Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

120 Divine Mercy: The Heart Of The Gospel Feast of Mercy, fo r they tell me that there already is such a feast, and so why should I talk about it? And Jesus said to me, And who knows anything about this feast? No one! Even those who should be proclaiming My mercy and teaching people about it often do not know about it themselves. That is why I want the image to be solemnly blessed on the first Sunday after Easter, and I want it to be venerated publicly so that every soul may know about it ( Diary 341, emphasis mine). Having been a student in Rome, it was easy for me to ascertain, that leaning upon a private revelation, not yet examined thoroughly and approved as authentic, as a reason for the establishment o f a liturgical feast, would carry no weight whatever with Church authorities. But it was precisely Sr. Faustina’s question and our Lord’s reply to her that motivated my decades long research for evidence and proof that there already is such a feast in the Church, one that even those who should be proclaiming Christ’s Mercy and teaching people about it often do not know about themselves. So, impelled by that Diary entry, I searched for clues in whatever I took up to read. I reached into the writings and sermons o f the Fathers and into liturgical works. When I realized that I needed to organize my findings, which I want to present here in abbreviated form, I had to begin with the notion of a feast. I looked for it under the entry: “Liturgy,” in The Dictionary o f Catholic Theology. I was immensely gratified by a passage I came upon. It reads: In the last analysis, theological sources are reduced to Scripture and Tradition. The liturgy is one o f the ways by which that Tradition is expressed, we would say the principal way. At times the well-known saying o f Bossuet was tagged an exaggera­ tion: “The principal instrument o f the Church’s tradition is con­ tained in her prayers” (Boussuet, Instruction sur les e'tals d ’orai- son, traite 1, 1. VI, n. l)... But this statement seems to us to be rig­ orously exact. The liturgy should come immediately after Scripture, and before the Fathers, because its witness, when one considers it from the point o f view o f antiquity, of universality, of dignity, gives it an importance above all the others (Column 788, 789, my translation from the French). I realized then that it is to the Church’s liturgy I should turn my atten­