Jesus, Mercy Incarnate

St. Faustina’s complete oblation of herself for the sake of sinners (diary entry 309, discussed above) is a clear instance of such self- forgetful love, which she practiced to a truly heroic degree. As Jesus the Savior Himself taught her (entry no.67): When I was dying on the cross, I was not thinking about Myself, but about poor sinners, and I prayed for them to My Father. I want your last moments to be com- pletely similar toMine on the cross. There is but one price at which souls are bought, and that is suffering united to My suffering on the cross. Pure love understands these words; carnal love will never understand them. (d) Human Frailty along the Way of the Cross Lest we think that the saints and mystics were always able to obtain the high state of complete abandonment to divine providence, and pure, self-forgetful love of God that they wrote about so eloquently, some other passages from their writings may help bring us “down to earth.” As St. Margaret Mary once wrote in one of her letters: Ever since I began to suffer, ever since the time the Lord blessed me with so great a good, I have not known how to make good use of it. There is nothing I so earnestly wish to do well and still do so poorly. That is because I am so much lacking in love for God through being so much given to lov- ing myself. 67 Moreover, even though at times we may, with our Lord’s help, attain complete surrender to His will and a pure love for Him, that is not to say that our feelings and emotions always will be able to follow suit. Recall the words (quoted above) of Fr. De Caussade that every blow of the “chisel” of God’s providence “I feel is ruin- ing me, destroying me, disfiguring me.” St.Augustine found in the story of the Agony of Christ in Gethsemane a kind of divine per- mission given to us to feel deep sorrow and anguish in the face of life’s miseries, in fellowship with our Savior. Such sorrow 77 Saint Faustina and Devotion to the Passion of Jesus Christ