Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

'My name is sacrifice” : The Mission of Blessed Faustina 103 Menke observes: “Where He ‘blesses’ people with vicarious suffering, joy as well always takes its place as ‘fruit.’”60 Expiation, for Hoffman, is all about sonship as well, about “the true achievement o f sonship to God, as against its rejection in sin.”61 True expiation for him bespeaks God’s determination to carry through His intention in the Creation: that is, “the continuation o f innertrinitarian sonship outwards.”62He concludes that “expiation is the manner of son­ ship in this world.”63 Sin ruptured the relation o f sonship that the Creator had in mind; the relation is re-established through expiation. In short, expiation is the way in which God lets sinners become sons: “expiation is the form of sonship in a world o f sin.”64 In the Spirit, the believer is given a share in this sonship, in the life of Jesus become the Christ through his expiation, and thus it is as “pri­ mary in the mission o f the Spirit that there appeal's the absolute ultima- cy o f God’s Trinitarian power of substitution working its way into the world.”65 In the Spirit, the Christian “actualizes” the one atoning work o f Christ. Our expiation belongs as the “inner moment” in the expiation o f Christ: “in us Christ’s expiation comes into its own ‘blossoming.’Our expiation is his glory.”66 O f course, one speaks of the expiation of sin­ ners analogously, no less than one speaks o f Christians as sons analo­ gously, but in a real way for all that. O f the expiating Christian, Hoffman writes that “only as one who is concerned about the ‘divine sonship’ of his fellow men and who is practicing atonement can he himself be truly ‘son.’”67 Invited thus to share the sufferings o f Jesus, Faustina identified with the Little Flower (150). In a dream, Therese appeared to her as a lay- woman. Faustina was skeptical as to whether Therese had really suf­ fered — ‘“ It seems to me that you have not suffered at all” — but Therese assured her she had. Then she appeared as a saint and promised Faustina that she will go to heaven: “but you must trust in the Lord Jesus.”68 As identification with sinners is crucial for the ongoing work of redemption, Balthasar is very critical o f the confessor who unfortunate­ ly told Therese she was free from sin: her subjective capacity to fully identify with sinners was thus diminished. According to Michalenko, Jesus assures Faustina that she “never committed a mortal sin” and yet she has human frailties.69A spiritual director observed that “there is no