Hi, I'm Father Chris Alar of the Marians
of the Immaculate Conception coming to you from the National Shrine of The Divine
Mercy in Stockbridge, MA and welcome to our brand new series about living Divine
Mercy here on EWTN television network. You know, you may know us from our Divine Mercy
Chaplet aired daily on EWTN. We Marian Fathers have been entrusted by the Church as caretakers
of the message and devotion of Divine Mercy. So our goal is to bring you an exciting new
show that not only teaches you the basics of Divine Mercy and the tenets of our Catholic faith,
but shows you interesting stories of how people are living mercy in their lives and how you
can too. You know, Jesus told St Faustina, who we'll be talking a lot more about
in future episodes, that Divine Mercy is "mankind's last hope of salvation." And if
we don't pass through the doors of His mercy, we must pass through the doors of His justice. Now
as I always say, I don't know about you, but I'm not going to make it through the doors of justice.
I need mercy. So join me and my fellow Marian priests and brothers as we help walk you through
the doors of mercy. And it all begins right now. In this weekly series, we will keep you
engaged not only with real stories of people like yourself, but with much more like gems from
the Diary of St. Faustina, segments of questions and answers about our faith, and mercy moments
from the Bible, showing you how God is leading mankind through this valley of tears in search
of our ultimate destination which is heaven. Our goal? It's to help get you there. That is why
I'm a priest, and that is why God has you watching this program right now. The most important thing
we can ever do in our lives is not get that next promotion or that bigger new home or achieve more
riches and fame. No, the most important thing we can ever do is get ourselves and our loved ones
to heaven. And there is only one way to do that. Through Jesus Christ, the Divine Mercy. So let's
begin today by explaining what Divine Mercy is. So to explain what Divine Mercy is, we'll often
go back to our archives and show you clips of familiar faces such Fr. George Kosicki, Fr.
Seraphim Michalenko, God rest their souls, and many others. You know, having
learned from both of those great priests, we are the next generation of
Marians who are continuing the task of teaching you the faith so that you can know
God better and ultimately love Him better. You know, I mentioned that I'm here at
the National Shrine of Divine Mercy. But why do people come to Shrines? Well,
they come to meet Jesus. Now who is Jesus? Well, He is God. Well, okay. And what
one word best describes God? Love. So, Jesus is God and God is love which is the highest
of all virtues. But not all love is the same. All right, everyone knows I love fishing. But I
don't love fishing in the same way I love my Mom. So there are different modes of love. And
the highest mode of love the Greeks tell us is Agape Love. A love that is a complete giving
of oneself for the sake of the other and holding nothing back. And when this highest form of love
is put into action, it is mercy. So mercy is the highest form of the highest virtue. In other
words, you can't do better. It's not just saying I love you, it's putting that love into action.
So, mercy? What is it? It's a particular mode of love that when love encounters suffering, it takes
action to do something about it. It just doesn't sit back and say, "Gee, that's too bad. Somebody
really should do something about that." No, it is putting that love into action. Even if it's just a
simple prayer. So if that is mercy, what is Divine Mercy? It is mercy as applied to God. When God
saw our suffering in the garden after the fall, He didn't let us wallow in our own misery. Rather,
He decided to take action and do something about it. What did He do? Genesis 3:15 tells us.
He immediately gave us the gift of a mother and the promise of a Savior, and that is what
this show is going to be about. Remember, that's what Marian consecration is; to Jesus, through
Mary. Not Mary instead of Jesus. Jesus wants to love and forgive us. And Father Seraphim's
definition of mercy, which is "loving the unlovable and forgiving the unforgivable" becomes
Divine Mercy because that is what God does for us. He loves us and forgives us, even though we are
definitely both unlovable and unforgivable.
Many people think that God of the Old Testament
is this mean ogre and it wasn't 'till the Jesus of the New Testament that we see God as nice
and merciful. No. It was God the Father who sent His Son to redeem us in the first place.
Right after the promise of a Savior that He gave us in the garden, God gave us a blueprint
to get to heaven. And we know that as the ABCs of Mercy. Now I want to get to heaven, you want to
get heaven, or we wouldn't be here. And the ABCs are the way to do that. If you want to summarize
the entire Bible in one quick and easy way, just know your ABCs because not knowing them is
what got Adam and Eve into trouble in the first place. You know, what are they? A. Allright. A of
the ABCs is Ask for God's Mercy. Now, did Adam and Eve say they were sorry and ask for God's mercy
and forgiveness? No. And the Bible says we must repent and ask for God's mercy and forgiveness or
we cannot enter the kingdom of God. So that's A. B. What is that? B is Be merciful to each other.
Were Adam and Even merciful to each other? No, in fact, they blamed each other. You know Adam,
I always laugh, there's a real man. He's like, Lord, it's the woman you gave me that got me
into trouble. It was, this was the reason. Now, God commands us to love him and each other, and
this is not just lip service. Matt 25, remember the sheep and the goats, tells us that if we don
t live mercy (which is the topic of this show) then we will be cast into the eternal fire. What
you do for the least of my brethren you do for me. And we have to do love. So we must be merciful
to each other. And finally C, which is Completely trust in God s mercy. Now, did Adam and Eve trust
in God? No, they ran and they hid. Jesus said that what hurt him the most during His passion wasn
t our sins but was rather our lack of trust.
You see, we don t get to heaven without God s
grace. We know that. And Jesus told St. Faustina that trust is the vessel by which all grace is
received. So think about this. We need grace to get to heaven, but we need a vessel to receive
that grace, and Jesus said that vessel is trust. So there you have it. You have all three of
these ABC s and if you do have them and you use them and you live them, you will get to heaven.
If you are lacking any one of them, you cannot. Sound pretty important? I think so. Pope Benedict
said Divine Mercy is the nucleus of the gospels, so in essence, if we reject Divine Mercy we reject
the gospel. So these ABCs are what we call the Message of Divine Mercy and they are not optional,
but rather actually mandatory for salvation, as I said, we see in scripture. You know,
many people say, 'Well, Father, I thought Divine Mercy was optional?' Well, actually the
devotion of Divine Mercy is technically optional and we will talk about that next week. But the
message of Divine Mercy is not. We need it. That's why Divine Mercy is unique in that it
is both a message and a devotion, and we are going to teach you both so that you can live God s
mercy and find eternal life. Thank you so much for joining us, that's why together we can do this.
You know, if you want God s mercy, he promises to give it if you know what to ask for. That is why
this show is so important. John Paul II said there is nothing the world needs more today than Divine
Mercy. Pope Benedict said that Divine Mercy is not a secondary devotion, but an integral part of
Christian life and prayer. Pope Francis declared a year of mercy back in 2016 and continues to stress
the importance of this message and devotion. You know, John Paul II told us Marian Fathers
that Divine Mercy was his special task before God and when he canonized St. Faustina in 2000, he
said it was the happiest day of his life. In fact, he died on the Vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday
less than an hour after receiving Holy Communion for Divine Mercy Sunday. Wow, that's God s mercy.
So, remember, Jesus said that Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to His mercy.
He said I have all eternity for punishing, so I am extending the time of mercy. But woe to those
who don t recognize this time of mercy. Well, thank you for recognizing this time of mercy,
or again, you wouldn t be watching. Now let's hear from Scripture about the specific moment
when God put His plan for salvation into action. "14 The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you
have done this, cursed are you above all cattle, and above all wild animals; upon your belly you
shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 15 I will put enmity between you and
the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you
shall bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:14-15) "There is nothing more self destructive than
sin. Others can put painful obstacles in our way, but they cannot keep us from living as true
"images" of God. Only we can choose to wreck our own lives by willfully disobeying God's law.
After Adam and Eve wreck the life God gave them, they attempt to hide because they are now
afraid of him and full of mistrust. God, though, wants his children to know him for who he really
is - the God of mercy. He wants them to come back to him freely, in love and trust, and dwell with
him forever. As Fr. Michael Gaitley, MIC, puts it, "The Bible can be summarized
as one long 'school of trust.'" God promises Adam and Eve that he will
one day send the "seed" of "the woman" who will crush the serpent's head
(3:15). That seed is Jesus, the Messiah, who would defeat the devil's power through
his suffering, death, and resurrection. The early Church Fathers call this promise the
protoevangelium, the first hint of the gospel. In fact, as God speaks to Adam and Eve, his
merciful plan of redemption has already begun." Now that's a powerful statement
of God's desire to redeem us and save us. But we have
a part to play in His plan as well. So let's now see how one woman has
discovered this and is now living Divine Mercy. 'Building the Kingdom of God' is
a Catholic book store and ministry owned and operated by Kim
Marchese in Dunmore, Pennsylvania. Her unlikely story of Divine Mercy began over
20 years ago on the worst day of her life. We're coming back from a family vacation
in Lancaster and on the way back, there's heavy traffic. My husband said, 'Make sure
the kids have their seatbelts on.' So I leaned back and I saw a truck approaching us. And it was
like I basically knew we are going to get hit by this truck. And the next thing I knew, we had just
been in an accident and I felt an impending doom. As I started to come to, I just felt
strongly the presence of the Blessed Mother. I wasn't a bit religious at the time.
I knew like three prayers, Hail Mary, Glory Be, and Our Father. And at that time, I had the
Sorrowful Mother necklace on that my mother had given me years before. I grabbed the necklace,
it was like an almost spontaneous reaction. And I just started to pray. I felt
God say to me, 'Do you want to live, or do you want to come home?' And I said, 'I
have to live because I heard my daughter Grace call my name.' So I felt the Lord say to me, 'I
will have mercy upon you if you have mercy upon others.' Now I didn't know what Divine Mercy was,
I didn't even understand it. But I knew clearly that I felt God saying to me lovingly but firmly
that I'll have mercy upon you. And that's when I said, yes. I said, I'll do whatever You want me
to do, I have to live. And then all of a sudden, it was like I came out of it and I could
see the ambulances, see the nurses, see the paramedics. And the next thing I knew,
my daughter was in the helicopter and myself. And in my heart, I knew that my husband and son were Dad. And then when I got to
the hospital, the first thing I said is I need a Catholic priest. And I hadn't gone to
Church, I was iffy, I would go once and a while. I really didn't have any devotion. I always
had that rooted Catholic faith in me, that little seed there. But when that happens and
God calls you, the first thing I knew is I want a priest and I need a priest to anoint me. So he
came, a priest had come to me and he held my hand, and he said I said, "I know." He said, "Yes,
your husband and son have been killed." So that's probably where the journey started and then the road
to Divine Mercy kind of began from then. After the car accident, Kim joined a local
prayer group and started praying the rosary more regularly. She continued to delve deeper
and deeper into rediscovering her Catholic faith. The Lord took me in His own path and time to
like different steps towards spirituality of learning and going back and learning a lot
of the fundamentals of the faith that I was totally unaware of. So once you surrender
to Him, or my experience when I surrendered, He started to take me into increments and
almost immediately I'd say within the year of the accident, my good, good friend
was going through his own trials and tribulations. And he said, 'You know, Kim why
don't we go, you want to talk to this priest.' I was very frightened to go to that
first sacrament of reconciliation. But I really felt that my first prayer was
'Lord, if there's a heaven, I gotta get there. So if there is a heaven, I'm going to
get there.' That's where I started. So, the rosary brought me to the sacrament
of Reconciliation with this very holy priest. So I went to confession with him and he
was the loving, tender God the Father. And I felt, it was like after that confession, it
is a veil that was almost instantaneously pulled from my eyes. There's no other way to describe the
Sacrament of Reconciliation. I mean, I'm a living testimonial miracle of the sacraments. I started
with the rosaries, I started with the confession, and then when the Blessed Sacrament came
around at a healing Mass. My friend said to me, 'Now you tell Jesus exactly what you need.' I said
okay. 'If you don't take this pain from my heart, I can't even raise my two
children. The pain is too much.' And I walked out of that Church
and I never felt an ounce of pain and that also was almost an instantaneous healing. The Divine Mercy miracles didn't stop
there. Kim followed God's call to open a Catholic bookstore to help spread
the message of Mercy in her community. She also ended up befriending a spiritually
broken man who one day become her husband. As for another Divine Mercy miracle, Kim's son Harrison, the little boy who was at home
with a babysitter on the day of the car crash, is now a seminarian in formation with the Marians
of the Immaculate Conception in Stockbridge. I would have to say even though it's a long
journey of understanding Divine Mercy and living the life of Divine Mercy, and that's
basically what it is. It's to live the life of the Divine Mercy and allowing that merciful love
exchange to come into my life every single day; that that could probably be the most important
thing that I could convey to anyone. Is - the mercy that God has is for us is nothing that we
could ever explain to anybody. It's so merciful to allow that everyday and exchange of that
mercy and in allowing the love to flow. Accept the love, and give the love back. That
transformation is what really I think the Lord in the Divine Mercy was trying to explain to
us. It's His merciful love to us as a gift. While Kim's experience of Divine Mercy
is certainly a unique one, she encourages everyone who is going through difficult times
to stay close to Our Lord, trust in His mercy, and realize that He can bring the greatest
good out of the most difficult situations. I think the people don't realize
that every challenge and difficulty is God's opportunity for mercy
and grace. It's actually a gift. He has such a great gift in store for you
of transformation to show you His presence and His love in your life. And that's to reach
out to that and grab onto that and say, "Okay, I believe that Lord. Take me there." He just needs
your 'yes', even if you're not understanding it. Wow, Kim's story certainly is powerful and it
is so true that God is waiting for us to say yes to Him. You know the Marians have been
blessed with many young men who have said yes to God and are discerning a call to the
priesthood. Let's meet one of them right now. Hi, my name is Brother JP
and this is Meet a Marian. All right, so the thing that drew me to the
priesthood, it's actually an interesting story because I forgot most of it in the
sense there were a bunch of little things, and I remember there were a bunch of little
things that led me to the Priesthood. But once I finally said yes, I just let go
of them. So I honestly don't have memory of much of that. I do know there was one final
moment in my discernment of the priesthood and I was actually spending the fourth of July with
this girl I was seriously considering dating. And as we were sitting there and as I left
that encounter with her, there was this huge weight in my chest. This sense of like, 'no
that's not where I want you to go.' And I was wrestling with this, I was like, 'God are you
kidding me? Not the priesthood, not for me.' And when I gave in, there was this
overwhelming peace that settled in. And that's when I knew and that's when I let
go. And I just accepted God's call for me. So, what drew me to the Marians was, it was an
initial 'Come and See' visit that I did with the Marians. I had been discerning with the
Congregation of the Holy Cross out in Notre Dame University. And I absolutely loved it,
I mean it was music. I really enjoy music, and I feel like music is a part of my vocation.
I was highly academic, they were a French based order, so I got to learn I could be a
French missionary or something out there. So it seems like all the material or all where
my gifts, what my gifts were. It seems like those were leading me to Notre Dame and them. And when
I went on the "Come and See" with the Marians, it was like, everything spiritual in my life
was pointing me towards them. I had done the 33 Days to Morning Glory Marian consecration. And
guess who did that? Fr. Mike Gaitley, one of the Marians. I had been to World Youth Day in Poland
with Pope Francis and in preparation for that, we watched a video series called the Second
Greatest Story Ever Told. And that's all about Polish history and Church history. And guess who
did that? Fr. Michael Gaitley, one of the Marians. And the big saints over in
Poland are John Paull II, St. Faustina. And when I went on this "Come
and See" retreat, Fr. Calloway told us the story of the Divine Mercy message. So all these
spiritual things were lining up in my life and I'm connecting these dots and I was sitting
at adoration before meeting with Fr. Calloway and I heard the words just spoken
in my heart, "This is your home." And when I heard that, I knew I couldn't turn
back. I struggled with the concept of joining the Marians because I felt like my heart was
with this other religious order at Notre Dame. But eventually along the line, I received
a couple of confirmations afterwards. It was just clear that I had to follow
God's call and join the Marians. So there you saw a perfect example of the type of
young man that is being drawn to the Priesthood and to the charisms of the Marians.
Basically, a new generation. However, as part of this new generation, we owe a huge debt
of gratitude to many priests that came before us who laid the groundwork. Let's
listen to two of them right now, Father Seraphim and Fr. George
Kosicki, God rest their souls. Now, how are you going to describe God's mercy? Well, in a sense, the very word would be
taken from the Latin particularly. It is 'misericordia', 'showing heart to the
miserable'. That's one translation. 'Miseri' meaning miserable
and 'cordia' meaning 'heart'? Right. Now, in biblical language,
heart is the whole being of a person. Here's another phrase. I read something
from St. Thomas Aquinas. And I'm making my own translation. He plays
on this word 'misericordia'. And he says what does this mean? Having a
'miserable' heart. But what he means is "I have a pain in my heart over the pain of your heart or
your heart and take pains to relieve that pain." Yes, moving me to do something about it. That's right. And so, but it's from the very heart
of the issue. You're saying the heart is very center of a person, isn't it? Or something
we'd speak of as a spirit of the person, that we would speak of the heart of
Jesus and the heart of the Father. Okay, now if we're going to
get to the heart of the matter, we have to get right inside of the
Holy Trinity. And it's all heart. How are you going to do that? Okay. The life within the Holy Trinity is
love, charity as we say. But charity is giving of self to the other
for the other's benefit. Say that again. Wait a minute. Slower, like. The love within God, which we should call 'agape',
[Fr Seraphim - it's pure charity], pure love. That means pure giving of self
to others for the other's benefit so that everything that the Father
is, He hands over to the Son. Ohh. And that is the life of love within the Trinity
and the two persons hand over to the Holy Spirit. He is that love that makes
the three persons go round. "Proclaim that mercy is the greatest attribute of God. All the works of My hands are
crowned with mercy." (Diary, 301) "Tell [all people] My daughter,
that I am Love and Mercy itself. When a soul approaches Me with trust, I
fill it with such an abundance of graces that it cannot contain them within itself, but
radiates them to other souls." (Diary, 1074) "Do all you possibly can
for this work of My mercy." "I desire that My mercy be worshipped, and I
am giving mankind the last hope of salvation; that is, recourse to My mercy." (Diary, 988) "The soul that trusts in
My mercy is most fortunate, because I Myself take care of it." (Diary, 1273) Thank you for joining us for this
week's episode of living Divine Mercy and please join us next week as we continue
to bring you teaching and stories of this most important attribute of God. And until then, may
Almighty God bless you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
