Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

;My name is sacrifice” : The Mission of Blessed Faustina 105 Conversely, the power o f intercessory prayer is stunningly highlighted by Jesus’ words to her: “Be assured that the grace o f eternal salva­ tion for certain souls in their final moment depends on your prayer” (1777). Blessed Faustina was explicitly a “victim soul” who lived her life as a “sacrifice for souls.” Her motivation was sheer identification in love with Jesus — “I thirst after souls, O Christ” (1680) — and with the suf­ ferings o f others. St. Paul o f the Cross also shared this solidarity with others: “I desired to be torn to pieces for the salvation of one soul.”73 There is no doubt in Faustina’s mind that she cooperates in the redeem­ ing work o f Christ, and that means, concretely, that she helps save souls: I suffer great pain at the sight o f the sufferings o f others. All these sufferings are reflected in my heart. I carry their torments in my heart so that it even wears me out physically. I would like all pains to fall upon me so as to bring relief to my neighbor (1039). One particularly striking instance o f this vicarious suffering is Faustina’s taking on herself the temptation o f a certain girl to suicide, which lasted for seven days after which Jesus “granted the grace for which she asked and her suffering ceased.”74Another time, learning that her own sister was in a dangerous spiritual crisis, she offered extraordi­ nary sacrifices and prayers for two weeks, after which “she felt that she had forced God to grant her sister the grace of recovery.”75 O f this Faustina wrote: “When I reflect on all this, I see that it was truly a mir­ acle. Now I can see how much power intercessory prayer has before God” (202). She uses words like “oblation” or “holocaust” in describing her desire to suffer for the salvation of others. This introduces a Eucharistic dimension to her sufferings which is seen most clearly in her notion of herself as a “victim host,” uniting herself to Christ, the victim on the altar. This union with Jesus is the one way to help others. “1 want to be transformed into Jesus in order to be able to give myself completely to souls... I absorb God into myself in order to give him to souls” (193). Between Christ and the chosen soul, there is a union reminiscent of the life o f the Trinity itself. Christ himself indicates to her that she her­ self is the host in which He dwells: “I delight in you as in a living host” (923). The recently minimalized sacrificial understanding of