The message of The Divine Mercy is simple. It is that God loves us – all of us. And, He wants us to recognize that His mercy is greater than our sins, so that we will call upon Him with trust, receive His mercy, and let it flow through us to others. Thus, all will come to share His joy.

The Divine Mercy message is one we can call to mind simply by remembering ABC:
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• Ask for His Mercy. God wants us to approach Him in prayer constantly, repenting of our sins and asking Him to pour His mercy out upon us and upon the whole world.
• Be merciful. God wants us to receive His mercy and let it flow through us to others. He wants us to extend love and forgiveness to others just as He does to us.
• Completely trust in Jesus. God wants us to know that the graces of His mercy are dependent upon our trust. The more we trust in Jesus, the more we will receive.

This message and devotion to Jesus as The Divine Mercy is based on the writings of St. Faustina Kowalska, an uneducated Polish nun who, in obedience to her spiritual director, wrote a diary of about 600 pages recording the revelations she received about God's mercy. Even before her death in 1938, the devotion to The Divine Mercy had begun to spread.

Spend time to learn more about the mercy of God, learn to trust in Jesus, and live your life as merciful to others, as Christ is merciful to you. Visit www.thedivinemercy.org.

David J. Conrad

Donned in my new imported, tailored, Italian threads from this year’s pilgrimage, I set out to serve at all of the Triduum liturgies. While I have served at every one of these before, I can’t recall ever serving at each consecutively, in a year. I have to say, it helped me jump start into the Easter Season. So much richness was there in those days, seeing it up front and attentively made up for the lackluster Lenten experience I felt this year.

While we had decent crowds, there was room for more at these liturgies. I know next Easter is a year away, but it is also a year closer to our time with Jesus, hopefully in heaven. Make a commitment this Easter to participate in as much of the 2020 Easter liturgies as possible. And, make a commitment to participate in Mass every weekend until then. Remember, St. Aidan has a 7pm Tuesday Mass that fits into working family’s schedules if you make room for it.

Paul Pyrkosz

John Updike wrote a beautiful poem where he chides Christians who want to treat Jesus’ Death and Resurrection as a moral parable rather than as an actual historical fact (see below).  Sadly, too many theologians and spiritual writers in recent times have tried to domesticate the Resurrection: “It just means the cause of Jesus goes on; we are just going to bear his presence to the world; it means we remember him fondly; it means he has gone to God.”  The trouble with these statements is that the same could be said of any great and admired figure.  If that is all the Resurrection - and thus Christianity - means, then it falls apart.  The Resurrection is not something that happens to the disciples; it happens to Jesus.  God the Father raises Jesus from the dead, and Jesus shows Himself bodily present to His disciples after His death.  Jesus was not simply resuscitated, that is, returned to this world as He was before death; Jesus is transformed.  He has conquered death.  Jesus appeared bodily present to His disciples.  This reality took their breath away.  The Good News is first and foremost the fact that Jesus is bodily risen from the dead.  Everything else in the Christian life flows from this reality.  Because of His Resurrection, we see that Jesus has conquered sin and death.  If you take those things away, you take Christianity away.  The Resurrection is the corner-stone of Christian faith.  Christ is Risen!  Indeed, He is Risen!

David J. Conrad

Seven Stanzas for Easter

Make no mistake: if he rose at all It was as His body; If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit, The amino acids rekindle, The Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers, Each soft spring recurrent; It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the Eleven apostles; It was as His flesh; ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes The same valved heart That-pierced-died, withered, paused, and then regathered Out of enduring Might New strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor, Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence, Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded Credulity of earlier ages: Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache, Not a stone in a story, But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of Time will eclipse for each of us The wide light of day.

And if we have an angel at the tomb, Make it a real angel, Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in The dawn light, robed in real linen Spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed By the miracle, And crushed by remonstrance.