Fr. Benedict Groeschel - Divine Mercy: Understanding the Sacrifice of Christ

I'm so delighted to be here again and somehow or other the Lord keeps me alive from year to year so if I'm still alive next year I'll be back again and Sabatino Sabatino on the others in the Institute done do a wonderful work of Education it's a wonderful example of lay apostolate of lay people donating time energy intelligence to the work of the church now I wanted to thank that beautiful icon you never heard of Saint Benedict Joseph labret when he was 16 in France around 1750 he left home to become at 16 a Trappist monk but he had a nervous breakdown and six times he joined the Trappist and he could never stay and so he went on the road visiting from shrine to shrine to church to church and he became a homeless pilgrim he did this for many years and he would go every year from wrong in the spring up across the Alps over to Spain to the shrine of Saint James in Compostela and go back in the fall and people remembered him they did not know his name but they called him El Santo El Santo the saint and even to this day in southern France you'll find ends marked with the name at the end of say Benedict Joseph labret because he had stopped there and stayed overnight in the barn and he we finally collapsed on the steps of a church on Holy Week he was carried into the church and he died at 4:30 in the afternoon and there were 10,000 people out in front of the church at 7:30 at night if some time on today the saint is dead and they couldn't bury him Durandal after Mohali monday easter monday and the church they had to call off all the services for Holy Week because of the tens of thousands of people heard about this and he looked like Christ when he was laid out in his casket a Protestant minister a professor who was in from Boston heard about this crazy thing and he went to look and the great crowds the staple papal soldiers made the place them because he looked like a gentleman and he walked up to the casket looked in and he was converted to the Catholic Church and that Minister John Tyler became the first Protestant minister to become a Catholic priest in the United States how mysterious how mysterious so when I arrived sixty years ago and no vitiate they were reading the life of st. Benedict Joseph thank you and I I decided that I would come to be brother Benedict Joseph because in an old religious order you change your name when you are entered into the new community now let's say a little prayer and we'll get started in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit a Holy Spirit come and be with us guide and enlighten us open our hearts and minds that we may understand value the mercy of God and that we may become witnesses for God's mercy to others that we ourselves receive divine mercy and grow in that mercy we pray through Christ our Lord we adore you Oh Christ and we praise you Our Lady seed of wisdom st. Joseph st. Francis mother Teresa brave name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen now we came up this sub subject with divine mercy people have been talking about the mercy of God the mercy of Christ for 2,000 years and in the very ancient form of the mass going back to the third of what century we have lord have mercy Christ have mercy lord have mercy and Greek key really saw so we've all grown up with the idea of divine mercy however they way back in 1931 a sister in Poland a devout humble a sister she was praying and she had a vision sister a kowalska and she saw a vision of Christ coming to her as the mercy of God and Christ asked her to preach Sister Faustina Kowalska that she would tell people to have a devotion to the divine mercy what is she gonna do a humble little cork sister she was a teacher she was one of the sisters that cooked in the convent the old people here may remember when every parish had a nice convent and with since reason thought and it was always a sister in the convent who was the cook sister and if you want of the altar boy Xia got sent to the store to buy the groceries and for the for the cook sister and if you one of those boys that always said you always learned that the Jews loved sisters the old-fashioned sisters but the habit and when I would get sent out to sit shop groceries to the sisters the Gaian Singh was our sister thought it that note can I take this big bag of meat back to sister Anthony and you tell her this is from Jake on the house and that was something that you do years and years ago that Jewish people always had great respect for priests but especially for duds now as time went on the world changed very much and sister faustina died in 1937 bringing out the idea of divine mercy and even she had an artist painted a painting of what she had seen in her vision you may have seen the paintings of the diviners it was a terrible time that was the beginning of the Second World War Poland had only lived as a repentant Republic from 1918 to 1930 nine centuries before Poland had been divided up runned by taken over by Russia Germany and Austria there was no country called Poland it was a geographic expression and that short time from 1918 to 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and he despised the Polish people he used to say Slav enslaving the Slavs were slaves and he was incredibly vicious to Poland finally when the war was over because the poles held on to their faith no matter what happened the poles were the most loyal Catholics in Europe along with the Slovak and when the war was over what happened the Communists took over Poland there were hardly any communists in Poland but Russia pushed their Communist Party in Poland and they took over there now they didn't get as far as the Nazis did but they were there for decades and it was during this time that Poland stood up against the National hem of Poland Oh God who has saved Poland from centuries and centuries they stood between Germany and Russia Poland me the flat land that's what the word Poland means the flat land so it could be invaded both from Russia from Austria and from Germany and the tremendous number of suffering concentration camps immense numbers of people killed hundreds and hundreds of Polish priests bishops were killed and you know some of them are well-known martyrs of st. Maximilian Kolbe is a representative of the many Polish martyr priests and then when the war went finally over and some peace into Europe and Poland under the Communists was freer than it was under the Nazis and the gradually the Polish Communist Party took more control over Rutland Russia all of a sudden you started see these paintings of the divine mercy in Polish American churches Polish national churches and you'd want everything what was it about and would you believe stupidly somebody decided that the divine mercy devotion was turned off you weren't supposed to put out the images you were not supposed to talk about sexist Casca and you weren't supposed to talk about the private revelation good boss god the other sets of ubirr the dev abyss the fact that God has a sense of human you know I love hippopotamuses and if you come to my house you'll see the pictures of hippopotamus is about because the hippopotamus proves that God has a sense of humor they add they look funny well what happened is that God laughed because as a result of the persecution of the church in Poland Poland to this day is the most loyal Catholic country in the world and right next to it in Slovakia and then it's Philippines this is where the church is very strong and as you know surprisingly we got a Polish Pope remember that one we always thought the Pope's were always going to be Italian and I remember I was a young priest listening on the television the radio and they how they must pop on and it said his name I couldn't figure out this name Voigt yeah you know what kind of Italian of the day right so and we got used to the idea of a Polish Pope and he has been a wonderful Pope about to be beatified and I was had the great honour of myself when he was a cardinal meeting him and he had a real sense of humor I had the opportunity to meet both Cardinal idea and Cardinal Ratzinger and what struck me about both of these men obviously very intelligent very capable very competent men but what struck me with both of them is that they were humble men they were humble men and you know it's not so easy to be humble when you're a cardinal right but they both were now because of the visions to st. Faustina Kowalska John Paul it resurrected the devotion to divine mercy he would did that when he was Archbishop of Krakow that had been stupidly forbidden the image was not seen you will not close the public protections about it about st. Faustina she was not canonized and this somehow or other they came out against the Vipers well you know God as a sense of humor yahzee made a hippopotamuses and so what happened not only did the Divine Mercy get resurrected but it resurrected by a pope and the Pope established the first Sunday of Easter as the day of diviners beautiful beautiful experience now what do you mean by mercy in Latin the word for mercy is misericordia kardia is heart and mozzeria means pain or suffering it means suffering of the heart so that you have pity when you feel someone when you see something happening to a person you should feel a pain in your heart for them that's what Misericordia means and it leads us to do things of mercy and the other side is justice now you had need both justice and mercy obviously the divine will the will of God the Ten Commandments are about justice but even in the Old Testament the mercy is there in the songs several of the songs have the same word phrase over and over again Oleum in aeternum Misericordia ayahs because the mercy of the lord lasts forever so mercy is a very important and good thing now Divine Mercy shows itself in many ways sometimes when tragic things in life the worst does not happen and that we say will be part of God's mercy but the right people here tonight spoke to me before we went in that sad sorrowful tragic things have happened recently in their lives and it can happen to any one of us it can happen on the way home and if you have belief in God's mercy He will bring goodness out of what is bad you will wait and see go through life and pick out things that were seen to you a bad thing one of the areas that must be looked at is death now some people's death is very predictable I'm moving in on 80 I don't want anybody to cry at my funeral I'm gonna be waving on my way so we had a holey old brother with an italian brother Ferdinando and he was that a years old and he was dying there they called the ambulance he heard the ambulance pull up in front of the monastery we were all kneeling around his bed in his little cell and he looked up as he heard the ambulance men running down the corridor and he said adi vedecci and he was gone without with class overture and that's what you call a happy death get out sometimes people have a painful death but that will prepare them for eternal life and at least the old Irish here tonight know the expression the old Irish is to say that all the time they're having their purgatory on earth did you ever hear that somebody suffering and your old Irish friend will say oh they're having their purgatory not at night and to a degree is surely true now what is certainly true anytime in life no matter what's going on what can you appeal to divine mercy someone maybe doing a bad job someone maybe messing up their life very badly someone is got life very confused and hurting other people pray for God's mercy for them one time I heard a confession many years ago I was almost afraid to hear the man's confession because he had been in the German army during the Second World War in the SS now SS means special services and there were two kinds of SS there were the commandos and there were the SS who were criminals they were murderers and in fact the end of the second war war they arrested any German officer who had SS papers in his gulp in his wallet and they didn't even try and they shot him right there on the spot because they were the SS they were murderers they were awful well there I was 25 years later hearing confessions and the man told me that he had been in the SS he was in the military SS the commandos and he lived with this terrible memory of the diabolical things that the Nazis had done right up out of hell and what could I talk to him about the mercy of God I'm sure in his memory are awful things diabolical things things would certainly send a person to hell to the bottom of hell but he was repentant he was going to Mass every day it was years and years ago when he was a teenager drafted into the SS and uh the there he was someone to research receive the mercy of God what about God's mercy because his mercy lasts forever the worst sin that a person could do it could be forgiven the sad example of course is Judas Iscariot in a certain sense he did the worst thing that anyone had ever done he betrayed Jesus Christ and he added to that by killing himself although he obviously felt very guilty and regretful but you know somebody used to pray for the salvation of Judas can you imagine that would you ever think of praying for Judas the worst person in history and you know who that is Saint Teresa of Avila she used to pray for Judas and free said to her how can you pray for Judas he betrayed Christ and Saint Teresa said I betrayed Christ - she was talking about her early years of life I betrayed Christ so we all need to think of divine mercy now blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy and most people here tonight if you think about the people who hurt you the most in life the people that you would have to show the greatest mercy to all most likely some relatives think about yeah ordinary people people neighbors ex friends presently friends friends Lancome / brands go but relatives brothers sisters cousins children parents oh my oh my now almost all of my life part time or for many years full time I worked with delinquent kids in Children's Village I was the chaplain there for 14 years and last Easter I was still working there saying mass uncie ster Sunday many of these children young people were very badly hurt by their own family betrayed perhaps by their mother or they tell you a number of them they call me Dad because they never knew who their father was their mother was a prostitute and she had no idea who was the man that conceived this child how poor and yet I have to tell you that these poor kids you work with them you know them and as they get older they try to be forgiving they understand you can human weakness perhaps more than anyone else very poor people poor kids poor young adults who have been caught in the severe disorganization of life there's no family at all did you ever meet a child has no family or a child that does have a family and he would be much better off if he never met them how poor how filled with compassion and going your way through life if you meet someone like that show them kindness and gentleness because they faced life without the rest of us having helping us in life this is part of the tragedy of human life there are people around now or very old people who lived through the Second World War in Poland and Slovakia in France in Germany and they could look back at terrible terrible things people in England and in Europe remember when bombs came down out of the sky like rain remember the old people here hearing that or perhaps seeing in the news films how difficult life was and how grateful we ought to be that we have lived in fairly peaceful times it's not perfectly peaceful but it is much more peaceful and if you want to remember that people don't experience people listen to what you hear about Afghanistan or in Libya or in other places in the world how come you and I live in peace because we are given a very special blessing in this country of this country now the point final point I want to make every one of us the mercy of God I was blessed in my life to know several Saints people who are probably going to be canonized saints one of them is already beatified and that was Mother Teresa I knew her quite well and is now she is already a blessed Cardinal cook Archbishop of New York is proposed for beatification and a few others we this one in New Jersey an old Italian lady mama G Lee and keep that open if I'd hear about mama G Lee Teuk old Italian lady and these are great holy people and if you know someone like that I knew Mother Teresa and father Cardinal cook very well you realize how different from you they are these are the Friends of God we are people struggling try to do better try to be friends of God but when you get to know them you realize how different they are from us very likely a number of people in this church tonight remember a person in your family or among your friends who's a saint usually an old person and it takes a long time in life to get to be old and to get to be saintly but once in a while very rarely you get to know a holy young person like Saint Torres Alysha who died when she was 23 years old how beautiful it is to watch the Saints and to try to learn in your life what it is to grow in the love of God's mercy and his presence every day each one of us nute as something to do take the next good step going toward God is not riding on the magic carpet it's one day at a time I lived with a man who will probably be very soon beatified father Solanas Casey I watched this man he was an extraordinarily holy man an old cabbage he worked all his life feeding the poor that was his job because when he was a seminarian they didn't think he was very bright so they ordained him but they couldn't they wouldn't let him hear confessions or preach all his life he didn't preach or hear confessions but I want to tell you he could do a lot of other things I was there as a young brother and we had this great big orchard filled with apples on the city boy will write all about apples and they were acres and acres of apples and when you have apples you have to have bees you have to have big hives of bees to pollinate the apple trees and we got the bell rang that was a problem we all ran out we had to put on hats and gloves and that's because the neat bees had swarmed like 25,000 bees in the trees sounded like an aeroplane and some of the brothers that were farmers they were up there cutting the branches and shaking the bees back into the hives not very successfully and the father Nava master said to me gets alongs and there was salons 80 years old he came out without a hat without any gloves without any net and he came out I watched him as close as six feet away and he started talking to the bees all right now called that have you don't they listen they calm down and he looked at me and he said it must be an extra queen bee in the hive that's why they swarm some with his bare hands he went down and these piles of bees and he found a little white creature that looked like a white caterpillar and that was the queen bee and he picked it up in his hand and he said to me the poor thing that he picked active up it is a kerchief and what it is is talking now have you touched the queen bee they all go absolutely great they didn't and then they were calming down and he took his harmonica out of his pocket he kept his harmonica and he started playing Irish music for the bees mother machree and the McNamara's band and the bees calmed down I was the most incredible thing I've ever saw in my life by the time of the death of father salanas the one 900 written reports of healings and miracles that he had worked 900 many of them written by doctors many of them I met one of them dr. Blaine was not a Catholic but when he had very severe cases he would send to father songs and I'm hoping that very shortly all the Solanas Casey will be beatified he should be and as long as I'll be I'll remember him talking to the bees there are people who do things like this you know not very many of them now let us tonight I'm so grateful that you came and I appreciate it that you did come up and I'll be out here signing books I write books and I want you to know that the Friars don't get rich from the books because anything we make on selling the books we give to the poor everything we know we don't we're not getting rich you can look at us we don't look Richie does anybody have a question all right now let's say a couple of nice prayers in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit hail holy Queen Mother of mercy our life our season our children to be to legally sent us morning we be in this volunteer time and most agents abdicate our eyes mercy towards and after this our exile shown to us Oh pray for us Holy Mother of God Oh Lord Jesus Christ we pause tonight in the presence of this most holy sacrament of your body and blood and we pray for each one of us here tonight and those who are dear to us who are having difficulties or trouble or who are very ill we pray for the young that they will be protected we pray for the poor that we will be cared for those who are in danger especially where there is war that they may be saved and we ask you O Lord to prepare each one of us that at the end of this life we will come to eternal life we pray through Christ our Lord Sacred Heart of Jesus Sacred Heart of Jesus Sacred Heart of Jesus st. Joseph st. Francis Holy Mother Teresa the name of the Father and of the son the Holy Spirit brother must have an announcement I don't have an announcement but the the parish priest is going to come up and solve it you know but on the way I was outside before while you were talking and a couple came in late and they said oh we used to come up to see father Benedict up in Larchmont and I said well let me guess this here's here's what the situation sounded like I bet it was something like this oh hi father Benedict we just arrived oh wait a second before we do anything I got a little bit of work for you to do so uncle boss that's right you

Channel: Institute of Catholic Culture

Views: 61,470

Rating: 4.842752 out of 5

Keywords: Divine Mercy, Jesus Christ (Deity), Benedict Groeschel (Film Actor), Catholicism (Religion), Franciscan Friars Of The Renewal (Organization)

Id: eFP0vbEeXok

Length: 45min 36sec (2736 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 15 2013