Trust in Our Lord

Speaker 1 00:02 One of the most striking aspects of the image of divine mercy is that line on the bottom. Jesus, I trust in you. Speaker 1 00:11 Jeez, I trustee today we'll refresh briefly on the trust that we all had to have in the Lord. Before we do that, let's take a few minutes to review the particular graces attached today's feast. We've heard all this before, but it bears repeating. Our Lord told Saint Faustina quote, my daughter, tell the whole world about my inconceivable mercy. I desire that the feast immersive be a refuge and shelter for all souls and especially for poor sinners. On that day, the very depths in my tenor mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of grace is upon those souls who approach the font of my mercy. The soul that will go to confession and receive holy communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment on that day, all the divine floodgates through which grace flow our opened, let no soul fear to draw near to me even though it sins be as scarlet close quote our Lord. Speaker 1 01:18 That was a 500 page analysis. It's most in depth analysis. Have a written on the grace as the face divine mercy and it was done by Father Netsuite, Rosie Kiki STDs. Atomistic theologian is part of the official investigation and the saint costing his life and virtues for the congregation for the cause of the saints. Father Zuki quote in this matter, four points are beyond all doubt. Hey, the special grace was promised in the context of the feast of mercy. B, it was directly attached to receiving holy communion on this day. See it consistent the total remission of sins and punishment and d, it is theologically possible. Close quote, Father Zeke, he comments the most exceptional grades promised by Jesus for the Feast to divine mercy is something considerably greater than a plenary indulgence. It is also greater than the graces of the other sacraments with the exception of the sacrament of baptism for the remission of all sins and punishment is found only in the sacramental grace of baptism. Speaker 1 02:29 In the promises sided Christ tied the remission of all sins and punishment to the reception of Holy Communion on the Feast of Divine mercy. In other words in this regard, he raised it to the rank of a second baptism. It is obvious that in order to effect a complete forgiveness of sins and punishment, the holy communion received on the Feast of divine mercy, but must not only be partaken of wordly, but it must fulfill the basic requirements. The divine mercy devotion received unworthily without trust in divine mercy and devoid of some date of mercy towards neighbor. It would be a contradiction of her devotion to the divine mercy instead of exceptional grace will bring down upon the recipient the divine wrath. Close quote, case of a special grace granted on the feast, Divine mercy is directly attached, receiving holy communion on this day. It consists in total remission of sins and punishment and it's considerably greater than a plenary indulgence in a lot easier to gain. Speaker 1 03:39 What about confession? Does that have to be made on the feast? A divine mercy will certainly a, it would have to be made before one went to communion if he had mortal sin on his soul, but that would be the only case. As one commentator notes, quote Christ never specifically asked for the faithful to go to confession on the day of the feast itself, which practically speaking would be an impossible burden upon most pastures. In fact, Saint Faustina herself made her confession on the Saturday before mercy Sunday. Diary Entry 10 72 whenever times of confession may be offered. The important thing is for the faithful that encouraged to come to mercy Sunday in a state of grace, having confessed at least all modal sins and trusting in the mercy of God. Is there anything else we ought to do? Yes. Our Lord said to Saint Faustina quote, there must also be acts of mercy. Speaker 1 04:33 I demand from you deeds of mercy, which to our to arise out of love for me. You are to show mercy to your neighbors always and everywhere. He must not shrink from this or try to excuse, absolve yourself from it. I'm giving you three ways of exercising mercy towards your neighbor. The first by deed, the second by word, the third by prayer, and these three degrees is contained the fullness of mercy. And it is an unquestionable proof of love for me by this means that so glorifies and pay reverence to my mercy. Even the strongest faith is of no avail. Without works. Close quote our Lord. What about the plenary indulgence? The decreed dated August 30 2002, the epistolic penitentiary announced that quote, the plenary indulgence is granted under the usual conditions. Uh, that's the usual conditions or sacrament of confession, communion, prayer for the intentions of the pope to the faithful. Speaker 1 05:34 Who on the second Sunday of Easter, divine mercy Sunday in any church or chapel and experience that is completely detached from the affection for a sin, even a venial sin. Take Part in the prayers and devotions held and honor divine mercy. Or who in the presence of the blessed sacrament, exposed or reserved and the tabernacle reset the our father and the creed and the devop prayer to the merciful Lord Jesus. For example, merciful Jesus, I trust in you. Okay. All that by way of review. Now let's spend some time reflecting briefly on the trust that we ought to have in our lord and to do that we'll follow the teaching that great doctor, the church, the little flower Saint Therese of the Su who realized, especially on the wonderful commentary by Father Shock Philly, the way of trust and love, it's virtually everything I'm going to say is just a paraphrase, a long, elongated series of quotes stitched together. Speaker 1 06:32 As usual, they'll be cut and pasted. Everyone here has probably heard of the little way of Saint Torres, which is how she refers to her path to holiness. Her little way is also known as the way a spiritual childhood and the reason for that will be obvious within a few minutes if you're not already familiar with it, but the point that we want to emphasize today is that trust is an absolutely essential feature of the little way saint tress, his sister, sister Maria, the sacred heart. Remember a bunch of her sisters, they were all together in Carmel. So sister Mary, the sacred heart at Saint Therese to share the thoughts she had during your treat that she made. September of 1896 and if you've read a story of a soul you're familiar with thought she had anyway, after system, Marie had read these beautiful thoughts of her own blood. Speaker 1 07:19 Sister Saint Therese. She wrote a note along these lines to saint Therese. Your text is magnificent, but it left me with a certain sadness. You ardently desire martyrdom. But after admit that what you desire is something that I'm afraid of. I flee from what you love. As a result, I'm seriously afraid I will never succeed in loving Jesus as much as you do. And that makes me somewhat sad. You have burning art and desires, but I am far from experiencing the same thing in my heart. So Saint Therese respond to this little note immediately. She told her sister, it wasn't her burning desires or any fervor that she felt that mattered. Quote, my desires of martyrdom are nothing. It is not they that gives me the boundless trust. I feel in my heart, I'm quite sure it is not at all that which pleases God in my little soul. Speaker 1 08:17 What pleases him and she's underlining in this next sentence, what pleases him is to see that I love my littleness and my poverty. It is the blind hope that I have in his mercy that is my only treasure. Close quote, Saint Therese, my desires and moderate and or nothing. It is not that at all, which pleases God in my little soul. What pleases him is it. See that I love my littleness and my poverty. It is the blind hope that I have and his mercy. That is my only treasure. Father, Phillipe comments. These few words are important. Saint Therese underlined them because they put things in the right perspective. She did not deny all that she had lived and explained her times of grace and fervor, but she was fully aware that these were not what made her pleasing to God. What please God in her was rather her love from littleness and her in your property, her blind hope and God's mercy, humility and trust. Speaker 1 09:22 This is what unfailingly makes us pleasing to God, draws down His grace upon our souls and makes us to objects of his tenderness and love. This is my only treasures. It St Tropez. It can perfectly well be ours. Maybe we don't always feel great desires, burning desire to be martyred, but loving our littleness and placing absolute trust is always within our reach. We can do that without much difficulty. Saint Therese. Well, how I'd like to be able to make you understand what I feel it is trust and nothing but trust that must lead us to love. Trust is the most characteristic feature of spiritual childhood. You can see that with a small kid, a little boy, never really small boy, never delts. His father's love. He trusts him. Absolutely. A small children are amazing. This regard. A father can put his very little boy on a table and back way up and say, come on, run and jump. Speaker 1 10:27 And without even a thought, the kid will run out and jump cause he's not worrying. He's not going to stop and think, I wonder if dad's going to catch me or let him fall. That kind of thing doesn't trouble. In third instance, he just runs because he controlled, loves his father. He trusts him completely and he runs and jumps. That sort of trust is what we want to have. That unlimited trust and God's goodness and faceless lies at the very heart of the path to holiness. On the other hand, Saint Therese says, what hurts God the most? Our most serious failings in this regard, there's a lack of trust. Quote, what offends Jesus? What wounds his heart is lack of trust. Close Code Saint Therese. God does not expect of us that we be absolutely perfect, but that we give him our trust. Trust that has to be total. Speaker 1 11:21 Now that is not easy to do since we're all somewhat wounded when it comes to trust. This is one of the remnants of original sin. Man has a tendency to distrust God. He's scared of the God he runs from God instead of trusting him completely. So among the graces that we can obtain from little flower today, let's make a particular point of asking for greater trust in the Lord, in his faithfulness and his goodness. Even if you've suffered and been disappointed by, for had the feeling that God was very far away, which is common to everyone when they're really having a crisis or even feeling that he's banned and you, in spite of all that, never doubt God's Love, never doubt his faithfulness. So how can we increase our trust in the Lord? Well, one of the first ways is we need to nourish ourselves on sacred scripture. Speaker 1 12:20 Everyone who has frequent recourse to God's word has had the experience of one day being troubled or discouraged when a verse of scripture touched him, restored his peace, really touched him. The depths of his soul. Holy Scripture is one of the richest, most beautiful and most effective resources at our disposal. It possesses an authority and power that no human words can have, and you can do a lot to nourish our trust in God. These are love letters from God towards us. We want to use scripture. Another thing that increases our trust is to make acts of trust to trust grows when it's exercise. For example, might have a a dangerous operation coming up in a few weeks or worrying about the behavior of one of our children or the economy or all the multitude of things that law of people that tried to start losing their trust. Speaker 1 13:18 What we want to do as soon as we identify that is stop and turn to our Lord and say, I trust you Lord. I'm placing this problem in your sacred hands and your sacred heart and I'll let you take care of it and then go about our business. If we have find that we have a tendency to keep bringing that problem back, then we turned to them again. We say the same thing and say, and I asked you to please keep it and not let me take it back from you. We just want to keep doing that sort of thing and as we do those sort of things, our trust will increase because we're making acts of trust in our Lord and by doing that will increase in trust. It won't make the difficulties vanish, but it will cause us to experience God's faithfulness and reply. Speaker 1 14:03 Saint Therese quotes, trust works miracles, close quote, realize that in this or that situation would seem absolutely insoluble. Things have mysteriously sorted themselves out. It's a very simple approach to God, but over the longterm it's very effective. That's the beauty of the little way. It's so simple so we can nourish and strengthen our trust by, let's do the word of God, reading holy scripture by prayer, by acts of trust, who make in difficult moments. Then by experiencing God's faithfulness, it's essential that we place our trust in God. Sometimes we're under more or less of an illusion about this. For example, sometimes you managed to do what's right. We're living a good and virtuous life. We have great trust in God. There's no with just sailing along smoothly and then it's a difficulty presents itself. We commit a fault that really humiliates us. We make a wrong decision which we're faced with or we or, or it's even worse when other people notice it. Speaker 1 15:05 So at that point in time we're brought face to face, but there are defects and shortcomings and we become sad and discouraged. All our great trust in God has suddenly melted away like snow and bright sunshine. What this means is what we call trust in God was in fact trust in ourselves. If trust disappears when we mess up, it shows our trust we had was not based on God but on our own abilities, on our own gifts. Discouragement is a clear sign that we placed our trust and sell and self and not at all on God. That's important to keep in mind if discouragement, a truth, trust disappears when we mess up. It shows our trust wasn't based in God but on ourselves and our deeds. Discouragement is a clear sign we have placed our trust in ourselves and not in the Lord. Trusted is truly based in the Lord. Speaker 1 16:02 Whether we're doing well or badly, whether we're happy or unhappy with ourself should never waiver. God's love doesn't have eclipses. It's vital that our trust should rest not on our personal achievements, but on God's love, his tenderness and his infinite mercy. The fact that he's a father and he's not going to abandon us. There's a subtle but very common temptation in the spiritual life with the excuse of wanting to be perfect. We seek to examine our inner selves too much to evaluate ourselves and measure our progress. The usual result is this sort of Discontentment and permanent sadness slips into our lives. Since we're never fully satisfied with ourselves. Such an attitude caused us to center on self when what we need to do is throw ourself on God with unlimited trust. We're more concerned with ourselves than about God. Sometimes people that are really serious about growing in holiness tend to focus almost completely on theirselves. Speaker 1 17:01 In the beginning of this stage, you're not going to go anywhere when you do that cause holiness is precisely not about focusing on yourself. The only way to really forget about ourselves is to place our hope in God. Doesn't mean we shouldn't examinate our examiner conscious. We have to do that, but we should ensure that the examination of conscious doesn't sort of turn into sort of interior gazing and getting gloomy looking at ourselves and our weaknesses. In one passage. Saint Therese explains extent to which trust makes us pleasing to God and attracts his graces. Important passage, Saint Therese, I would like to try and make you understand by a very simple comparison how much Jesus loves souls, including imperfect ones who entrust themselves to him. Imagine a father has two naughty disobedient sons. When it comes to punish them, he sees one of them running away in fear and trembling. Speaker 1 17:57 Knowing his heart of hearts deserves to be punished. Well, his brother does the opposite. He throws himself into his father's arms telling his, sort of heard him that he loves him and he will prove it by being good from now on. Then if that child asks his father to punish him with a kiss, I don't think the happy father could harden his heart against his child's trust, knowing his sincerity and love. Of course, he knows his son will fall in the same faults again and again, but he's ready. Forgive him every time. If his son catches him by the heart every time. Close, quote Saint Therese of the Su. We want to make darn good and sure that we're catching God by the heart every time we miss meal. For anyone interested in growing in holiness, this is just essential to grasp saint Therese. Yes, I feel that even though I had on my conscience all the sins that can be committed, I would go heartbroken with repentance to throw myself in a Jesus arms because I know how dearly he loves the prodigal son who returns to him. People might think it is because I have not sinned that I have such great trust in God. If I had committed all possible crimes, I would still have the same trust. I feel that all that multitude of offenses would be like a drop of water falling into a blazing furnace. Speaker 0 19:44 Okay, let's close. Speaker 1 19:49 Our Lord told Saint Faustina that the more soul trusts, the more it'll resy. Today. Every one of us make an effort. Say a quick prayer to saint Therese, begging her for greater trust and Lord then strive to make as divided community as possible with his greatest trust in divine mercy as possible so as to receive the most, the greatest grace possible. Each one of us should also strive to obtain intelligence and then offered up for the poor, so most in need, which is an immense act of mercy to that and after mass father will lead the chaplain prayers for our holy fathers intentions our Lord. I desire that the feast of mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls and especially for centers. On that day, the very depths of my tender mercy are open. I put out a ocean of grace is upon those souls who approached the font of my mercy. The saw that we'll go to confession, receive holy communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. On that day, all the divine floodgates to which grace flow are opened, let no soul fear to draw near to me, even though it sends via scarlet, the Morris soul trusts, the more it will receive. Speaker 1 21:16 Even though I had on my conscience all the sins that can be committed, I would go heartbroken with repentance to throw myself into Jesus' arms because I know how dearly he loves a prodigal son who returns to him. If I had committed all possible crimes, I would still have the same trust. I feel that all the multitudes of offenses would be like a drop of water falling into a blazing furnace. Oh Speaker 2 21:46 my Jesus. I trust in you.