Jesus, Mercy Incarnate

If only [mankind] wouldmakeMe some return forMy love, I should think but little of all I have done for them and would wish, were it possible, to suffer still more. But the sole return they make for all my eagerness to do them good is to reject Me and treat Me with coldness. Do thou at least console Me by supplying for their ingratitude as far as thou art able.... Every night betweenThursday and Friday, in order to bear Me company in the humble prayer [in the Garden of Olives] that I then offered toMy Father in the midst of My anguish, thou shalt arise between eleven o’clock and midnight, and remain pros- trate with Me for an hour, not only to appease the divine anger by begging mercy for sinners, but also to mitigate in some way the bitterness which I felt at that time on findingMyself abandoned byMy apostles, which obliged Me to reproach them for not being able to watch one hour with Me. 47 Thus, our Lord asked St. Margaret Mary to console His loving Heart bymaking a Holy Hour each week. But He did not proscribe any set prayers or meditations for her to make during that time. In fact, it is entirely appropriate for the devotees of His Heart to include the recitation of the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy during their Holy Hours. The Chaplet was dictated by the Lord Jesus Himself to St. Faustina, and it involves an offering up of His “Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity” to the eternal Father so that graces of Mercy may be poured out upon the whole world. Nothing could be more appropriate than to recite these prayers in the very pres- ence of the Eucharistic Jesus in the sacred Host. Moreover, the prayers in St. Faustina’s “Novena to The Divine Mercy” are also appropriate for the Holy Hour, since most of them are offered to “console” the Heart of Jesus, and to bring all sinners into “the abode ofYour most compassionate Heart”— the very same things that Jesus asked St. Margaret Mary to do in her Holy Hours! 49 At the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, for example, the custom is to keep a Holy Hour 122 Jesus, Mercy Incarnate