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Dear Friends in Christ,

Today we are blessed to celebrate our Mass at (near) the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy, where St. Faustina, the Apostle of Divine Mercy, lived and died.

Sister Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament, as she was known in her religious life, was an amazing woman, who lived only to be 33 years old, dying of tuberculosis after much suffering, which she kept entirely to herself. But even more remarkable, as was revealed after her death, during the thirteen years she spent in this (the) convent, Sister Faustina was privileged to carry on a daily conversation with our Lord. This may seem fantastic and even unbelievable to many, but if you read just a few of her writings, her record of the dialogues she exchanged with our Lord, then you will be convinced of their authenticity, and you will be moved by the deep and humble sincerity of this handmaiden of God. It was be cause of this profound humility, and the graces bestowed on her by God, that the Holy Father John Paul II declared her a saint of the Church, the first saint of this millenium, on April 30th, 2000, and created according to the wished of our Lord, expressed through St. Faustina, the feast of Divine Mercy, celebrated every year on the first Sunday after Easter.

Just a small quote from her accounts of her conversations with the Lord will serve to express what became the entire purpose of her life, and the focus of our thoughts at today's Mass. Early on the Lord told her:

In the Old Covenant I sent prophets wielding thunderbolts to my people. Today I am sending you with My mercy to the people of the whole world. I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to My Merciful Heart.

How true it is for our Lord to describe our lives, with a word familiar to anyone living in the modern world -the word "aching." For though we have our portion of joy, and although we know the many consoling graces given to us by God - especially the Sacraments, and our friends and families - we still must admit, that in our hearts, we always have an ache -a pain - an awareness that something is missing. And this ache is a sign f what Christ has taught us - that we are not made for this world, that we are made by and for God alone, and that in God, and in His sweet and eternal mercy, will we find our final happiness, our final release from the ache, the pain, the incompleteness of human life.

The truth of this is borne out by the events we have heard in today's Gospel. When our Lord walked upon the earth, when He was actually nearby, all who felt the need for mercy, flocked to His presence. Those beset by physical illness, those beset by mental disorder or possessed of demons, those who suffered from moral degeneration - all were compelled to draw near to our Lord, to be touched by Him in some fashion, and to be healed according to His gift - all were desirous to be pressed to His "merciful heart." Even the Roman centurion, the representative of the coldest, the cruelest, and the most spiritually indifferent power of His day - even the centurion came close to the Lord, to obtain mercy for his beloved servant.

And when the Lord has heard the request of this centurion, His answer was short and perfect - the answer we all desire to hear: "I will come and heal him."

Dear friends, what Saint Faustina taught by her life, and by the treasures of spirituality she produced during, and that were revealed after her life, is that all of us, no matter how well we think we are - all of us are sick, and in need of the Lord's mercy, and the comfort that can only come from His merciful heart.

Let us make as a special focus of our prayer during this spiritual joinery, the admission in ourselves that this need constantly dwells in us - and let us not only think of our own needs, but remember that we live in a world that at all times needs, and truly, is struggling for, the downpour of God's mercy.

And also, let us offer, as another focus of our prayer during these days of pilgrimage, our thanksgiving that God has sent us this heart of eternal mercy, this medicine of spiritual healing which is our Lord's, and which He gives so freely and so generously - by His word, by his charity which moves us to be loving creatures, and by the Sacraments, especially the Sacrament of the Eucharist, when His mercy enters us as directly, and as tangibly as a glass of water, to refresh our thirsting souls. This was the point of our Lord's life - mercy - the redemption of Mankind. For as the Gospel, and Saint Faustina's life and work remind us, His life was

...to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, "He took our infirmities and bore our diseases."

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