St. Bernard Parish expands Divine Mercy tradition

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

FITCHBURG – Seeing the sin in the world, Christians can view mercy as too lenient. But mercy is at the heart of the Gospel, Father Joseph M. Dolan told an estimated 300 people attending last weekend’s Divine Mercy Sunday celebration at his parish.
The pastor of St. Bernard Parish at St. Camillus de Lellis Church, he is credited with enhancing this tradition, which organizer Joan Catalfamo said has expanded in content and number of participants since Father Dolan arrived.
Mrs. Catalfamo said the tradition here goes back at least to the mid-1990s, when she organized, with Father Richard P. Lewandowski, Divine Mercy celebrations at St. Camillus Parish or at the Newman Center at Fitchburg State College. Father Lewandowski, now retired, was then pastor of St. Camillus and chaplain of the Newman Center.
“Divine Mercy wasn’t as known as it is now,” Mrs. Catalfamo said. But St. Camillus kept holding an annual celebration.
Father Dolan came to St. Camillus in 2004. When the parish was merged with St. Bernard Parish in 2010, he became pastor of the newly established parish.
“When Father Dolan came, I told him I would like the Divine Mercy Sunday celebration extended,” Mrs. Catalfamo said. “He was very open to it.”
She said they added Mass and confessions, and the celebration started to grow.
“People wanted that grace” of the indulgence available for the feast day, she said. People who haven’t been to confession in years receive the sacrament – they tell her that when asking which confessional spot has a screen.   
Divine Mercy Sunday and the Divine Mercy message, image and devotions come from the writings of St. Faustina Kowalska, explains the website of the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, www.thedivinemercy.org.
St. Faustina, a Polish nun who received revelations of Jesus between 1931 and 1938, reported that Jesus asked that the first Sunday after Easter be the feast of mercy. In 2001 Divine Mercy Sunday became a universal Church feast day.
In his homily at St. Bernard’s celebration last Sunday, Father Dolan told of a woman who seemed to think there is too much focus on mercy today, which could contribute to a loss of the sense of sin.
But when Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God, he was talking about love, Father Dolan said. When we love and encounter sin in ourselves, love reveals itself as contrition, he said. When we love and encounter sin outside of ourselves, love reveals itself as mercy.
The Divine Mercy revelations to St. Faustina came during the Depression, in a world that had just experienced World War I and was on the brink of World War II, Father Dolan said. He spoke of trusting in God’s loving mercy, and not letting what’s going on in the world overwhelm you. Seeing how far the world has drifted away from the Gospel, people can become angry, he noted.
“We’re not called to judge anyone,” or to say the world is beyond God’s mercy, he said. Rather, we’re called to look at ourselves, at our own sin.    
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t call sin sin or admonish the sinner, which is itself a work of mercy, he said. But that admonishment must be an act of love, given in a way that the other person can hear it, or we run the risk of being self-righteous.
We can make a profession of faith and proclaim God’s mercy and love to the world around us, he said.
St. Bernard’s proclamation includes the Divine Mercy Sunday celebration with Mass, confessions, eucharistic adoration, praying of the Divine Mercy chaplet, the blessing and veneration of Divine Mercy images, veneration of a relic of St. Faustina, a petition basket and a hot meal.
Mrs. Catalfamo said that much of what is done here she got from reading material from the Divine Mercy shrine; “when I had a question I’d call them.”
The petition basket is brought from the regional Divine Mercy Chapel of Perpetual Adoration, which co-sponsors the celebration with the parish, she said. The basket is available in the chapel, adjacent to the sanctuary, year-round, for people to put prayers in it. Adorers who go on pilgrimage take the petitions with them to holy sites.
The celebration’s hot meal was the suggestion of someone who observed that there tends to be cold weather on Divine Mercy Sunday, Mrs. Catalfamo said. So the former tradition of coffee and cake grew, as people donated food, and money, some of which pays for a catering service.
Mrs. Catalfamo said she appreciates the input participants have given, and now people like the celebration the way it is.
She said that each year, seeing what’s going on in the world, she asks for another Divine Mercy Sunday before Christ returns, so participants can have “clean souls and full tummies.”