Fr. Roger J. Landry
\nPutting into the Deep
\nThe Anchor
\nApril 25, 2014<\/p>\n
History will be made on Sunday as Pope Francis celebrates a joint canonization of two predecessors, both from his lifetime, Popes John XXIII and John Paul II.<\/p>\n
Of the 266 Popes who have served the Church, 80 are canonized saints, but none has ever been canonized with another successor of St. Peter; and many presume, based on the trajectory of Pope Francis\u2019 life and papacy, that in future centuries, April 27, 2014 will be associated with not just two but three saintly Bishops of Rome, the two raised to the altars and the one presiding at the altar.<\/p>\n
To make the day even more significant is that they\u2019re being canonized on the Feast of Divine Mercy, which was a central theme, perhaps the central theme, in the life of all three Popes.<\/p>\n
John XXIII\u2019s most notable papal achievement was the calling of the Second Vatican Council, but in his famous October 11, 1962 speech to open the Council, he framed the entire Council in a merciful key. The point of the Council, he said, was to guard and teach more efficaciously the \u201csacred deposit of Christian doctrine.\u201d In the past, he said, the Church \u201ccondemned with the utmost severity\u201d the errors of various ages, but he said that today the Church must prefer \u201cthe balm of mercy to the arm of severity, \u2026 by explaining more fully the purport of her doctrines, rather than by publishing condemnations.\u201d It\u2019s no wonder why he once called himself \u201ca teacher of mercy and truth,\u201d for he recognized that both are needed.<\/p>\n
In 1962, he published the encyclical Paenitentiam Agere<\/i> on the gift of God\u2019s mercy and the need for us to recognize our need for it, come to receive it in the Sacrament of Penance, and do interior and exterior penance. This was, he declared, the best way to prepare for the Council, so that the \u201cgood seed that the Council will scatter far and wide over the Church in those days [will] not be allowed to go to waste,\u201d but rather find \u201chearts that are ready and prepared, loyal and true.\u201d The fruits of the Council would happen in abundance, he believed, only if the soil of receptivity had been fertilized with God’s mercy. One might argue that among the reasons for the chaos, confusion, and dissent that occurred in the Church after Vatican II was that John’s summons to conversion, penance and mercy wasn’t adequately followed.<\/p>\n
One of John Paul II\u2019s principal tasks was accurately and effectively to implement the Second Vatican Council that John XXIII convened and in which the future Polish Pope participated as a young bishop. It\u2019s no surprise, therefore, that he sought to bring what Papa Roncalli called the \u201cbalm of mercy\u201d to the modern world. John Paul II was spurred on in a particular way by the private revelations Jesus had given to a young Krakovian Sister named Faustina Kowalska.<\/p>\n
Curiously, during John XXIII\u2019s pontificate, Sr. Faustina\u2019s diary was placed on a list of condemned books because a faulty Italian translation made it seem as if Jesus had revealed to her that forgiveness of sins could happen through devotional practices alone outside the Sacrament of his Mercy. But when the future John Paul II became Archbishop of Krakow, he had his former teacher and doctoral dissertation adviser, Fr. Ignacy Rozycki, examine her writings dogmatically in order to show their consistency with Church teaching and eventually lead to her total rehabilitation.<\/p>\n
When he was elected the successor of St. Peter, John Paul II framed his entire Pontificate within the scope of God\u2019s mercy. In 1981, he said, \u201cRight from the beginning of my ministry in St. Peter\u2019s See in Rome, I consider this message [of Divine Mercy] my special task.\u201d In 1997, he added, \u201cThe Message of Divine Mercy has always been near and dear to me. \u2026\u00a0This was also my personal experience, which I took with me to the See of Peter and which in a sense forms the image of this Pontificate.\u201d In August 1992, he solemnly entrusted the world to Divine Mercy \u201cwith the burning desire that the message of God\u2019s merciful love \u2026 be made known to all peoples of the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
He would declare in 1997, \u201cThere is nothing that man needs more than Divine mercy,\u201d and in his second encyclical, \u201cGod is Rich in Mercy,\u201d he would write, \u201cThe Church must bear witness to the mercy of God revealed in Christ \u2026\u00a0seeking to introduce it and to make it incarnate in the lives both of her faithful and as far as possible in the lives of all people of good will \u2026 [and] to call upon the mercy of God, imploring it in the face of all the manifestations of physical and moral evil.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1993 he beatified Sister Faustina and seven years later he canonized her, solemnly declaring the Second Sunday of Easter to be Divine Mercy Sunday.<\/p>\n
Because of his devotion to proclaiming the Gospel of God\u2019s Merciful Love, it\u2019s fitting that God called him home on the Vigil of the Feast of Divine Mercy in 2005, that he was beatified on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2011 and now will be canonized on that same feast.<\/p>\n
Lastly, mercy has been the fundamental theme in the first 13 months of the papacy of Pope Francis. When he was asked if he would accept the papacy, he showed his own personal trust in God\u2019s mercy, responding, \u201cI am a sinner, but I trust in the mercy and infinite patience of Our Lord Jesus Christ.\u201d Mercy is the fundamental story of his vocation, receiving his priestly calling totally as a surprise while he was confessing as a 16 year-old. His papal motto, “Miserando atque Eligendo,” emphasizes that in his life and in every life, God calls us in the very same act with which he embraces us in his mercy.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s praised John Paul II for grasping, with the help of St. Faustina, that our time is a \u201ckairos\u201d or propitious occasion of mercy. He said last September that the \u201cwhole Gospel, all of Christianity,\u201d is contained in the joy God has in forgiving us, and that \u201cmercy is the true force that can save man and the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Francis canonizes John and John Paul on Sunday, the real story will not be the personality and achievements of these three holy popes who will seem to be the central figures but the mercy of God that they received, rejoiced in and never ceased to offer and proclaim to the Church and the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor April 25, 2014 History will be made on Sunday as Pope Francis celebrates a joint canonization of two predecessors, both from his lifetime, Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. Of the 266 Popes who have served the Church, 80 are canonized saints, but none […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1013,708],"tags":[5550,5548,2078,5549,1700,669,1883,5190,2823],"class_list":["post-6471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anchor-column","category-articles","tag-angelo-roncalli","tag-balm-of-mercy","tag-karol-wojtyla","tag-paenitentiam-agere","tag-pope-francis","tag-pope-john-paul-ii","tag-pope-john-xxiii","tag-second-vatican-council","tag-st-faustina"],"yoast_head":"\n