Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

The Sacred Heart and The Divine Mercy 63 ituality in the Church, namely, the devotion to the Sacred Heart and the devotion to The Divine Mercy? Are they in competition with each other for the allegiance o f the faithful? Is there room in the Church for both? Is there any need in the Church for both? On the one hand, some Catholics seem to feel that devotion to the Sacred Heart is enough; there is no need for this new devotion to The Divine Mercy, they claim, because it largely duplicates what we have already been given in the Sacred Heart tradition. At the other extreme, some Catholics seem to feel that there is no longer any need for the tra­ ditional devotion to the Sacred Heart; now that we have the “new and improved” version, so to speak, in devotion to The Divine Mercy and to the Merciful Heart of Jesus, we can just let the old Sacred Heart tradi­ tions, such as the First Friday Communions and the images o f the Sacred Heart, fade away quietly and be forgotten. 1. The Sacred Heart and the Divine Mercy are Inseparable The truth is, however, that saints, visionaries, and several popes have seen these two things - the Divine Mercy and the Sacred Heart - as so closely bound up with each other as to be absolutely inseparable. Thus, we shall argue that the Church needs both the traditional devotion to the Sacred Heart, and the newer devotion to The Divine Mercy, alive and well among the faithful. St. John Eudes (1601-1680), for example, was the pioneer o f the liturgical worship of the Sacred Heart. But in his “Meditations for the Feast o f the Sacred Heart,” we find the following, revealing passage entitled: The Divine Mercy should be the Object o f our Very Special Devotion. O f all the divine perfections mirrored in the Sacred Heart of our Savior we should have a very special devotion to divine mercy and we should endeavor to engrave its image on our heart.15 Similarly, consider the visions and locutions (allegedly) received by Sr. Josefa Menendez in the 1920s, recorded for us in a beautiful little book entitled The Way o f Divine Love. The whole book is a tender expression o f devotion to the Sacred Heart. However, Jesus also explained to her that the message o f the merciful love o fHis Heart must