Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

The Mercy of God and Modern Medicine 137 The Mercy of God and Modern Medicine In this essay, my subject is the Mercy o f God and M odem Medicine. It is about the mission o f Blessed Faustina in relation to modem medi­ cine, and to the needs o f the healthcare community. I do this because, for the first ten years o f my priesthood, I was a Hospital Chaplain and the Consultant to our Bishop’s Conference in British Columbia. The hospital where I lived for most of those years (and I did live on site) was a five-hundred bed tertiary and quaternary care centre, sponsored by the Sisters of Providence of Montreal, which specialized in the treatment and care o f A.I.D.S. patients. At the beginning of the A.I.D.S. crisis most civil hospitals were refusing A.I.D.S. patients because they were afraid o f what this unknown syndrome, this disease o f unknown origins, might bring both financially, scientifically and in terms of crippling their man­ power or staffpower. Alone among all of the hospitals in British Columbia our acute care facility, under the Sisters of Providence, was devoted to the needs o f all people. Because o f their charism o f caring for the poor and the sick in all of their needs and o f bringing the love of Christ to those most in need, not only o f His Mercy but o f our own, the Sisters agreed enthusiastically to open their doors to men and women living with HIV. As the years went on, our hospital became a centre for excellence and, by 1996,15% o f all o f the persons living in Canada who were infected with the A.I.D.S. virus passed through the doors o f Saint Paul’s Hospital. It was a tremendous opportunity for me in the first years of my priesthood to devote myself to the care and needs o f the sick and dying. During those years I had countless opportunities to experience first hand the value o f the devotion to The Divine Mercy, both in my own spiritual life and as a means o f approaching my patients. And over those years there were many remarkable instances o f the Mercy o f God being made manifest in the lives and deaths o f the sick whom I served, and their friends and families to whom I ministered. In this essay, however, I want to discuss the message o f Divine Mercy in a slightly different way. It is my conviction and belief that in the mod­ ern world a crying need for evangelization on this eve of the new mil­ lennium is the evangelization of the healthcare community. The mes­ sage of Blessed Faustina and her experience o f the Mercy of God, as we find them presented in her Diary, are not only precious gifts for the