transubstantiated into the most beautiful book I'd ever laid my eyes on with all these maps charts and diagrams the publishers did the most beautiful job 15 chapters of the old 15 chapters on the New Testament all culminating in the mass and it's written at a high school level it's used in adult education even in some seminarians as well but I want to recommend just to tackle this if you want to go deeper into the Word of God there's also some information upon a pilgrimage that we're taking kimber than are leading to fatima and lourdes next month this is the last week for that and this stuff back there I really encourage you to take advantage of all those resources but lastly and most importantly from the bottom of my heart I just want to say thank you brothers and sisters for your time and especially for your prayers god bless you

Channel: Annual Bronx Divine Mercy Conference

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Keywords: +Divine Mercy, +Divine Mercy Conference, +Bronx Divine Mercy Conference, +Scott Hahn

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Length: 48min 51sec (2931 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2016