Living Divine Mercy TV Show Episode 1

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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.
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Channel: Divine Mercy
Views: 29,423
Rating: 4.9676929 out of 5
Keywords: Divine Mercy, Divine, Mercy, Divine Mercy Official, Shrine of Divine Mercy, National Shrine of Divine Mercy, Mass, Rosary, Holy Rosary, Divine Mercy Rosary, Chaplet, Divine Mercy Chaplet, Chaplet of Divine Mercy, Catholic, God, Jesus, Christ, Mary, Mother of God, Faustina, Marian, Marians, priest, catholic teaching, spiritual, eternity, grace, pray, prays, praying, spirituality, Living Divine Mercy, EWTN, Fr. Chris Alar, Fr. Alar, Alar, TV show, Diary of St. Faustina, Living Divine Mercy TV Show
Id: 3A4q7YacCv8
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Length: 27min 22sec (1642 seconds)
Published: Thu Sep 09 2021
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