Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

102 Divine Mercy: The Heart Of The Gospel this always involves a death, and a “moment of sorrow, of suffering.”56 Here we find a resonance with the whole notion o f Stellvertretung , of “taking the place” o f another. Bialas observes: Whenever a person no longer desires to remain merely at the stage of independence, of being only for himself, but rather desires to transcend to the being of another, then self-injury occurs; he “suffers” from love. Surely, the loving person continuously expe­ riences a kind of joy, too, when he abandons self to the beloved, when he is lost in another. Nevertheless, this love is necessarily painful even if it is experienced as a joyful pain.57 Love is also proved, and purified, by suffering, for “suffering repre­ sents the deepest and most convincing kind o f love.” It is not pain, then, “that links the soul to God but the love which bears the pain.”58 Judgement: Sharing in Jesus’ Sufferings It was at the ceremony o f receiving the habit and veil, 30 April 1926, that God revealed to Faustina the intense suffering in store for her: “The day I took the habit, God let me understand how much I was to suffer. I clearly saw to what I was committing myself. I experienced a moment of that suffering. But then God filled my soul again with great consola­ tions” (22). Suffering is the price of redemption; at the end o f her life, Jesus told Faustina that He wanted her last moments to be like His in a death con­ formed to His and then he added: “There is but one price at which souls are bought, and that is suffering united to my suffering on the cross” (324). He went on to explain that only “pure love” understands these words; “carnal love will never understand them.” Indeed, Jesus directly told St. Gemma Galgani: ” ‘Many would abandon Me, if I did not nail them to the Cross.’”59 Suffering is the surest way to become like Jesus: “the greater the suf­ ferings, the more I see that I am becoming like Jesus” (1394). Faustina was indeed called to a “spousal” love with him: “My likeness to Jesus must be through suffering and humility” (268). Suffering voluntarily accepted is the way to joy: “From the moment I came to love suffering, it ceased to be a suffering for me. Suffering is the daily food o f my soul” (276). O f the joy-filled suffering o f the saints,