Mercy and truth have met…
Justice and peace have kissed.
In one of his messages, our Lord asked St. Faustina to snuggle close to his mercy on the Feast of Mercy, and that is what I did yesterday. I wish I could convince everyone what a great feast the Second Sunday of Easter is and how willing the Lord is to embrace each soul who approaches him, trusting in his mercy and love.
While at adoration one day a few weeks ago, I was thinking to myself how if I had known before what I know about myself now, I would probably have killed myself. I thanked our Lord for ‘putting up’ with me for so many years, hiding from my sight these ’secret’ sins. (I think I’m talking about the root sins, the predominant fault from which actual sin emerges.) I pondered the thought however - although keeping my secret for myself, since others wouldn’t understand what I meant. Until yesterday, when I read the following locution from our Lord to St. Faustina, I didn’t really understand it either:
“You see what you are of yourself, but do not be frightened of this. If I were to reveal to you the whole misery of what you are, you would die of terror. However, be aware of what you are. Because you are such misery, I have revealed to you the whole ocean of my mercy.” [718]
I have more understanding…
In the morning meditation on the Gospel, Magnificat featured a reflection from M. Marie Des Douleurs, the Foundress of the Benedictine Sisters of Jesus Crucified. (Don Marco is chaplain to the nuns in Connecticut, and has translated a couple of Mother’s writings.) If memory serves me, M. Marie had some character weaknesses - nothing scandalous, really. I believe she may have had a few bouts with drinking, as well as a penchant for drama - or so it seems to me - it is all hearsay on my part to write about it however. (Don Marco can correct me if he likes.)
Nevertheless, her defects became the “happy faults” that established her in humility… she came to understand “the whole of her misery” through them. Likewise, through her own struggles, she understood the weaknesses and temptations her beloved priests were subjected to - on some level, she shared in them. (Her order of contemplative nuns was established to pray for priests.) Our Lord often permits our falls, even serious failings, in order that we can become more humble after we repent, because if we are not conscious of our misery, we cannot understand the rest of our Lord’s message to Faustina:
“Because you are such great misery, I have revealed the whole ocean of my mercy. Your trust in me forces me to continually grant you graces. You have great and incomprehensible rights over my Heart, for you are a daughter of complete trust. You would not have been able to bear the magnitude of the love which I have for you if I had revealed it to you fully here on earth. I often give you a glimpse of it, but know that this is only an exceptional grace from me. My love and mercy know no bounds.” [718]
Little Souls
Little souls like Therese and Faustina acknowledged they were preserved from many failings and sins by a special grace, yet they understood well their own misery and admitted that if it were not for grace, they too were capable of serious sin. Both Therese and Faustina especially wanted souls to know this, lest the weakest of us become discouraged and fail to have confidence in the Divine Mercy, since it is confidence and love that attracts the Divine Mercy.
From what I have learned of Mother Marie Des Douleurs, I believe she also was a little soul - maybe more like the rest of us who daily fall and rise on our spiritual journey. Perhaps there was an illusion of grandness about her personality, even a certain flamboyant idealism, which was only tempered by the gradual awareness of her own shortcomings and failings, whereby she understood her supernatural vocation was sustained by sheer grace and mercy.
We only become truly humble and trusting of the Divine Mercy in and through the realization of our misery, and for some of us, this understanding is only possible through our continuous falling and rising.
.
The roar of the waters.
deep calls unto deep…
mercy calls unto misery,
our misery
calls unto his mercy…
in the roar of the waters -
such tears of shame and sorrow…
engulfed in the flow
of the blood and the water…
wherein mercy and truth meet,
and justice and peace embrace.
.
[Photo: M. Marie Des Douleurs from Vultus Christi - read about her here. Don Marco - please correct me if I got it wrong regarding M. Marie.]
March 31st, 2008 at 11:41 am
A couple of months ago I tried to find materials written by Mother (in English) after reading about her on Father Mark’s blog, but could find only one book (quite expensive/and I was on a book buying freeze at that point) on Abe books, it’s gone now– I hope her writings get translated into English.
Wonderful post!
March 31st, 2008 at 12:47 pm
The DM has changed my life and I thank God for it.
March 31st, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Mother Marie des Douleurs was a magnificent and complex figure. Her weaknesses were wrapped in gifts, and her gifts were wrapped in weakness. When she was just a little girl, her mother was institutionalized. She and her sister were raised by governesses and by their father. She grew into a charming young woman, madly in love with Our Lord and, at the same time, desperately in need of affection, approval, and admiration. She identified with troubled and fallen priests in their humiliation and neediness. She offered her life for them, to the point of asking to share in their humiliations. At some point she began drinking. After ruling from 1930-1965 as something of an absolute monarch in her Congregation, she was removed from authority, and entered a period of interior suffering and turmoil. After a time she lost her hearing and began to live in silence. She became more and more peaceful, more and more resigned. Shortly before her death, she wrote that her prayer to share in the humiliation of fallen priests had, in fact, been granted. Mother Marie des Douleurs makes holiness real for those of us who, like her, wrestle with dragons in the darkness, and believe in spite of everything we see within ourselves that, in the end, Crucified Love will triumph.
March 31st, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Adoration, Reparation, and Spiritual Motherhood for Priests
On December 7th, His Eminence Claudio Cardinal Hummes, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy made public his letter entitled, “Adoration, Reparation, and Spiritual Motherhood for Priests.” The letter is available in the form of booklet. It contains 36 pages. Its content is remarkable. The letter presents a number of figures, men and women, of recent times who responded to a particular call to offer themselves for priests in adoration, reparation, and intercession. Among them figure Blessed Marie de Jésus Deluil-Martiny, Mother Louise-Marguerite Claret de la Touche, Berthe Petit, Conchita of Mexico, and the illustrious English convert, Eliza Vaughan, the mother of six priests and four religious sisters.
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A Life Offered for Priests
I regret that certain texts of Mother Marie des Douleurs Wrotnowska (Foundress of the Benedictines of Jesus Crucified, (1902–1983) were not included. Mother Marie des Douleurs is too little known in this regard. In the first years of her Congregation, she presented the oblation of its members for priests, as its particular mission within the Church. While in France I had occasion to reflect on some of her writings on this very subject dating from the early 1930s. I was astonished by the strength of what she articulated in speaking of the Sisters’ vocation to become a victimal offering for priests in the hands of Christ the Eternal High Priest. And now, thanks to the spiritual biography written by Father Luc de Wouters, O.S.B., we know that at the end of her life, Mother Marie des Douleurs interpreted her own sufferings and, especially, her humiliations in weakness as a divine response to a prayer made in her youth in which she asked that the lot of fallen priests be visited upon her own head. Shortly before her death on December 10, 1983, she wrote:
In the eventide of my life, I have such a need of recollection, such a need to obey and to humble myself. I am unworthy of having been chosen to found the Congregation. I suffer being pulled between heaven and earth. The cross grows heavy. The Lord gave me as my portion the souls of guilty priests . . . my own soul disappears beneath an accumulation of iniquities! But I had asked for this humiliation! How is that the Lord was able to make use of so little a thing? His fidelity, His consuming love, this is all my life, my light, my death.
March 31st, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Thanks very much Father for your addition to the post - I was hoping you would write something.
March 31st, 2008 at 6:28 pm
This is a fine example of blog teamwork-an excellent post, expanded upon by a fellow blogger. Great post.
I concur that as we mature in our spirituality we know our natures better. It can be scary to know how sinful you really are. It can be terrifying to know what you are capable of-even if you don’t act on it.
April 2nd, 2008 at 5:12 am
mea culpa
mea maxima culpa