Pillars of Fire In My Soul

What is This Trust? What is this trust in which the essence of Devotion to Divine Mercy consists? Trust cannot be understood as an emotion or attitude in isolation from the whole of Christian life. Rather, it is the attitude which the Lord Jesus called faith and which He expected from His followers when He said: “If you have faith like a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Go from here over there’ and it will move. And nothing will be impossible for you” (Mt 17:20). This same attitude of life is described by St. Paul and by the whole of Christian theology as hope, the divine virtue of hope which springs from living faith in the infinity of God’s love and goodness toward us. It is indissolubly tied to humility, that is the sincere and deep conviction that all good within us and which we do is the work and gift of God; that we possess nothing except that which we have from God. This trust-hope constitutes the opening of a soul’s receiving Divine grace, and the requesting of it is an attitude of continuous and most effective prayer. In revelations concerning the Devotion, the Lord Jesus links this attitude of hope with repentance for sins to such a degree that He clearly calls upon devotees of Divine Mercy to strive for the deepest possible trust and repen- tance as often as they receive the sacrament of Confession. Thus confession, a common Christian activity, becomes an act of devotion to Mercy. Great promises belong to the essence of the Devotion, but there are also certain requirements. In the first place, an indis- pensably necessary element of the Devotion is an active love of neighbor or the practice of mercy toward our neighbor. The Lord Jesus applies the principle to the Devotion. It is a principle which He expounded in all its extent and without the slightest mitigation during His lifetime, and which is found in revelation 36, dated October 24, 1936: “If a soul does not perform mercy in some manner, then it shall not know My Mercy on the 104 Pillars of Fire in My Soul