By Ryan LeBlanc

In my last reflection, Friend of God, I wrote about how the Easter miracle, if genuinely encountered, will necessarily leave us gob-smacked, confused, speechless, awkward. It’s just simply too big a reality.

We’ve had some time now to mull it over. On one scale, 2,000 years. On the other, we’ve had about a week since our annual re-living of the Resurrection moment.

What can we say about what God has done for us in raising Jesus from the dead? Can we understand and say a bit more about what Easter means?

The Sunday after Easter is the feast of Divine Mercy. Many Catholics have a great love for this devotion, centred on private revelations to St. Faustina last century.

The Divine Mercy devotion is the same message, same gospel, same Savior as we’ve always had, but offers us a specific mystical image that can help some of the faithful understand better just what Christ has to give.

Mercy. Divine, infinite, overpowered, unending, unreserved mercy. Lots of it.

The central image of Divine Mercy is of a living, resurrected Jesus, with rays of white and red light shining out from the centre of his chest, representative of the Blood and Water from his side on the Cross. The poetry of the prayers calls him the “fount” of mercy from which “gushed forth for souls” and also as having opened an “ocean of mercy for the whole world.”

God’s kind of mercy floods. Forgiveness for those who do not deserve it. Healing for those with incurable wounds. New life for those who have resigned to death irrevocably.

These days, including this past Lent, I don’t know who needs it more – my soul or the world. Let’s just say we all do. It’s hard to recognize just how much we need mercy. For sin, first of all, then weakness, violence, stupidity, brokenness, loneliness, darkness – all this stuff I call “muck” – just how much is God willing to deal with? How much mercy does Jesus really have?

Enough.

The mercy of God is enough, destined to answer every doubt, pacify every violence, calm every fear that I or humanity has ever had and ever will have.

More than enough, in fact, since wiping away our muck is as easy for Jesus as we might blow away an eyelash. If I imagine myself rolling in mud before jumping into the Pacific Ocean, wondering if it’s enough to wash me clean, still God’s mercy would be even bigger. If we imagine the planet Earth plunging into the Sun, wondering if it’s enough to roast my marshmallow, still God’s mercy would be even bigger.

Then why do we still doubt God?  Why doesn’t his mercy touch our hearts when we experience despair and despondency?

Think of the heart as a mucky sponge.

If everything about Christ communicates the ocean of Divine Mercy flowing from him, then only one thing determines how much we receive from him: our own willingness.

We need to let the ocean into the sponge.

Imagine a sponge clenched tightly in your fist, passing back and forth through the flow of water from a faucet. How much will it absorb? The answer is, less than it would if you held it gently. Less than it would if you were willing to plunge it into the water.

If our heart is our “hidden centre,” then the process of accessing the floodwaters of Divine Mercy is always the same: I need to get down. I need to allow myself to go down into the muck, where the mercy is active and present, and put the sponge in my chest deep into the pure waters gently and openly.

The opposite of allowing mercy into my heart is to lift it up, squeeze it tight, try to elevate myself out of the muck. If the ocean of mercy does not flow in me yet, it is because I am still trying to keep it out.

And so, we’ve made some small progress. What does Easter mean? It means an ocean of mercy that will soak into our mucky hearts, beginning to open and flush out the pores with kind and loving patience. It means that as frustrating as it is to be a human being in this world, God will always take the time we need to learn to trust him just a bit more. It means however much evil and suffering exists in the world, it will one day end in a way that the fount of mercy never will.

Whatever muck you or I are experiencing right now, Jesus wants to flood it with the transforming, life-giving light of his mercy.

Will you let him?

Will you trust him?

If so, say it with me:

Jesus I trust in You.

-30-

Ryan LeBlanc is a Teacher Chaplain at E.D. Feehan Catholic High School in Saskatoon and a parishioner at the Cathedral of the Holy Family.

To learn more about the devotion to Divine Mercy: thedivinemercy.org

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