Jesus, I Trust in Thee!

When I was visiting my Evangelical Christian parents about a year ago, my father took me to mass and attended with me. The small Catholic church displayed a large, colorful painting of the Divine Mercy image. My father had not seen the image of the Divine Mercy before and to say the least, it did not appeal to him. To him, it was an example of mediocre popular art and a misleading image of Our Lord, in that it looked sentimental and almost "weak".

I could see his point, though my perspective is different. I am so grateful for what some might call the "sentiment" and "weakness" of Our Lord -- Our Lord who wept for Jerusalem, who commended Mary Magdalen for sitting at his feet and anointing him with expensive perfume (just think, unless He washed it off afterwards, He went out and about through the day wearing that perfume, rather like a mom might end up wearing some hairstyle her little daughter had lovingly designed and implemented on her hair).

One aspect of His Mercy seems to me to be His tolerance of popularization, even when it does not quite do Him justice. Think of the way Jesus accepted the palm-strewing of the populace who He knew would condemn Him only a week later, or how He spoke to the Samaritan woman by the well who went to report to her neighbors "come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done." -- surely not exactly a high-brow or precise account of what He did!

When I look at the Divine Mercy image, with the words inscribed, "Jesus, I trust in You!" , it expresses something I can never be reminded of often enough -- the fact that I am a sinner and can never pull myself out of the hole that "through my own grievous fault"I have dropped myself into. Only Christ's unmerited mercy can pull me out. Or the way He bears with my imperfect vision of Him and my limited understanding of His message. "We see through a glass darkly..."

I was not sure what to say at the time to my father, whose opinion I respect very much, but when I came home I researched Divine Mercy and found that St Faustina, who originated the devotion, felt a bit the same as he did about the painting itself. She asked the artist to revise his work several times, and wrote in her diary:

"Once, when I was visiting the artist who was painting the image, and saw that it was not as beautiful as Jesus is, I felt very sad about it, but I hid this deep in my heart. When we had left the artist’s house, Mother Superior stayed in town to attend to some matters while I returned home alone. I went immediately to the chapel and wept a good deal. I said to the Lord, "Who will paint You as beautiful as You are?" Then I heard these words:"Not in the beauty of the color, nor of the brush lies the greatness of this image, but in My grace."

So, my father's sincere (though somewhat painful to me) response to the sight of the image ended up bringing me consolation in this indirect way. I know that my father, who is suffering presently from painful and severe illness with humility and devoutness, is partaking in many of Christ's consolations even though he does not receive consolations from the image as it is presented.

Pope Benedict said in a message to sick people:

“You who say in silence: ‘Jesus, I trust in you’ teach us that there is no faith more profound, no hope more alive and no love more ardent than the faith, hope and love of a person who in the midst of suffering places himself securely in God’s hands.”

My father has expressed trust and acceptance of God's will, when he told me that he has seen many people suffering in his years as a physician, and that he does not see why he should be exempt from what so many through the ages have gone through. I know he has a resignation towards what God is working in his life. I hope to do as well as him in this, when and if I am in similar circumstances.

Pope Benedict also wrote:

"God’s passionate love for his people — for humanity — is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice.”

My father is right that there is another side to Our Lord: the Person who drove the moneychangers from the temple with a whip, Who judged the Pharisees summarily as "whited sepulchres". But He did not come down from the Cross in vengeance with a crowd of angels; He suffered Himself to be scourged and mocked and pushed beyond human endurance, and He interceded for the perpetrators, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do!" Mercy trumps justice for Him. The desperate robber on the cross, the sincere Pharisee, are gloriously forgiven.

St Faustina wrote about the symbolism of the picture, which Christ told her was of more crucial importance than the artistic veracity of the work. As she recorded the private apparition she received of Christ's words:

"The two rays denote Blood and Water. The pale ray stands for the water which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls... These two rays issued forth from the very depths of My tender mercy when My agonized Heart was opened by a lance on the Cross. These rays shield souls from the wrath of My Father. Happy is the one who will dwell in their shelter, for the just hand of God shall not lay hold of him."

The Catholic Church does not require that everyone have the same type of charism in their faith. There is room for a Thomas Aquinas and a Francis of Assissi; there is room for a bold and outspoken Teresa of Avila, a "little" and hidden St Therese of Lisieux, a wise and diligent Teresa of Calcutta. There is room for someone who receives deep consolation from the work of Eugene Kazimirowski (the artist who implemented Faustina's vision) and there is room for those who are not especially consoled by private revelations of this sort.

As Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict wrote:

“An assent of Catholic faith is not due to revelations approved in this way; it is not even possible. These revelations seek rather an assent of human faith in keeping with the requirements of prudence, which puts them before us as probable and credible to piety”.

Catholic Answers sums it up (and This Rock also has an online explanation of the distinction between public and private Revelation)

Public revelation is binding on all Christians, but private revelation is binding only on those who receive it. The Catholic Church teaches that public revelation was completed, and therefore was concluded, with the death of the last apostle (Vatican II, Dei Verbum 4)....

Therefore, as I understand it, when a private revelation is approved by the teaching Church, the faithful are authorized to accept it, but by no means obligated to do so. The approval indicates that the teachings support general Revelation, and are not in contradiction to it. However, approved private revelations often highlight a particular and useful aspect of general Revelation, and it would not be wise to disregard an aspect of Revelation just because it happened to clash with one's personal temperament.

So, it is proper to seek other ways of understanding Christ's almost scandalous Mercy if this particular image and devotion does not wake one to a deeper sense of God's truth, but it would not be proper to ignore or minimize the essential aspect of His Truth that is represented thereby -- in this case, His abiding Mercy. It is not out of line to feel a temperamental coldness towards a certain popular depiction of Christ, but it would be a lack in understanding to be oblivious to the fact that Christ showed a kind though measured acceptance of his followers' tendency to cast Him in popular, simple terms. He came to save the childlike and simple; they are His sheep.

Here is the Chaplet of Divine Mercy . I try to say it every afternoon at 3 pm, the Hour of Mercy. And the Novena is just concluding today. Imperfect self will confess that I have only remembered to follow it for four days out of the nine. I guess that is improvement from last year, when I did not remember to say it at all!