Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Guys, I'm gonna be honest with you.
You might be a little angry after watching today's episode. See, but the only part that'll make you angry is that you didn't know this 10 years ago. We're gonna talk about the Feast of Divine Mercy and the grace that you can unlock on this feast day every year. Today on the Chris Stefan.
Welcome to the Chris Stefanik Show. We're here every week to give you the tools and inspiration you need. You really do. We all need it. To live your everyday life with joy, even when life gets crazy.
I want to thank our Missionaries of Joy. You make this work possible. Become a missionary of joy today. Click below this video and give monthly. Every gift makes a difference.
So get off the sidelines. Get on board. Help us change the world. I want to thank the people who sign up for the daily anchor. You're letting us inspire you. It's what we love to do. Join the 140,000 people getting daily inspiration for free. No strings attached. To help start their day in the right direction. This episode is sponsored in part by ewtn. You can catch this and so much more on ewtn. Streaming link is below in the show notes. Let's dive in.
Father Chris Alar. It is always a gift to have you back.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: It's great to be back. Thank you for allowing me to come back.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Yeah. I love your grace, your energy, priesthood. It's all a real gift of the church.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: Beautiful. Thank you.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: I want to talk about Divine Mercy. You wrote a book called Understanding Divine Mercy. A lot of our shows are more, you know, practical, everyday life help.
We're going to deep dive right in the deep end of the pool with a cinder block on our ankle. Let's go right into full Catholic nerd dom here because this is something too good to keep to ourselves. Everybody's got to understand this secret, this gift, it is.
And it's not well known enough.
Let's start here. What happened with Sister Faustina?
Who is she?
Talk about the apparitions, everything.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Let's even go back earlier.
People think that Divine Mercy was just instituted by some Polish pope through a Polish nun. And I'm not Polish, so therefore it doesn't apply to me.
Divine Mercy is two things.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Things not part of the Kibasi posse.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: That's right.
It's two things.
It's both a message and a devotion. It's not just a devotion.
People hear. Priests hear the devotion of Divine Mercy. Oh, we already got a devotion to St. Therese. We already got a devotion to St. Anthony. I don't need another devotion. First of all, divine mercy is not devotion to a saint. It's a devotion to God himself.
And that's not optional. So let's go back to the very beginning.
While, yes, the devotion of divine mercy, which we'll talk about in a second, came through St. Faustina and John Paul II helped to promulgate to the world the message of divine mercy goes all the way back to the garden of Adam and Eve.
Pope Benedict said the message of divine mercy is the nucleus of the Gospel.
So that's not just some secondary Christian devotion, but it's an integral part of Christian life and prayer. What happened in the garden? Okay, what happened with Adam and Eve? What happened in the garden wasn't so much that Adam and Eve sinned, which is what surprises people is they didn't know their ABCs.
And people are like, what's that, Father? We have two ways to remember the message and the devotion of divine mercy. It's very simple. With the message, it's ABCs A, B, C.
They are the nucleus of the Bible and has nothing to do with Saint Faustina.
A is ask for God's mercy. The Bible tells us unless we repent and ask for forgiveness, we cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Pretty clear.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: What happened with Adam and Eve. Did they ask for God's mercy? No, they blamed each other.
They didn't ask for God's mercy. They. That was their mistake. They didn't know the A, ask for God's mercy. B is being merciful to each other.
That is very clear in Scripture. Matthew 25, the sheep and the goats.
What does it say to those who did not show mercy and love to their neighbor? It didn't say, well, you know, you'll get a slap on the wrist. It said, away with you into the eternal fire.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Mm.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Period.
That's not optional.
You don't do it. You go into the eternal fire. Does that sound optional? That's not optional.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: Archbishop Shappey sums it up very brutally. He says, if you don't serve the poor, you will go to hell.
That is kind of Matthew 25, though. That is, the Lord can still save anybody, right? But we can't overlook what he was saying at face value.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: That's exactly it.
So, baby, is be merciful to each other. Did Adam and Eve be merciful to each other? No, as I said, they blamed each other. You know, Adam, there's a real man.
Lord, it's the woman you gave me. She's the one that got me into this mess. Right? And then sees the biggie completely trust in God's mercy.
Here's the point.
What is the only way we get to heaven?
Grace. God's grace. That's it. Okay.
But Jesus told St. Faustina, Trust is the vessel by which all grace is received.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: Boom.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: So think of this cup.
The water in this cup is God's grace, but trust is the vessel by which all grace is received.
If you don't have this vessel by which to capture the grace of God as he pours it down, like if you couldn't be with that bottle, and you say, here, Father, I'm going to pour all this out on you, but I don't have a vessel by which to collect it. It's just going to spill all over.
Trust is the vessel by which all grace is received. So what is trust? Trust is simply accepting the help that somebody offers you.
What help did Jesus give us while he was on this earth more than anything else? The gift of his church. Matthew 16:18, and the gift of his mother from the cross.
Mary and the church.
So when we trust Jesus, we accept the help of Mary and we go to the Church for what? The sacraments. The sacraments.
That message. The ABCs ask for God's mercy, be merciful to each other and completely trust in God's mercy.
Adam and Eve blew it totally. They didn't know their ABCs. They didn't trust. What did they do? They ran and they hid.
Did Adam and Eve trust God? No. They ran and they hid.
So God then, throughout human history, raised up prophets after prophets after saints after saints to try to teach this world the ABCs, the very basics of life. That's why it's so ironic that they're ABC. The ABCs of life is beautiful.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: So what happened?
Did we learn? No, we got worse. What happened? You mentioned a few shows ago Jansenism.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: What happened?
[00:07:21] Speaker A: All those heresies are anti mercy.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Pelagianism.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Yes. Jansenism. God is this ogre who's just with a scorecard up in heaven that wants to crush me for the simplest little mistake that I make. Okay.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Condemned heresy, by the way.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Don't be a Jansenist.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Yes, don't be a Jansenist. That was.
That was the problem. And so he rose up. St Margaret Mary A la coque.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: It's amazing because as you sum it up that way, that's still, from the outsider's perspective, exactly what the Church teaches.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: God has a scorecard. Why would I want to be a Catholic?
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: Catholic guilt. Blah, blah, blah. It's literally a condemned heresy.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: And yet it's in the psyche of.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: But you hear the term Catholic guilt.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: You hear the term you scorecard.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: If you go to an AA meeting, half the people say, I'm a recovering Catholic. As a joke. It's like maybe recovering Jansenus. Dude.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: That's a great way to put it. And that's exactly what happened. So in the no. St. Margaret Mary Lecoq, Jesus started to correct the ship.
He said to her, tell the world I am love.
And tell the world to come to me to make reparation against the sins and ingratitude against my Sacred Heart, which is all love. I am love. And tell the world that I am love. And tell them to come to me because I am love.
God bless Margaret Marielle Coke. She did her job.
She said that she did it. But did we listen?
No. What did we have right after that? The French Revolution, where we now just outright rejected God. I still think the French Revolution was one of the most, if not the most tragic events in human history because it set the stage for everything behind it. That we don't need God.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: We rebel against God. We rebelled against God because violence is the path to renewal in society.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: We rebel and we don't need God. All right, so picture the scene. Now we get the devotion of the Sacred Heart, which he gives to Margaret Mary. Tell the world to come to me.
I am love. I'm not this ogre. It was a response to Jansenism.
So God gives us.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Therese was a response to it too.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: The what?
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Little Therese, little way. Absolutely trusting the Father.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: So we're building up to something.
So Jesus tells her, tell the world to come to me.
Some did.
Most did not.
So in the world, we had this issue of the world still not coming to Jesus and not making reparation against the Sacred Heart. This is why it kills me when so many people, especially the radical traditionalists, which I'm close to a rad trad. But they say that the divine mercy is evil because it tries to replace the Sacred Heart. It does not.
Divine mercy completes.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: So there's actually a movement within stratism that rejects divine mercy.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Strange. Absolutely.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: We hear from them all the time.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: Really?
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We get letters regularly.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Oh, God bless them all.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And I'm there with you guys. I believe that you believe so hard in God, but don't believe so much in his justice that you forget about his mercy.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So in this Sacred Heart, we then did not respond as God Asked us, you remember God spoon feeds us along human history. Everybody says, well, why did God have to? Why did it take the church 1800 years to define the Immaculate Conception? Because he spoon feeds us along the way. Okay. He spoon feeds us.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Yeah. For the same reason it took him how many thousand years to write the Old Testament.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Right. And to bring Christ.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: It's gradualism.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Why didn't he bring Christ in the garden?
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: So?
[00:11:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: So in the Sacred Heart, he's still spoon feeding us. Now he teaches us he is love. He had to do that first because what was to come next was since we didn't come to him, he's now going to come to us.
Jesus told Saint Faustina, divine mercy is mankind's last hope of salvation. In every image of divine Mercy, you'll see Christ's left foot stepping forward.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: In every image, I've never noticed.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: It doesn't matter if it's the Hylah, the blue one, the Vilnius, which is the original, the darker one, more of a blackish, doesn't matter if it's the Skemp, which is the brown one. And every image of divine mercy, Christ's left foot is stepping forward.
Very important because it's him coming to us.
It's the devotion. Instead of our devotion to God, it's God's devotion to us.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Oh, man, it fills my heart thinking of that.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: This is how it all ties together. In the Sacred Heart, we learn God is love.
But then he rose up another great saint. And it doesn't mean that God made a mistake. God has always done it this way. He brings us in stages.
So with Margaret Mary, she did her job. She told the world, God is love. We still didn't respond. So he raises up another great saint, Saint Faustina, and he says, you, Saint Faustina, will help prepare the world for my final coming. Wow. A spark will come from Poland to prepare the world for my final coming. That spark is Saint Faustina, John, Paul and divine mercy.
And we Marians like to say Marian fathers too, because we're from Poland.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: But anyway, Serge Bozja so what we
[00:12:43] Speaker B: learned is in the Sacred Heart we learn God is love. But in divine mercy, it's God's love put into action.
That's the definition of mercy. Mercy is a particular mode of love that when love encounters suffering, it takes action to do something about it.
That is mercy. What did God do? He saw our suffering in the garden. So he decided to take action to do something. What did he do? The gift of a mother and the promise of a Savior.
That Was what he did about it.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: She will crush your head.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Yeah. It took centuries, but he spoon fed us along the way. So now we are at the culmination, we are at the end, we are at the very precipice of salvation history because Jesus said, you will prepare the world for my final coming. Now, we don't know when that is. It could be next year, it could be tomorrow, it could be 50 years from now, it could be 100 years, but she's preparing the world. Through he is through her. You will help me to prepare the world for my final coming. So what does this all mean?
In the Sacred Heart, As I said, God is love, but in divine mercy, it's put into action. God is love put into action so that he sees us and he says, you know what? You still aren't coming to me. I'm making my last ditch effort to come find you.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: It's the parable of the shepherd that goes out and finds that one lost sheep. So he's going to find us. Now here's where it's amazing.
We said on an earlier show that the Mass is a foretaste of heaven. It's a precursor, and it's called the Wedding feast of the Lamb.
What did every Jewish man want his bride to be before he took her home to meet his mother and his father? Spotless.
Completely spotless.
Now this is, to me, the biggest miracle of everything. And this is where all divine mercy culminates.
When we go to confession and we have a valid confession, our sins are forgiven.
But what about the punishment?
Is that forgiven or does that remain? Well, the eternal punishment due to sin, AKA hell, that's wiped away, but the temporal punishment due to sin still could remain.
And that is a stain on our wedding garment. Our wedding garment can have two stains. Sin and the result of sin is the punishment that we still hold back. Remember we talked about consequences of sin? If somebody breaks a window, the dad doesn't just say, well, you can go now. He says, you're grounded, you have to pay for this. So we have this temporal punishment remaining on our soul. That the problem is when Jesus comes for us as the groom, he wants his bride to be spotless. Now when does Jesus come for us?
[00:15:35] Speaker A: So we're forgiven but stained?
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: At the end of our lives and at the end of time.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: Okay, end of our lives. Now what's the perfect number to the Jews?
[00:15:43] Speaker A: Seven.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Seven.
That refers to time.
God created the world in six days. He rested on the seventh. Seven is a number symbolic of time, creation, but what was the perfect number for the Jews regarding eternity?
8. 8 was the perfect number to the Jews regarding eternity.
So when Jesus told St. Faustina, I want this feast, but it has to be on the Sunday after Easter, he did not say your birthday or my birthday. He did not say on St. Faustina's birthday. He said, it has to be on the Sunday after Easter. Now check this out.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: So this is the. In one of the apparitions, he said, for the Sunday after Easter be instituted a divine mercy.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Yes. The feast of divine mercy has to
[00:16:33] Speaker A: be the Sunday after Easter has to be.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Now, this meaning is so deep and so beautiful. This is going to be the theology we get into.
There is something we take from the Jews called an octave. When a feast was so big that it couldn't be celebrated in one day, the Jews would celebrate it over eight days.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: I've always proposed that my birthday be an octave for my family.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: So we have this year as my 50th. We're going to do it this year.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: There you go. That's an octave of octave of 5,0.
Go to Hawaii. Do your 5,0.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: Hawaii.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: And I love Hawaii, by the way. But Jesus was emphatic that it has to be on the eighth day. So I talked to my mentor, Father Seraphim, who is the. And he went into the writings of Rozicki, and he went into the writings of blessed Michael Sopocko. And here's the meaning of the eight days. We come from the Jews. And when a feast was so big it couldn't be celebrated in one day, it was celebrated over eight days.
We called it an octave. Now, we used to have many octaves in the Catholic Church. We had the octave of Pentecost, the octave of Corpus Christi. We have only two octaves left now.
The octave of Christmas and the octave of Easter.
Now, the octave of Christmas. I always ask people, when does that begin?
Christmas Day, the 25th.
Christmas does not end on Christmas Day, which the secular world tries to tell you. It begins.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: So start the party on Christmas day.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: So day one of the Christmas Octave is December 25th. The 26th. The 27th. 28th. 29th. 30th. 31st.
January 1st. The eighth day.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: Why do we always go to church on January 1st?
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Mary the mother of God. The feast of the. No.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: To root for Michigan to win the Rose Bowl. No. Just kidding. Mary the mother of God. Right.
You can't separate the birth of Jesus from the mother of Jesus.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: It's gorgeous.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: It was strategically placed as an octave because it's all celebrated as one huge giant feast. The proper eight days. Go to the Epiphany. Now you have the 12 days of Christmas. Go to the baptism. Now you have the Christmas season. But the octave is the eight days. The biggest octave we have in the Catholic Church is the octave of Easter.
When does the octave of Easter begin?
Easter Sunday.
Day one. Easter Sunday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
Divine mercy Sunday, the eighth day.
Here's the whole meaning.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: I love this.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Eight represents eternity to the Jews. Christ is going to come for you. You just said this at the end of our life.
He's the groom coming for his bride to take her to the wedding feast of the Lamb in heaven. He's coming on the eighth day. The eighth day symbolizes eternity.
Guess what the eighth day means. He's coming for you.
You're his bride.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: Stepping forward with his left foot.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Walking up. Stepping forward his left foot. He comes for you as the bride. Is he going to find you spotless?
Odds are no.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: I just. My mind's blown here. I mean, the church has celebrated Christmas and Mother of God for a very long time on those particular days.
The fact that we have in this era, that it was strategically done that
[00:19:50] Speaker B: way by God so that we in the last time, where sin would abound, grace would abound even the more he specifically did this for the end time. You know what St. Therese said? She says, I'm jealous of the people who will live 100 years from now.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: Really?
[00:20:06] Speaker B: She said that? She said, I will be jealous of the people who live 100 years from now because they will have more grace than it's ever been given in the history of the world.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Dang.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: There's a little pressure with that, because I'm thinking, who much has been given, much is expected. We're getting more grace right now with this trial.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: This is amazing.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: So now you've got this important eight, this eternity. Christ is going to come for you. But the odds are he's coming for you as his bride. Who does he want? What does every Jewish man want his bride to be? Spotless. The problem is we have two stains on our wedding garment. Sin. And the result of sin is the punishment that we still owe. And if we have either of those, we're not ready for Heaven. We gotta go be purified.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: You won't be lost. But there's the.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Well, if you have unconfessed mortal sin, you'll be lost. So the first stain, sin is wiped out. How confessional.
The second stain, the punishment still may remain. So what happens? We Gotta be cleansed of that in order to get to the wedding feast of the Lamb, to have a white garment without a stain.
So Jesus promise on this one day, the eighth day, Jesus said to St. Faustina, in paragraph 699 of the diary, the soul that has been to confession so that you're in a state of grace and receives Holy Communion, will receive the complete forgiveness of all sin and punishment.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: In other words, it's a plenary indulgence.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: It's greater. And I'll tell you why it's greater than a plenary indulgence.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: And we'll link to definitions of plenary indulgence below the video. If you're like, huh, yeah, we got you.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: It's greater.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Jesus is saying on this one day, he told St. Faustina, the floodgates of my mercy are open on this one day. You know what? It's the fulfillment of Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur to the Jews was the one day of the year the High priest could enter into the Holy of Holies and receive on behalf of the people their complete forgiveness of sin and punishment.
Yom Kippur, divine Mercy Sunday, is a fulfillment of Yom Kippur.
So the High priest Christ went into the holy of holies. That's what the image of Divine Mercy Sunday is. He's coming out of the cenacle and he's giving us a complete wiping clean of all sin and. And punishment. You know why? It's the eighth day, and that is the day he's coming for you as his bride.
That's the day he wants to find you spotless. So Jesus comes as the groom. He doesn't want to be the unhappy groom who can't find his bride without any stain. And if we are all full of stain, he's not going to be the groom that's going to be happy with his bride. He wants us to be spotless, so he gives us Divine Mercy Sunday. It's like a second baptism.
Never will your soul be cleaner than it is, other than your original baptism, than it is on Divine Mercy Sunday. Because not only are you forgiven of all your sins, but all the punishment. Guess what? You are ready to enter the wedding feast of the Lamb. You're spotless. When did John Paul II die? People don't realize this. They say, oh, he died the day before Divine Mercy Sunday. He died on the Vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday.
He went to confession that morning and he received Holy Communion from Cardinal Djevic as he was getting very sick and he was Dying. They were not going to celebrate Mass. They were going to celebrate Mass the next Sunday morning. But Cardinal Jevitch visited our shrine and told us a story. He said it kept being put on his heart. Celebrate Mass with John Paul for divine mercy Sunday. It was like five o' clock at night on Saturday. Wow. There was no plans. He ignored it. Wow. About two hours later, at 7 o', clock, it was put on his heart. Celebrate the Mass with John Paul for divine mercy Sunday. He said he ignored it. We're celebrating mass tomorrow. At 8 o' clock it came again. So this time he obeyed. He got. Can you imagine a cardinal rummaging through corporals and purificators and chalices and cruets.
He celebrated Mass privately with John Paul. He received Holy communion and died 25 minutes later.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: He received complete forgiveness of sins and punishment.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: This was the grace God gave him. So anyway, we can too receive this grace. Now, what is incredible about this is, is the image of divine mercy, where you see the rays of Jesus coming with the rays of blood and water. Here's what's fascinating. Those rays symbolize everything here. Because Satan only has two tools in his toolbox. Sin.
And the result of sin, if we don't get it confessed, is death.
If you sin, that's why Jesus died on the cross.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Those are the Devil's rays.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: That's his tools. He's only got two tools. Sin. And the result of sin is death. So on the image of divine mercy, what is it? It's the blood and the water.
What is the water? He told St. Faustina, it's the cleansing waters of baptism and confession.
So in the first ray, the white ray, the pale ray, Jesus wipes out Satan's first tool of sin. What wipes out sin? The cleansing waters of baptism and confession.
So that's why he says, go to confession for divine mercy Sunday. The other ray, the red ray, he says, is what?
It's the precious blood. And what was Satan's second great tool? Death. What wipes out death?
Life.
What was life to the Jews?
Blood.
So he shows the blood.
The blood. That's why the Jews eat koshered meat, because the blood to them was the life of the being.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: You had to take the blood out or still alive.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: You had to take the blood out because it was still alive. So blood is life. So Christ has, in the image of divine mercy, the blood and the water. The water cleanses of the sin. The blood defeats Satan's death. So in that you have the two tools of Satan completely Obliterated by Christ.
The thing is, that image of divine mercy is symbolic of what you have to do on divine mercy, son. You have to get to confession and receive, basically the blood. Well, Father, we don't receive the precious blood. The host has the body, blood, soul, and divinity.
So when you receive Holy Communion, you're receiving the blood.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: You are wiped clean. You are wiped completely clean. Second baptism. And finally. I know we're running out of time.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: No, no, no.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Why is it greater than a plenary indulgence? This is amazing.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: And I want you to also back up a little. And didn't the Church. Some people are watching. Do away with indulgences already? What's a plenary indulgence? First of all, how do I. You know, indulgence is.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: Were never taught by the Catholic Church to sell. They were misused by some priests back in the Middle Ages, and it really wasn't their fault.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: Give me some money, I mean, and I'll wipe your purgatory.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: And it wasn't even that.
It was. It was a work of mercy to contribute to the building of a church.
And so they said, if it's a work of mercy, you will get the reward for the work of mercy. So the work of mercy, it wasn't for giving the money. It was for helping to build a church.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: So plenary indulgence, it can obviously be misused. So the Church, we're not doing that.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: But it's a beautiful gift. One of my talks, a guy came up to me and said, father, this is the problem with the Catholic Church, all these rules and regulations, because I was talking about plenary indulgences. Plenary means full, like plenia gratia, gratia plena means full of grace.
Plenary means full, means you get the full remission of all temporal punishment due to sin, all the sins, and the punishment is gone.
But here's the thing.
Oh, but back to this guy. This guy said, that's the problem. All these rules and regulations. I said, there's no rules or regulations. It's extra credit. You get an extra credit of grace.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: You get to do this reinterpret. It's so many rules.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: I'm an engineer.
I did very well scholastically. There was one class I could never grasp. I just couldn't get it. It was electromagnetism.
I could not grasp it in my brain.
And I went to the professor and I said, listen, I'm really worried about my grade in this class.
He said, all right, do a paper on calculating the flux through this toroid and I will give you.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: I wasn't in your kind of class.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: And he said, I will give you some extra credit. Now, did I look at him and say, I'm sick of your rules and your regulations?
I was so elated that he was offering me extra credit.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:28:44] Speaker B: Totally. A plenary indulgence is extra credit of grace.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: And the Church actually has the authority from Christ to say such a thing. Absolutely. An activity they want to encourage to a plenary indulgence.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: Now, what is a plenary indulgence? Okay.
We can get plenty indulgence in hundreds of ways. You can visit a shrine or a basilica on its anniversary. You can walk through the holy doors.
You know, there's all kinds of ways.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: And you could give it to someone else you love.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Only a holy soul. You can't do it for another living person. Okay, yeah, you can do it for yourself. Personally, I do the first 29 days of every month for the Holy Souls. I do the last day of the month for myself.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
So there's many you can do, but I'm gonna give you the big four. Yeah, there's four plenary indulgences you can do any day of the year, anytime, any place.
Every Catholic. If you're watching, do one of these, pick one. You could do the same one every day if you wish. You can do each different one every day. Only one a day, though, except in the jubilee year. The church should say, you can get a second if it's for the Holy Souls, but that's another topic.
There's four big four you can do any day of the year.
One is pray a rosary inside a church, chapel or with another person.
So if you pray the rosary with another person, you can notice I'm going to say this.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: I'm racking these up, man.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: Yeah, you can get a plenary indulgence.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Second, half an hour of adoration.
You go. It doesn't have to be exposed in a monstrous. It can be in the tabernacle as long as you're in the present. And we know this because we had this argument. We contacted Rome.
That's what priests do with their Catholic nerd arguments. Yeah, it was. That was totally Catholic nerd argument.
So the second is a half an hour of adoration.
The third is reading a half an hour scripture. My goodness. You can do that on your couch at halftime.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: Half an hour of scripture.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: You're not missing anything with halftime anymore.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: Anymore.
Oh, especially the Super Bowl.
And the fourth is walking the Stations of the Cross has To be at a legally erected blessed station. It's not in your bathroom where you put a cross on the wall.
If you do any of those four, you can get a plenary indulgence. Now, notice I keep saying can.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Because there's four conditions.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: Okay. One, and again, these are bonuses. This is extra credit. This is the Church with a disorder. There's no rule, there's no regulation attaching a bonus to something that you're going
[00:31:08] Speaker B: to want to do it your whole life. You don't have to.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Yeah, but why not? So, one, there's four conditions. You have to go to confession within 20 days. Used to be eight, but in the Jubilee year 2000, they made it about 20.
If you're in a state of grace, you can go 20 days before or 20 days after. If you're not in a state of grace, you need to go before.
So 20 days before, after. So if you go once a month, you're covered.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[00:31:35] Speaker B: You're covered.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:36] Speaker B: Because you can do multiple plenary indulgence on one confession. You don't have to go to a confession for every single plenary indulgence, just one a month, you're covered.
Second, you have to go to communion one time for each plenary indulgence. So you can get one a day. If you go and you receive, you go to daily Mass, you can get a plenary indulgence if you did one of those four things.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[00:31:57] Speaker B: Third, you have to pray for the intentions of the Holy Father, which normally, not always, but normally is an Our Father, a Hail Mary and a Glory Be.
So far, so easy, right? So far, so good.
No problems here.
But it's the fourth condition that sinks most all of us.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: Yeah. No attachment to sin.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: Attachment to sin. Even venial.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: How do you define attachment to sin?
[00:32:23] Speaker B: I struggle with gluttony and impatience.
[00:32:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: No matter how hard I sit in traffic and try to be patient, I'm impatient. What you. What really irks me is when the accident's on the other side of the divided highway and your traffic jam is the gawkers, that drives me up a wall.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: So I still.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: So I have the sin of impatience. I'm attached to it. I still get frustrated.
I'm so tight on my schedule. Gluttony.
I'm guilty of sometimes too much food, but a lot of times too much sports. And now that might not be a sin in itself, but if I'm missing prayer because of it, if I'm missing serving my brother because of it, then yes, it is. So, okay, so attachment to sin is things that we aren't willing to give up yet.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: So I might have it, but if I'm not liking it, I'm willing to give it up, then I'm not attached to it.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: If you are able and do give it up, then you can get the plenary indulgence.
You got to be willing and. And do it.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: Now what happens?
[00:33:31] Speaker A: It seems like it. Like it. Like, I don't. Is there any time that my soul is in that state? I don't know.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: That's. That's the question for many people.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: You know, Philip Neri said that one time at the cathedral, there were 1200 people. Two got the plenary dollars.
[00:33:43] Speaker A: So he could see it.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: He could see it.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: Dang. That's a glitch in the whole thing.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: But what do you do if you don't get the plenary? What do you get?
[00:33:53] Speaker A: Well, you get grace.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: Partial indulgence.
[00:33:56] Speaker A: Okay, we'll take it.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: And pennies equal dollars.
There was a story, a guy that just took him $37,000 of pennies.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Hey, that's cool.
[00:34:06] Speaker B: $37,000 in pennies.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: We'll take it.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: Pennies equal dollars. So don't give it up.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Yeah, totally.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: But guess what? The extraordinary promise of divine mercy says you get that same forgiveness of sin and punishment, just like a plenary indulgence, but the only conditions are confession and communion.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: Boom.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: That's it.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: I didn't know this stuff. I didn't know this about divine mercy Sunday.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: It's so cool. Incredible.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: That is awesome.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: Why? God gave it to us because he knows we are snakes crawling around in the gutter and that most of us are not able to get a plenary indulgence. He's coming as the groom, wants to find us spotless as a bride. Problem is, he's going to find most of us with stains on our wedding garment. And instead, he is so hoping and wanting us to go with him straight to the wedding feast of the Lamb. No stopover in Purgatory, no cleansing, no punishment. He wants us to go straight up. That's why he gives on the eighth day, the day of eternity, this grace. And all he asks is to get to confession and go to Holy Communion. Any snake can crawl out of the gutter.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: Go to Communion.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: Do I have to do the Divine mercy chaplet each day? No, just literally, it's given to every Catholic within eight days or within the month.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: No, that somehow before Divine mercy Sunday, you went to confession, so you're in a state of grace.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: You have to have an intention to. I offer you.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: Here's what you do. You receive Holy Communion at any mass, even if the priest never mentions mercy. You go on the vigil or on Divine Mercy Sunday, even if the priest never mentions mercy. And here's what you do.
You receive Holy Communion after having been to confession.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: And it doesn't have to be confession on the same day.
Faustina went to Saturday before.
Wow. So you can go before. As long as you're in a state of grace. Okay. You can't be aware of any mortal sin.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: Grave sin.
[00:36:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:36:03] Speaker B: Okay.
All you do is you receive Holy Communion. You go back to your pew and you make this prayer or a prayer like it.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, you promised Saint Faustina the soul that has been to confession.
I have.
And the soul that receives Holy Communion on this day.
I just did.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: You're just claiming the Super Lotto ticket
[00:36:36] Speaker B: will receive the complete forgiveness of all sin and punishment. Jesus Christ, please give me this grace. I trust in you. And you know what? He has to. Or he's a liar.
Because he promised the soul that goes to confession and receives Holy Communion. So it's greater than a plenary indulgence, because anybody can get it.
[00:37:03] Speaker A: Oh, that's just awesome.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: This is incredible.
[00:37:05] Speaker A: That's awesome. That's awesome.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: It's incredible.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: I'm just. I'm so grateful for this, honestly.
I love divine mercy. I love the apparitions. That's huge book of these beautiful messages that are all really just the gospel.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: But it means something, right?
[00:37:19] Speaker A: I love the message. I've always loved this. That the mercy is an ocean. The bigger your trust is a bucket, the bigger the bucket. There's no limit for yourself, for others. And you pray like Jesus. I'm trusting in you. I'm just drinking from the bucket.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: That's it.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: But I knew all that, and I thought, cool. Divine Mercy Sunday. That's great. I never heard this until just now. I think it's maybe because so much of the church has distanced itself from the reputation of the sale of indulgences.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: That we've stopped talking about these cool
[00:37:47] Speaker B: Catholic features because it was misused doesn't invalidate it.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: Yeah, totally.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: You know what I can do? If you hand me a knife, I can take that knife and kill you with it.
Or I can go out and whittle a beautiful statue of the Blessed Mother out of the wood in your backyard.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: I was thinking her cut a rib
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Eye or cut a rib eye and enjoy the fruit of the beautiful gift God gives us in a stake. I can use the same thing for good or for evil. An indulgence can be used for good or it could be misused. Just because it was misused does not invalidate it.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:20] Speaker B: And so what we have to do is say, you know what, Lord, you are offering the most incredible grace on this day.
Don't let me miss this, please. And if you'd like to get it, thank you for putting a copy of the book up. Understanding Divine Mercy. You can get it on Amazon.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: I'll link to it below the video.
[00:38:34] Speaker B: We'll put a link. It's available on Amazon. Is called Understanding Divine Mercy. Explain all of this, all of this
[00:38:42] Speaker A: detail, all of it. You know, another thing I love about the whole indulgence thing? All that, I mean, again, Jesus is your Savior. It's not by works that you're saved, but there's the things we have to work out.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: You're cooperating with the grace by doing
[00:38:55] Speaker A: whatever that indulgence is and the reality that he saves us and yet nothing impure can enter heaven. This is where the Church's teaching on Purgatory was clarified and emerged over time. It's all beautiful, but there's a very human psychological element here. Have you seen the movie Mission?
[00:39:10] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: How Robert De Niro is carrying the weight.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: Sad, but very powerful story.
[00:39:15] Speaker A: Beautiful, right? He's carrying the weight of all this armor as a penance because he was a slave trader but repented. Changed his life, but he was carrying it and he couldn't give it up until you got to watch this movie, if you haven't seen it. Until one of the people he had been trading, the indigenous from Peru, came up and sawed it off and set him free.
But he needed just to feel the weight of.
I want to be part of this redeeming process, to be shriven of this and to have it done. And behind me, there's something so mighty about this Catholic practice, this ancient practice.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: Our sin is like a nail.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: When you sin, it's like driving a nail into the board of the world. It's like putting poison into the body of Christ.
What happens in confession is that nail is pulled out.
God removes the sin. But what's left in the board?
[00:40:11] Speaker A: There's the hole there. The hole, it's damaged. The wood's been damaged.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: You gotta do something.
Christ did his job. This is. Why would the Protestants say Christ did it all? Yeah. He removed the nail.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: Yeah. It's enough to get me out of heaven.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: But you left a hole.
He pulled the nail out, but there's a hole left in that board.
And that hole is what we have to give back. We have to pay back. And Divine Mercy Sunday even fills the hole.
It's gone.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: That's epic, man.
[00:40:43] Speaker B: It's wiped clean.
[00:40:44] Speaker A: That's epic.
[00:40:44] Speaker B: And it's because he wants us spotless.
He is. The groom wants his bride spotless. On the eighth day, eternity, when he comes for us, he wants to find his bride spotless. And he gives us this day to become spotless.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: God is good.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: Yeah, you can't beat that.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Let's close in a prayer. Can I lead us in a real quick prayer and then you give us a blessing to wrap it up?
[00:41:05] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely.
[00:41:05] Speaker A: In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
I just want you to think for a second, if you're watching or you're listening, of the thing about yourself or the world that feels the most hopeless. And remember, the mercy of God is the ocean, and your trust is the bucket.
And whatever you think is so hopeless or so beyond his reach, it's a pebble you'd throw into the ocean. It's nothing.
So remembering the size of his mercy, pray three times with me right now. Jesus, I trust in you.
Jesus, I trust in you.
Jesus, I trust in you.
[00:41:42] Speaker B: In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. And before we give you the final blessing to piggyback off that, Jesus told St. Faustina that if you put all the sins together ever committed in the history of the world, they're but just a drop compared to the ocean.
The ocean. That is my mercy. Now, what happens when you drop a drop in the ocean? Nothing.
Nothing. It's obliterated. It disappears.
That drop is all the sins ever committed in the history of the world put together.
And the ocean is his mercy.
So if you just put that drop into the ocean, it's gone.
That's what God's mercy does. That's why it's awesome. It's like a second baptism.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: The Lord be with you and with your spirit.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: May Almighty God bless you, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Go in peace. God bless you, brother.
[00:42:29] Speaker A: Oh, man. So good to see you.
[00:42:31] Speaker B: It's awesome.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: Love you, man.
[00:42:32] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: I love being a Catholic. I love you guys. Thanks for being part of the Catholic party with us. We'll see you next time.
