An image I love, A song I hate, and my favorite Poem about God’s Mercy : Things that have helped me pray on Divine Mercy:
Part 1: The Image I Love (from the film “Contact” starring Jodie Foster, Mathew Mcconaughey circa 1997, Sci-Fi, Science and Religion, Belief and unbelief)
In the film, Jodie foster plays an astronomer, Dr. Ellie Arroway who heads a team of scientists / and together they are the first to decipher radio signals from intelligent beings from another galaxy. Together, she and her team begin to plan the first expedition to meet this alien race, but while she is the most qualified and deserving of scientists, she is barred from the mission by politicians who disqualify her on the basis of her being an unbeliever. Their thinking was that in sending a human being who would represent the human race to meet another sentient race for the first time, how could they send someone who didn’t believe in God when 75% of humanity did?
If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth watching. But before we digress any further let me get to my favorite image which comes at the end of the movie. After her long and arduous struggles through the vastness of space, time and interiority, Dr. Arroway stares long past the desert horizon into a star-laden sunset and takes from the ground a bit of sand, and then gazes upon these particles of sand that sparkle in the palm of her hand.
So beautifully, the image suggests that each planet is but like a grain of sand held tenderly in God’s hand. And the image speaks to me of how tiny we are in the scheme of things.
How tiny we are in this scheme of things, and yet…this God, this force behind all the powers of the heavens and the earth, now alive in the person of the Risen Lord, is so patient with his disciples who are so slow to learn. Apparition after apparition he must teach them and encourage them little by little. Meeting them where they are in their fear, and leading them slowly to freedom and a deeper sense of mission.
How tiny we are in this scheme of things, and yet this God to whom all the galaxies are but sand particles upon God’s hand, obliges Thomas in the pettiness of his pagtatampo. This Jesus who gave his all on the way of the cross and on the cross, has no qualms giving in to the demands of his emotional disciples.
How tiny we are in the scheme of things, and yet our Lord makes Godself so available and so present to us who come to God in our day to day. With our needs and hopes and deepest desirings that God bothers to listen to and know so intimately and respond to.
The enormity of God’s love set against our very smallness is Divine mercy.
That is why this simple image of sand upon one’s hand is so powerful to me.
Chapter 2: The song I came to hate : FATHER MERCY
Of course there’s a funny story behind why I came to hate this beautiful song. And it is from my 30-day retreat at the SHN which ended just last March 7. Why did I come to hate it then? Kasi naman, yung choir po ng mga seminarista nung 2nd week of the exercises, EVERYDAY kinakanta yung FATHER MERCY!
One day, FATHER MERCY, was the entrance song, another day it was the communion song, and other days it was the FINAL song. (Laughter)
There I was, already long past praying on my sins and God’s mercy, already enjoying the second week which was mostly chill time with the Lord, hearing this song over and over.So I refused in silent protest, to sing “Father Mercy, Father Hear me, why have you gone from me? Broken, humbled, waiting hopeful…Father return to me.”
But Why? Why was I refusing to sing this? Because I thought, it had been several days since I already felt so blessed by a good general confession and felt “freed” from my own personal sins and was in such a joyful state of the second week, so it seemed not to make sense to me anymore.
BUT, after the 4th consecutive day that the choir sang this song, the 4th consecutive day that I was annoyed, I whispered to God at the end of the mass – baka naman po may sinasabi kayo sa akin ano po? And so prayed for openness of heart. After that, believe it or not… without getting into the gory details of my prayer periods, in several meditations that followed, my openness brought sin and God’s mercy back into the picture in a most unexpected and profoundly meaningful way.
I began to see that even the context of the Call of the King was precisely a sinful world, and that Jesus’ public ministry was mercy in action. “Mercy” meant Jesus was returning love and forgiveness for all the sin and hurtfulness of humankind. And I began to realize how selfish and narrow-minded I was in the past to be thinking only about me and my own sinfulness when praying “Lord Have Mercy”. Ang yabang ko to think that it made no more sense to me to say “Lord Have Mercy” at times when I already felt forgiven … when in fact the meaning and depth of any prayer beseeching the Lord’s mercy lies in our acknowledgement that we are part of a whole history of sin, and of a humanity that has been so deeply hurtful throughout all time. Wars, man-made disasters, greed-induced famines, slavery, human trafficking, genocide. These are not only of the past, but are on-going. And these are not only their sins, but ours too, all of humanity’s. And if not for God’s mercy, we might long all have been wiped out of existence by our own wrongdoings.
Other than our smallness, the enormity of our sins as a collective human race is also what magnifies Divine Mercy. The human experience has become so dark and dirty and yet, the Son of God came to embrace all of it. We repeat not only our own sins but the sins of our fathers and mothers and of their fathers and mothers, and yet, again and again, we are forgiven, given uncountable second chances, and unceasingly loved into being.
The relentlessness of God’s love set against this backdrop of the history and gravity of sin is divine Mercy. And so maybe these days we can pray not to lose sight of the enormity of sin in the world, and through it, to see and trust more deeply in the power and unfailing presence of God. It is thanks to this grace, that I am again able pray “Father Mercy, Father Hear Me”.
Chapter 3: A Poem Etched in My Heart (read to us when I was a novice by the late Charlie Wolf which I have treasured since then)
A poem by Jessica Powers, a Carmelite nun (1905-88):
I am copying down in a book from my heart’s archive
the day that I ceased to fear God with a shadowy fear.
Would you name it the day that I measured my column of virtue
and sighted through windows of merit a crown that was near?
Ah, no, it was rather the day I began to see truly
that I came forth from nothing and ever toward nothingness tend,
that the works of my hands are a foolishness wrought in the presence
of the worthiest king in a kingdom that never shall end.
I rose up from the acres of self that I tended with passion
and defended with flurries of pride:
I walked out of myself and went into the woods of God’s mercy,
and here I abide.
There is greenness and calmness and coolness,
a soft leafy covering
from judgment of sun overhead, and the hush of His peace,
and the moss of His mercy to tread.
I have nought but my will seeking God;
even love burning in me is a fragment of infinite loving
and never my own.
And I fear God no more; I go forward to wander forever
in a wilderness of His infinite mercy alone.
A blessed Divine Mercy Weekend to you all.
Amen.
Homily delivered by Fr. Mark Lopez, SJ
6 April 2024 | Anticipated Sunday Mass on the Solemnity of Divine Mercy
Cenacle Retreat House