Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

A Contribution to the Discussion on the Feast of The Divine Mercy It is my opinion that Bl. Faustina did not really realize what she was stating here, just as she was unable to explain a number o f things she was given knowledge of through her visions, and only faithfully record­ ed her experiences. For example, when she described the vision of “Our Lady of Priests,” she commented: “I resolved that at the first opportuni­ ty (I would have) o f seeing Father (Andrasz) I would tell; but I myself can make nothing o f this vision” {Diary, 1585). I believe she would not have been able to explain to anyone that, evi­ dently, for the Church the Octave of Easter in time lost its meaning and impact and became inactive and ineffective. Its meaning, o f course, relies on the “theology o f the Eighth Day,” which was already estab­ lished by St. Basil, and after him by St. Gregory o f Nazianzen, applying the meaning to the “week of weeks o f Pentecost.” That is, after the forty- nine days o f the “week o f weeks,” one day is lacking to make fifty (Pentecost means fifty days). That day, which is outside the week of weeks, is the figure, the representation, o f the future eon, or age. “It is at once first and eighth, or rather one and indissoluble” (see Danielou, The Bible and the Liturgy, p. 268). It should be noted here that the Easter Octave can be considered a “mini Pentecost,” as though a paradigm o f the extended one, for the Octave pa r excellence is Pentecost, which is the feast of the harvest; and the harvest is the bringing o f all the saved into the beatitude o f the Saints at the end o f time: the second, more wondrous and sublime perfection, as we saw (see Bible and Liturgy, p. 271). It could very well be that the source o f misunderstandings and false conclusions in liturgical matters touching upon the Sunday that is the Octave o f the Pasch lies in this, that the Fathers of the Church were not sufficiently studied through, and, as a result, liturgists evidently got hung up on the process o f the development o f the idea of Sunday as “the Eighth” Day, but did not pay attention to the fact o f the conclusion of that process. In his treatise On the Ogdoad, (or Octave) which he addresses to men “who are not ignorant o f the mystery of the octave” (XLIV, 608 C), Gregory states: It is in this sense that we take the law o f the octave... that is to say that, this septenary time having ceased, the eighth day will appear after the seventh. It is called the eighth because it comes