Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

'My name is sacrifice” : The Mission of Blessed Faustina 109 munion with the suffering souls.” The greatest suffering o f purgatory is the intense longing for God. One biographer notes that she kept “company with the inhabitants of Heaven.”82 In addition to revelations o f the Holy Trinity, she experi­ enced visitations o f angels and saints. There are heavenly visitors, as when St. Barbara visits her and Faustina observes that had she not known Our Lady, she would have mistaken St. Barbara for Mary: for “each virgin has a special beauty all her own; a distinct beauty radiates from each o f them” (1251). Those conformed to Christ’s sufferings on earth, are guaranteed glory in Heaven. Jesus told Faustina, “there is no way to heaven except the way o f the cross. I followed it first. You must learn that it is the shortest and surest way” (1487). Faustina wrote: The Lord also gave me to understand what unimaginable glory awaits the person who resembles the suffering Jesus here on earth. That person will resemble Jesus in His glory. The Heavenly Father will recognize and glorify our soul to the extent that He sees in us a resemblance to His Son. I understood that this assim­ ilation into Jesus is granted to us while we are here on earth. I see pure and innocent souls upon whom God has exercised His jus­ tice; these souls are the victims who sustain the world and who fill up what is lacking in the Passion o f Jesus. They are not many in number. I rejoice greatly that God has allowed me to know such souls (604). Faustina’s spirituality is deeply inner, one which goes through the heart and which seeks the depths. Writing o f expiation, Norbert Hoffman points out that the expiatory existence o f Christ reaches its peak in His pierced heart: the pierced heart is the “foundational form of expiation (Siihne).”83 Not coincidentally, then, the Image o f The Divine Mercy focuses on the Heart of Jesus, from which rays o f Mercy emerge to the world: it is a visual statement o f expiation. Always oriented with­ in, into the deepest recesses o f the soul, Blessed Faustina herself points to the heart as the locus o f all these mysteries, the gateway to heaven — and hell. The heart can be expanded or constricted (1578). Confronting a host of evil spirits she asks where they have come from in such num­ bers: they reply: “out o f human hearts...”84 Mercy opens the heart and makes it wide enough for heaven.