Pints With Aquinas - St. Faustina & the Divine Mercy: A Message for Our Time (Fr. Chris Alar) | Ep. 521

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

Father Chris Alar, MIC, is the Provincial Superior of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Mercy Province of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception in the United States and Argentina. He wrote and produced the popular "Divine Mercy 101" and "Explaining the Faith" YouTube series and is the author of the bestselling books After Suicide: There's Hope for Them and for You, as well as Understanding Divine Mercy. He is host of the EWTN show Living Divine Mercy, which airs on Thursdays, 10:00 p.m. EST. From 2014-2024, he served as "Fr. Joseph, MIC," the Director of the Association of Marian Helpers. Fr. Chris's links: https://www.thedivinemercy.org  https://shopmercy.org/  https://www.youtube.com/@DivineMercy_Official 🍺 Want to Support Pints With Aquinas? 🍺 Get episodes a week early, score a free PWA beer stein, and join exclusive live streams with me! Become an annual supporter at 👉 https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💵 Show Sponsors:  👉 College of St. Joseph the Worker – Earn a degree, learn a trade, and graduate without crippling debt: https://collegeofstjoseph.com/mattfradd 👉  Truthly – The Catholic faith at your fingertips: https://www.truthly.ai/ 👉 Hallow – The #1 Catholic prayer app: https://hallow.com/mattfradd  💻 Follow Me on Social Media: 📌 Facebook: https://facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/mattfradd 𝕏 Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas 🎵 TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas 👕 PWA Merch – Wear the Faith! Grab your favorite PWA gear here: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com

You know why Divine Mercy Sunday is even greater than a plenary indulgence? We can still be broken and get this grace. You mean attached to sin? Yeah. Do you know how happy that makes me? Exactly. Whenever somebody told me I can get a plenary indulgence if I'm not attached to sin, I'm like, what does that mean?

Exactly. That's like saying you can fly up there if you can fly up there. Exactly. Do you know Philip Neary was revealed to him in the cathedral? No. That there were 1200 people at the cathedral together doing an act of plenary indulgence. It was revealed to him that two people got a plenary indulgence. As Catholics we're not bound to believe private revelation, but why do you think it was in

fact authentic? Divine mercy didn't begin with St. Faustina. When we say divine mercy, we have to recognize that it's not just a devotion. Remember, nobody could be canonized who's a heretic. So I heard of you because I was just, I mean, I've been seeing you on YouTube a lot. Watching some of your lectures, I think they're really great. Oh, thank you. Yeah, we get a lot of, we've been very pleased that EWTN just renewed us for a fourth season. I host a show. I'm we get a lot of we've been very pleased that EWTN just renewed us for a fourth season I host a show. I'm now the provincial superior of the Marian Fathers, which that's a blessing and a curse and

So yeah, things are busy. Yeah. Yeah, and then I was just in Australia with Char Bell He said you were coming like I'll put us in touch Thanks for making it out. Thank you very much was always been a fan of yours So when they were able to work it out, I was very happy. So that's great. Well, we have Divine Mercy Sunday coming up, and you're apparently the man to speak to about this. Well, the community tells me that. All right. Well, for those who are maybe not terribly familiar, what are the Divine Mercy Revelations and Divine Mercy Sunday? What's that about? And why shouldn't we take seriously those Catholics? I mean, all sorts of Catholics have all sorts of false opinions. I'm sure

I'm one of them. So I think there are Catholics who have the false opinion that there's something dire or seriously problematic with the revelations and therefore we should not be trusting them. We shouldn't be reading Faustina's work and that sort of thing. So that's a lot. So wherever you want to start. Well, let's start with mercy, which is a timeless topic, okay? No matter what day of the year you're listening, you can find the importance of divine mercy. In fact, the revelations that were given to Faustina, you know, I think that we can just start right off with that. The ban, okay, let's just start right there because a lot of people will bring up the fact that St. Faustina was banned and condemned, and actually, this isn't

entirely true. There was a halt placed on her writings between 1959 and 1978. And that was mainly due to a faulty translation. Real quick, when did she live? Okay, she was born in 1905 and died in 1938. Okay, so the supposed ban was placed well after her. Yes, correct, correct. So she was really who the kind of person you don't expect to work through, God to work through, but exactly is the person God who works through. I mean, look at Moses. He stuttered so bad, people couldn't understand him. He says, Lord, use my brother. And Jesus, God's like, no, I'm using you. Look at Mary, insignificant, poor, you know, but God uses her as the most important human in history. Look at St. Paul.

All right? A lot of people think St. Peter's the biggest reason we have a church today. Actually it's St. Paul. And we know from the Apocryphal writings, St. Paul was ball-headed, bow-legged, hook nose, and four foot eight. Really? Yeah. That was St. Paul.

And we see all these massive statues of him in Rome. Four foot eight. Really? That was St. Paul. And we see all these massive statues of him in Rome. Four foot eight! Didn't they call it like the tiny man's complex? Yeah, Napoleon's syndrome. That's right. You're a little more kind of cleric to compensate for. Yes. Interesting. And so, she's one of those you wouldn't expect, but God has a tendency to do that. He works for, I mean, look at the 12 apostles. One did not, one betrayed him, one denied him three times, one didn't believe in the resurrection. They all ran away except for John at the cross.

So again, God picks those who you wouldn't expect. And so if we're trying to place St. Faustina on this perfection pedestal, it's not what you're going to find. But if you find this goes in line with what God has done throughout salvation history, it makes perfect sense. John Paul II said she was nobody from nowhere. She was completely insignificant. Who was Mary? To the town, she was nobody from nowhere. You know, same with Joseph. And they're the two most important humans ever to walk the earth. And so we have this, after she died, there was a translation by a nun from the Polish into the Italian, and it was really inaccurate. And I'll give you just one example, I could give you many, but in the translation, she said, I am the divine mercy.

Well, if Faustina really said that, it should be banned. There should be a halt on the writings, even though there was never an official ban. There was a halt placed on her writings from 1959 to 1978. Because of that specific mistranslation? There were errors in the translation. Once that translation was worked out, and there was more knowledge of what was really said, and it wasn't even John Paul II who lifted the ban. It was Paul VI. So it wasn't some Polish guy that said, I want to defend a Polish nun. It was Paul VI. And so John Paul then began the investigation talking to the witnesses that were still alive.

And then once the revelation really became understood, there's been full embracing by the church. Remember, nobody could be canonized who's a heretic. So any people who are saying she's heretical or there's these problems where she says it's difficult because she never could have been canonized if that was the case. So they had to clarify all that and they did. But when you say that she wasn't perfect, I mean, you mentioned St. Paul and these others, is there something about her? Well, okay, maybe that's, yeah, maybe that's not a good word. Maybe I should say she wasn't

a highly important person that we would expect God to use to change the world. But in salvation history, he's never used those kinds of people. He's used the lowly, the insignificant, the humble. So when you say this to a detractor of the divine mercy devotion, that it is a mistranslation that's been cleared up, I'm sure they don't go, ah, good. So what's the next thing they say?

The next thing that they said is, and this is the most common, false mercy. That this is a permission slip to sin. And if you read the diary of St. Faustina, which I've read multiple times, it's anything but that. It is the last thing. Jesus talks so much in the diary about the consequence to sin. And the misconception amongst those who hold that opinion is that we're doing away with God's justice. No. You know who does away with God's justice, honestly, is those who keep telling you that Jesus did it all on the cross and there's nothing you have to do afterwards.

There's no reparation that you need to done because Christ did it all on the cross. He did everything for our redemption on the cross, but He never took away the consequence to sin on the cross. He never did away with his justice. And what's hard for them to understand is God's mercy is his justice. I'll give you a quick example. Two soldiers on the battlefield. One cuts his finger on a shell casing. The other one, like my uncle in Remagen, has his arm blown off by a German mortar cannon. There's one medic who has the greater right to that medic, the one in more serious trouble.

That's justice. So by God's very justice, he says, the greater the sinner, the greater the right to my mercy. And that doesn't register with people. Interesting, because Christ says the same thing in Mark's Gospel, chapter 2 verse 7 or something. I don't know. That's a great point. I haven't come for the righteous.

I've come for the sinners. The sick. Sick, yeah. The well don't need the physician. The sick do. Oh, you're right. And you see the same thing well don't need the physician. The sick do. Yeah. Are you right? And you see the same thing elsewhere in many of the saints.

But okay, maybe it's the fact that there's a concentration on the word mercy that people get afraid. What a terrible thing to get afraid of God's mercy. I mean, it'd be one thing if in the diaries, Faustina is telling you, sin willy nilly, we're all good. You know, Martin Luther said that. He said, sin and sin boldly. And that's not what Faustina said. She said even the slightest, tiniest, she became aware that even the slightest, tiniest transgression, which she never even thought was a

sin, gravely offended our Lord. That's not free, false mercy. That's a realization that God is still holding us accountable. Yeah, the bad argument I've heard against the Divine Mercy is, well, if the Divine Mercy chaplet takes off, then people will pray that and not the rosary, which is just terrible. I mean, there's nothing to it. It's like, okay, we'll pray both if you want. Secondly, these are private devotions, which aren't commanded by the church, encouraged, we'll pray both if you want. Secondly, these are private devotions which aren't commanded by the church, encouraged, but not commanded. So anyway, I don't know if you've heard anything else.

No, no, you're absolutely right. And you know why you should pray both? I mentioned this quite a bit in my talks because I think it's fascinating. The mass we know is in two parts, the liturgy of the word and the liturgy of the Eucharist. What is the liturgy of the word? It's meditation on scripture. What's the liturgy of the Eucharist. What is the Liturgy of the Word? It's meditation

on Scripture. What's the Liturgy of the Eucharist? It's sacrifice. It's offering sacrifice. Because worship, in the way God set it up, Old or New Testament has to have sacrifice. That's why the praise and worship is kind of a misnomer, because you really don't have worship without sacrifice. You have to have sacrifice. Okay. And so, I bring this up all the time. I say, okay, guys, if you miss Mass, what's the next best thing you can do? And I teach catechism, so I asked my seventh grade, and I said, now, if it's Sunday Mass, the next best thing is confession. Okay, okay. But if you miss daily Mass, what's the next best thing? And the answer

is, pray the rosary, because it's like the liturgy of the Word, it's meditation on Scripture. Well, no, Father, it's a bunch of Hail Marys. Actually, no, the Hail Marys are background, they're just background music. They're not... When you pray the rosary, your focus should not just be on the words of the Hail Mary. They should be on the mystery, which every one of those mysteries is biblical. The only two that are debatable are the glorious with the assumption and the coronation, and I can show you scripturally where they really are, Revelation 12 and whatnot. But if you miss Mass, pray the rosary because it's just like the first part of the Mass,

meditation on Scripture. Second, pray the chaplet because it's like liturgy of the Eucharist. It's offering sacrifice, eternal Father, I offer you the body, blood, soul, and divinity. Now here's where it gets interesting. Right back to your argument, I don't know how you could say that, Father Chris, that's problematic. I'm not a priest. Only you can offer that sacrifice. Only you are consecrated to be able to offer that sacrifice. Well, are you a priest? I am.

You are. Exactly. You know your faith. By virtue of your baptism, you share in the three offices of Christ, priest, prophet, and king. So what does a king do? He governs. You are to govern your family in the way of the Lord, the laws of the Lord, your body and holiness. You are a prophet. What does a prophet do? A prophet teaches. You're to teach your family, your loved ones, even your co-workers by your example. But you're also a priest. And what does a priest do? A priest offers sacrifice. And by you, that's the common—I'm sorry, what we think of is normally the ministerial priesthood. That is your normal priest, that's your diocese and your parish that goes up to the altar

on Sunday and performs the sacrifice of the Mass. But it's also you, because by virtue of your baptism, you share in those three offices, you share in the common priesthood of Christ. It may be the only time some people ever offer the sacrifice that they are able to offer is praying the chaplet. Because the words, the very words, eternal Father, I offer you,

sounds like that's only supposed to be for a ministerial priest. That's why we get a lot of complaints. A lot of people say, this prayer is absolutely improper. This is way out of bounds allowing me to pray this prayer. I'm not a priest. Yes, you are. And when you pray that, you're exercising your common priesthood. So I finished by saying, guys, you miss Mass, pray the rosary, it's like liturgy of the Word, pray the chapel, it's like liturgy of the Eucharist, and make a spiritual communion. Just asking God, say, Lord, I can't receive you sacramentally right now, but please come

into my heart as if you were, you know, I did receive you sacramentally. What a beautiful answer to the next best thing if you can't make Mass, a daily Mass. Like, I go to Mass daily, I say Mass daily, but I tell people that all the time. If you can't make Mass, you're traveling, like you travel, you go on the road, pray that rosary, pray that chaplet, make that spiritual communion, and you got the next best thing. Beautiful. So, I mean, as Catholics, we're not bound to believe private revelation. You know, no Catholic is being commanded to read the Divine Mercy Diary, that sort of thing. But why do you think it was, in fact, authentic, other than the fact that it's beautifully written,

that it's theologically sound? what else is there that you think? No, no, this seems legitimate like legitimately a supernatural experience that she had 100% because Divine Mercy didn't begin with st. Faustina in 1931 when he first appeared to her in Płock and gave her the image That we now have painted called the Vilnius image because at the time it was in Poland, now Vilnius is in Lithuania due to

the relignment of the borders of Europe. But 100% because mercy goes back to the beginning, it goes back to the garden. When God created us and the first great act of mercy was creation. So the first great act of mercy that we attribute to the first person of the Trinity, God the Father, was creation. That's when the perfect love of the Trinity, God decided to let it flow outside of itself, and we have creation. But what happened? Ten minutes later, we get broken. It took Adam and Eve all of ten minutes to fumble the football and to get us broken. So what happened?

Immediately the second great act of mercy by the second person of the Trinity, redemption. So here's the answer. Mercy doesn't go or start, I should say, with St. Faustina. It goes all the way back to the beginning of mankind. The mercy that God showed in the garden after the fall was the gift of a mother and the promise of a Savior. So, what do you mean, Father? Well, Genesis 3.15, you know, talks about the woman and her seed.

This is the gift of a mother and the promise of a Savior. So right away we see God's mercy immediately. And this is what Pope Benedict said that I thought was awesome. He said, mercy is the nucleus of the Gospels and the whole Bible. It's the heart of the whole Bible. So when we say divine mercy, we have to recognize that it's not just a devotion. It's both a message and a devotion. And the only one similar to that is the Sacred Heart. And this is where a lot of people will attack and say, you're trying to replace the Sacred Heart. I had Jesuit priests say,'re trying to replace the Sacred Heart.

I had Jesuit priests say, it's only about the Sacred Heart. What are you Marian's trying to do? And I said, it's not just the Marian's, this is the whole church, you know, with Divine Mercy. It's, you know, Matt, in the Missal, Divine Mercy Sunday is actually not optional. It's translated into the English as Or, the second Sunday of Easter, or Divine Mercy Sunday. But remember, or is an equivocal term.

It's not univocal. That means there's different ways you could use it. For instance, I have an apple or an orange. That can mean totally two different things. But what's out in that parking lot? Is that a car or an automobile? It can mean the same thing. The actual translation of the Latin, seau, S-E-U, is really not or. It was a mistranslation.

It is namely or that is. So in other words, the missal really says, the second Sunday of Easter, namely Divine Mercy Sunday. Okay. The second Sunday of Easter, that is Divine Mercy Sunday. So, it's really not optional. Yeah. And here's the reason why, because mercy isn't optional. If we don't repent and ask for God's mercy, that's the only unforgivable sin. Amen. I agree with all of the things that you're saying, but I could still see someone saying,

no one's denying that mercy is an important theme that needs to be talked about and preached. But some people might deny that she experienced supernatural revelations. So do you have any reason, or did, I mean, presumably the church had reason to think that she wasn't making this up? Oh, yeah, absolutely, because mainly she had three years of education. She was formally trained in three years of education. Remember at Lourdes where Our Lady appeared and said, I am the Immaculate Conception, and Bernadette gave that testimony to the authorities? And what did the authorities say to her? She said, she said on the Immaculate Conception, she didn't even know what the Immaculate Conception meant. So there was no way that Bernadette could use that term because she didn't even know

what it meant. She couldn't be making it up. She had never heard the term. She was what, 12? It's the same with Faustina. Her depth of the theology that is written, and we have massive amounts of work that was done by John Paul II, Rojitsky, probably the main scholar in all the work that was done on St. Faustina's writings, said this is impossible to come from somebody with three years of formal education. She couldn't even write a complete sentence. She didn't even use punctuation. She was drafting as the words were coming to her through the Holy Spirit. And when the church analyzed her writings, they determined the depth of the theology

and the depth of the meaning of what she's writing, she was completely incapable of knowing on a supernatural, I'm sorry, on a natural level. It had to come from a supernatural level. Why did this message of divine mercy need to be revealed when it did, do you think? You know, when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. God gave us basically the answer, you know, asked for His mercy, they didn't. He said, you know, basically God taught us from the beginning to be merciful to each other. Adam and Eve weren't.

Completely trusting God's mercy, they didn't. They ran and they hid. God had been trying for centuries to get this message of mercy, what we call the ABCs. A is ask for God's mercy, B is be merciful to each other, C is completely trust in God's mercy. For century after century, He tried to raise up great prophets and saints, but we didn't listen. Look at Jansenism in Europe and what was that, 17th century, 16th century, 17th century, right? Yeah, to which the Sacred Heart was a response.

Exactly. This is where it all ties together. Jansenism is a perfect example of the world being, us being skittish creatures afraid of God, and His answer, you said, was the Sacred Heart. Basically, through St. Margaret Mary Alacogue, Jesus said, tell the world, come to me. I am love. I am not your enemy. There is one, but I'm not Him. I'm love. That's the whole message of the Sacred Heart. Come to me, I am love. Well, the problem is, many of the traditionalists, and I'm a traditionalist, I am. I'm totally 100% in favor of the extraordinary form of the Mass.

In fact, I'm already in process of learning it and seeking how to celebrate this beautiful form of the Mass. I'm 100%. I mean, I might not be considered what they term radical in terms of rejection of the documents of Vatican II or something like that. I do believe there were a lot of mistakes, and I believe there was mis-implementation, of course. But Vatican II never said to turn around the altars, it never said to drop the habits, it never said to stop praying the rosary. But with the Sacred Heart is a great example because God said, I am love, come to me. And we still didn't. What happened next?

The enlightenment. Man is who we come to. Man is who we trust, not God. And so by this time, Jesus is just—God will be shaking his head and saying, you guys are driving me crazy. And so, you know, what happened 100 years to the day after Jesus said, I wanted France consecrated to the Sacred Heart, the French Revolution. Yeah, the French Revolution. I didn't realize that. Yeah, 100 years to the day. And so, what happened was in the Sacred Heart devotion, which is also a message, God is

love, we see a situation that mankind didn't respond. So God in His wisdom never gives up on us, finally said, that's it, I'm done. I'm bringing this all together now. And He said to St. Faustina, you, St. Faustina, will help prepare the world for my final coming. And here's what he taught her. My love, which she taught through Margaret Mary, but mankind still didn't accept because he said, come to me. We were still skittish. I mean, even my dad looked like he was in a good mood. I was afraid to come to him sometimes because he was a tough Vietnam Marine helicopter pilot that flew helicopters out of Da Nang. I did not get away with anything. I was very much skittish

around my father and God knows that's how we are in our brokenness. So, He wants us to come to Him. And with the Sacred Heart, He was saying, come to me. We didn't do it. So, in God's infinite wisdom, He didn't give up. He then said, all right, I'm coming to you. My love is now taking action. This is why in every image of Divine Mercy you see Christ's left foot stepping forward. Every image. Doesn't matter if it's the Vilnius, the Hila, the Skempt, the image over the Faustina's tomb. It doesn't matter.

It's always the left foot stepping forward of Jesus. It's symbolic of Him coming towards us. Here's the definition, Matt, of mercy. Mercy is love put into action. See, in the Sacred Heart, He taught us He's love, but in Divine Mercy, He says, my love is now being put into action. Remember, in the Sacred Heart, love was a noun. In Divine Mercy, He now makes love a verb. And this is critically important because in knowing what God does, the definition of mercy is it's a particular mode of love that when love encounters suffering, it takes action to do something about it. It doesn't just sit there and say, you know, if you called me at two o'clock in the morning

and said, hey, Father Chris, I'm really, my car broke down, I'm in a horrible part of town, I'm fearful of my safety. And I said, you know what, Matt, I love you, brother, but I got to get up early tomorrow morning. I need my sleep. Sorry, but I'll pray for you. I love you. All right.

That's love. Not terribly helpful. That's love saying, okay, I'm telling you I love you. Trust me, I love you. But until I get in that car, drive there, and put that love into a verb and take action, does it not, it does not have its fullest fulfillment. And that's what Jesus did masterfully in teaching us He is love first. So divine mercy completes and fulfills the sacred heart. It does not replace it. And you know what's funny? The most beautiful stamp of approval I got on that was from a Jesuit, Mitch Paqua. Father Mitch Paqua of EWTN. He is amazing,

and he's a Jesuit priest. And he's like, you know, Father Chris, you know, we're always out there saying that this divine mercy thing trumps the sacred heart, and therefore it can't be a good thing. He said, it fulfills and it doesn't replace the sacred heart, it fulfills and completes it. It works with it. And that's why John Paul II said it's two sides of the same coin. It just seems a strange thing to pit one apparition against another.

It would be like doing that with our Lady of Guadalupe. Yeah, Fatima on Lourdes. Yeah. By saying because she presented herself this way at Lourdes and not this way in Fatima, therefore one of them must be erroneous or something. That's just an odd point. Great point, therefore one of them must be erroneous or something. That's just odd to me.

Great point. Yeah. Great point. But one of the things people say is, well, whenever Christ is presented, surely you see his wounds. And people will say that in the Divine Mercy image, I might have this a little mixed up, you can correct me. You don't see his wounds and...

Actually they're there. The biggest mistake I personally think that's made on this whole divine mercy understanding is that image was refurbished because it was left up in an attic of a church and got tons of soot through candles. It was displayed for a while in Lithuania, and the candle soot and the flames that were on it, it got very much deteriorated. But then they stored it throughout World War II. It was stored in an attic of a church, and then it was rediscovered. Our religious community paid for the restoration.

It did. And we raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to restore it. Father Seraphim, God rest his soul, was the main person behind it. The one thing that I have to admit that we missed was when it was refurbished, they didn't accentuate the wounds, but the wounds are there. They're there in the original. They're even there on the refurbished, but boy, they are hard to see. So when anybody says the wounds are not there, that's not correct. Interesting.

They're not prominent. They're not heavily visible. And I admit that can be seen as a problem, but it's really not. The original image painted by Faustina had the wounds very, very clearly and the renovation of it didn't make it clear enough. I think one of the reasons we're so in desperate need of the message of Christ's mercy today, and I suppose we've always been in need of God's mercy, but I mean, we've been born into a cultureless society in many respects. Many people at a young age are introduced to evil things that maybe, you know, you had no chance of being introduced to 200 years ago or something like this.

We live in a godless nation in some respects. Atheism is promoted, pushed, people are being raised in the aftermath of the sexual revolution. My goodness gracious, I mean, if there was anything we need to be told, it seems to be, I love you and I'm your refuge. All these other refuges, they won't work, they're broken cisterns. I am the font of living water, come to me. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is with the broken family now, I mean, even Catholic divorce rates over 50%, the same as the secular culture, cultural relativism is, in my opinion, the root of all evil, because you're God.

Don't tell me your truth. I have my truth. Don't push your quote-unquote morals on me. You want to believe that? That's fine for you. I have my own belief. The problem is you can't have pick and choose objective moral truth. There's one objective moral truth. There's only one. You can't have conflicting beliefs and have them all both be objective moral truth. You can't. There's only one truth.

And what's interesting is the further we've gone down this trail of moral relativism, the more moral absolutists people have become about certain things. So if I was trying to say, you know what? Maybe racism is okay for me. I got a feeling that people would rightly disagree with that. But then they got to find a sort of ontological basis

to uphold that, which they seem uninterested in. You're right, because people do believe in some sense there is objective moral truth. And like a good example you just said is racism. Well, if you think that's right, because everybody knows that's right, what's then to say that taking a life in the womb isn't also under that category? That it is an objective moral truth, that that's a life. You know, even Blackburn, the majority

opinion in Roe v. Wade says if it's ever determined the human being is a fetus, I'm sorry, that the fetus is a human person, then the entire case for this decision crumbles. He said that. And it wasn't much later in 1981 that the Senate Judiciary Committee determined through massive studies and testimonies of scientists and doctors that life began at conception. They even presented it to the Congress, I don't know if it was the full Congress, Joint Congress or Senate, but it was the Senate Judiciary Committee, so the thing that, the very thing that he admitted would crumble the case has been proven that life, that the fetus is a human person. So why haven't we now gone back and said that crumbles? It is objective of moral truth that the human fetus is a person, you know. You referenced this earlier, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which both Aquinas and the Catechism say is final impenitence, the refusal to repent of our sin.

Let me throw out another sin that people will often say is unforgivable, and that would be suicide. So, I don't know if the Divine Revelation book, Dara, has anything to say about this, or if you have thoughts on it? Well, I ended up writing a book co-authored with Father Jason Lewis, who's in our community. Well, I promise you I didn't know that. That wasn't like a softball question. Oh, that's great.

I didn't realize it. That's great. No, no, thank you. I was amazed growing up. My grandma took her life. When I was just out of college. And I'd never known life without grandma. And growing up, I'd never known how life would be without her.

And she worked during the war effort in the hardcore assembly plants of Detroit. And when they shifted all over from automotive manufacturing to tank and bomber, you know, military manufacturing. She was some of the hardest labor, the women were really running the plants because the men were all off to war. And she got just crippling injuries and pain and arthritis.

And it ended up being so unbearable for her that it ended up causing severe depression, anxiety, mental illness even to some point. She didn't have mental illness in the sense of a diagnosed, you know, psychological illness but it, you know, depression and anxiety over time, they can really start to affect you. Well, anyway, my grandma took her life. We never talked about her again. It was like this switch was flicked off in our family. All of a sudden, it's like grandma never existed for 10 years. And I would bring up grandma and all of a

sudden there would just be this change of subject. And it's because I come from a hardcore family, Croatian on my father's side, Czech on my mom's side. This is what they were taught, that suicide means automatic damnation. And so this is why our family never talked about it, because grandma was in hell. Well, all of a sudden, I go down to North Carolina, and I start getting on fire with my faith. I started finding so much interest in draw. I started going to daily mass. I started, you know, getting on fire with the faith, starting finding my zeal, because I was very apathetic through college. My college buddies still say, you're a priest that knew me in my fraternity days. I wasn't as bad as Father Don Calloway, my brother, but I watched your show with him

just on the way over here. What a beautiful, beautiful interview you guys had. But it was kind of similar, not as much, but I started going to this priest in North Carolina and he started teaching me how to pray the divine office and started teaching me about things of the faith and why I needed to go to confession. Well, he taught me this concept of called a general confession, which I had never heard of, is where you kind of go back in your life and you kind of walk through your life and you confess your sins as you go. And so I did that and he said, this would be really good for you,

you got a lot of baggage. And so I get through grade school, I don't know too many problems, junior high, I got a couple fights, high school, now there's girls, you know, so but then I get to 1993. And I confessed, I really felt bad. And I had to confess that at my grandma's funeral, I was more worried about our family's reputation. I never prayed for my grandma. I was more worried about our family's reputation. I never prayed for my grandma. I was more worried lobbying all our family members not to tell the newspaper how grandma died.

Because I was so embarrassed it would appear in the newspaper that- Was that something that your parents instructed you to do or that you just did on your own initiative? It was their upbringing of me and my embarrassment that the family was shamed that led me to do that. They never said go do it, but it was their upbringing that led me to kind of have that attitude.

And so I went lobbying all our family members to not tell the newspaper how she died. I want to write the obituary. You know, it's like, here's my grandma laying in the casket. It just tragically ended her life, and I'm worried about our good name. And so, I confess this in the general confession. And I said, and you know, the problem, Father, is when I really could have helped her, because I knew she was sick, I knew she was struggling before she died, I didn't pray for her.

I wasn't there for her. I was more worried about my girlfriend. And now she's in hell. And the priest looked at me and goes, what? I said, Father, you're a priest, you're a Catholic priest. You ought to know that. The church teaches that there's no opportunity for repentance.

You make that choice to take your life. Now, not to be graphic, I apologize, but my grandmother pulled a trigger and the gun three inches away from her temple, she pulls the trigger. There's no time to repent. She's dead instantly. her temple, she pulls the trigger. There's no time to repent. She's dead instantly.

And he said, that's not church teaching. And I said, what? He said, yes, your grandma may be lost, but that's not automatic. This is the first time I ever heard that? Never heard that. And he said, he pulls out the Catechism 2282, and it talks about there are mitigating circumstances such as fear, grave fear, sickness, anxiety, depression, that could mitigate, if not eliminate, the culpability of one who took their own life. And I was like, really? I never realized that. Well, grandma definitely fit that category. Then the next one was a bombshell. Catechism 2283. By ways known to I'm reading this in the confession, shocked. I'm like, Father, I don't understand this. What do you mean, solitaire repentance?

There's no time to repent. He says, listen, you don't think in the time it took the bullet to travel three inches, God can't come to the soul and have it realize what it's done and maybe show repentance. Never thought about that. So it really affected me. Wow. What I'm trying to think, it's so sad because usually I try to think of devil's abjections, but I don't really want to do that in this situation. But no, it's true. In fact, I can add some for you. A lot of people said that it's murder, which is a grave sin, and we all know the church teaching is if you die in an unrepentant

state of mortal sin, your soul is lost, okay? This is official church teaching. Here's the difference though. God is outside of time. There's no past for God, there's no future for God. There's this omniscience and omnipotence of God that if this is Adam and Eve and this is the end of the world, God sees it all at one instant. So, my grandma didn't commit suicide 10 years earlier, because she took her life in 1993. I'm in the confessional 2003. But it was explained to me this way, to God, your grandma didn't commit suicide 10 years earlier. It's all one present moment.

And here's what blew me away, Matt. When we were working on the book, Father Jason discovered in the Missal of the Roman Rite, there is a Mass for those who have taken their own life. And in the Collect, we pray for the forgiveness of their sins. There would be no point offering a Mass for a suicide if they were necessarily damned. Exactly. Here's the point. How can we even pray for the forgiveness of their sins? Weren't they judged immediately upon death, right? So the second my grandmother died, her funeral was a week later. Okay, grandma's long been judged. How would it be of any effectiveness

to pray for the forgiveness of her sins when she's been judged or not. She's already—there's no forgiveness to come because she's not living, she died. But the collect of the mass says, we beg you, Lord, for the forgiveness of the sins of those who have taken their own life. That must mean even a week later that there's an opportunity. And here's where it really blew the door open for me, was a documented case of Padre Pio by the friars that have documented that he was at his doctor one day, and the doctor noticed that he was praying

during a physical exam. And the doctor said, just in casual conversation, what are you praying for? And he said, the conversion and happy death of my grandfather. And the doctor said, well, I knew your grandfather. He died 20 years ago. And Padre Pio said, I know, but God knew 20 years ago that I'd be here tonight making this prayer, and He'll apply those graces. Now, we can't get souls out of hell. We can't replace their rejection of God with our acceptance of God. But there's a lot of grace that

can be given to a soul at the moment of their judgment, even from past, present, or future, because God's outside of time. To me, that's a fascinating concept. So, is the point of the book that you co--author just to offer hope to those who've been left behind? Yeah. That's the title. There's hope for them and for you. So the first part of the book is showing why they're not necessarily damned. And the second part of the book relies heavily on grief counseling and how you get through it. Because you know the highest, the most definite indicator of a suicide is somebody who has suffered the loss of a suicide.

That's the number one indicator that somebody will take their life. Yeah. Didn't know that. The catechism also talks about those who die in utero prior to baptism and I love the humility of the church Right because the church I think Peter Crave said this doesn't edit God's mail It just delivers it faithfully and it says something like, you know, the church only knows of baptism You know for the remission of sins, but we are bound by the sacraments God is not yeah

So, I mean what have you said to those presumably who've had children die in the womb and the hope that they can also have? Yeah, there is the two ways that even the church does teach baptism of desire and baptism by blood now, obviously a martyr would best fit that but you know, I believe let's let's let's go off base a little bit here and say an abortion, a child who dies in the womb, in one sense, that's a satanic sacrifice because, you know, I could I could entire talks about why abortion is a satanic sacrifice.

But in another sense, that could be said as they've shed their blood. You know, the baby has shed their blood, kind of like the holy innocents. You know, they were martyrs really in a sense. They died for God. Not that abortion would be the child dying for God, but it would be a way to awaken our society of the horridness by seeing how many have died. Was it 60 million in the US since Roe v. Wade? Over a billion worldwide since Roe v. Wade?

It's not until we're going to actually see the reality of it do we wake up. And so one way is baptism by blood, but also baptism of desire. And what does a God parent or a parent do at a baby's baptism? They stand in for the child. I believe the desire of the parent can bring that child baptism of desire. Ben Felsenberg I've been talking a lot lately about my friends at the college of St. Joseph the Worker, you know, Jacob Imam, Mike Sullivan, Andrew Jones and company, the guys who started the college that combines the Catholic intellectual tradition with skilled trades training. Well, listen to this, they're growing their program and are looking to connect with experienced

Catholic tradesmen to hire as instructors. So if you are an experienced carpenter, plumber, HVAC technician or electrician, and wanna help mentor and teach future Catholic tradesmen, go right now to collegeofsaintjoseph.com slash careers to connect with the college and see how you can become part of something truly special. And if you're watching or listening and know a tradesman who needs to hear this message,

please invite them to reach out to the college again That's college of st. Joseph comm slash careers college of st. Joseph comm slash careers. Thanks. I Really do because I if I had a baby and and it died in the womb My desire is that child? and I am the word, the representation of that child, if I'm the father, especially at an infant baptism. So, if the father can step in and say the words at the baptism, the baptismal rite, why can't he also have the desire for the baptism of the child, even though physically we didn't put water on the head?

I know form and matter, absolutely, but there is this baptism of desire. Well, I mean, this is something the church has wrestled with since the time of Augustine and beyond, right? And so the idea is they're not culpable for any personal sin, and so it seems unjust that God would damn them to hell. So I mean, however you slice it or whatever explanation you come up with for why we may have hope that they're saved, the catechism makes it clear that we can have hope, if not assurance. Yep.

Yeah. You know, as I've been sitting here talking about the mercy that God wants for us, as He wants for the suicide, as He wants for the child who dies in utero, it's just striking me, like, why is this gonna upset so many people? And I'd love your take on it. My take is, in a time of doctrinal confusion, people demand very rigid lines so that we can be clear again.

We'd really like, we're tired of the ambiguity, and we're right to be tired of the ambiguity. We want straight Catholic teaching. And so whenever someone comes along and makes things sound a little too merciful, they can sometimes be perceived as the enemy, which is really sad, actually. But I don't know if you agree with that assessment, but what's your take on why this frustrates people? No, I do. I think a good example is the Holy Father. I don't question his motives, but I do question his ambiguity. I do question his lack of clarification on things such as blessing same-sex couples. This whole confusion, because just use the proper wording.

This is not that difficult. So, I believe that you are right, that that is causing some people to raise their defenses, to question it, and why the Holy Father doesn't explain sometimes very more clearly. When it's clearly, to me, it's easy to explain more clearly, if that makes sense. It's clear to me that it's easy to explain more clearly, if that makes sense. It's clear to me that it could be more clearly explained. I don't feel it's that way with Divine Mercy. I feel it is very clearly explained because Jesus laid it out in the Scriptures. I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

Matthew 25, the sheep and the goats, you know, it makes it very clear. You know, the sheep and the goats is a great example because a lot of people have misconceptions about Catholic teaching that we think we can earn our way into heaven, that we can do works. Actually that's not Catholic Church teaching, even though I'm the first one out there to promote works of mercy. There's only one way to heaven, and that's grace. That's the only way you're getting to heaven, but you've got to cooperate with that grace. That's Church Teaching 101.

And so, in Matthew 25, with the sheep and the goats, he makes it very clear. He separates at the end of time the sheep and the goats, the king does, and he says, unto the sheep on the right, you know, when I was hungry you gave me food, thirsty you gave me drink, naked you clothed me, in prison you visited me, well done, good and faithful servant, you know, enjoy the kingdom of your Father. And then the goats on the left, he says to them, when I was hungry you did not give me food, thirsty no drink,, naked, no clothing, in prison, you didn't visit me. Now did he say, well, I knew you were busy.

So I'm going to let you go. Now, that's false mercy. That's what a misconception of St. Faustina's teaching is, but it's the opposite. Jesus says in the diary, like 742, 741, 742, I demand from you. He doesn't say, it's optional. You know, I know you had a bad day, you were busy. You know, Matt, you were making videos. Father Chris, you were traveling. You know, it's okay. That's not, he says in Matthew 25, away with you into the eternal fire. He doesn't say it's optional. He makes it very clear it's not optional. He demands it.

And in the diary of St. Faustina, everything in the diary backs up scripture. And in the diary in 742, he says very clearly, just like Matthew 25, I demand works of mercy. Not because those works are going to get you into heaven, but because that's your putting love into action. So now we're back to our conversation earlier. Love is put into action. Love becomes a verb. And you are now loving your neighbor, which is one of the two great commandments, and it shows Matthew 25 that if you don't do it, you're in big trouble. That's why he says at St. Faustina, I demand it.

So there's not this false mercy that we can do what we want and God's mercy is just going to wipe it away. That's presumption. You know, the two worst ends of the spectrum are despair and presumption. So I always tell people, don't fall on those two extreme ends. Despair is where they thought suicide caused damnation because you gave up. But again, we know there could be mental illness, you know, you could not have free will. I don't believe my grandmother had free will when she took her life. She tried to hang in she gave everything she had to hang in there

She gave every ounce of effort She didn't Want to take her life? She couldn't do it anymore, and I'm not excusing it some people will say father you're excused. No, I'm not But despair is where you you just give up. There no hope for me. There is hope for my grandma, as my book says. And the other end is presumption. Oh, it doesn't matter what I do, God would never send me to hell. Well, yeah, that's true, but your choices can send you to hell. And so, we have to look at the diary of St. Faustina warns very clearly about both of those.

She warns so clearly. In fact, she gives visions of hell. She gives visions. Her guardian angel took her into hell. She knew the dangers and how many souls were down there. She accounts in her diary how many souls are in hell. She also accounts in her diary about the narrow path. Again, that's scriptural. She saw this narrow path and she said, I saw so many, or a wide path, I'm sorry, I saw the wide path. So many people were on it, joyful, laughing, singing, having a good time. And at the end of the path there was this cliff. And she says in her diary, and they all fell off the cliff into destruction. This is complete backing of the Bible. Then she said she saw a narrow path and few were on it, but they were crying, begging, suffering, thorns, thickets, rocks, sorrows.

But at the end of their path was this glorious garden, this wonderful paradise. That is scriptural. So I don't mean to take all our time here, but I can give you example after example of where the diary literally and clearly reiterates what's in the scriptures. There are many people living today who are living in serious sin who need to be very aware that they're on a path that can lead them to hell. At the same time, there are many good and faithful souls who watch this show, who watch your teachings on YouTube, which are excellent.

And you know, they love Jesus Christ and they say their prayers, they flee from sin, and yet they're plagued with scrupulosity, which I always think is good to distinguish from a sensitive conscience, which we all ought to have. But they're plagued with scrupulosity and fear, which it seems to me they ought not be. And I wish more people were talking about that. Therese is the queen here in my estimation. It's not because of her own strength. She doesn't have any.

It's because of her confidence in the good Jesus that she is confident in her salvation. Yeah, her little way was revolutionary. But you know, in the diary of St. Faustina, she has a lot about St. Therese. Does she? St. Therese appeared to St. Faustina. Didn't know that. And said that, will I be a great saint like you? And Therese says, yes, you will be.

Wow. And here's why. Come on. Remember how I said, love with divine mercy, it kind of completed and fulfilled the Sacred Heart? Yeah. Faustina completes and fulfills St. Therese. So what the French begin, the Polish finish.

That's right. I'll get letters for this. Okay. So I don't know if you get as many letters as I do, but you know, 95% are positive, but man, that 5% that just attacks you and whatnot, you're like, you know what, I can't say anything without getting some of these negative letters, but I'm just defending the truth. But I'll tell you why St. Therese and St. Faustina are so tightly connected. Because St. Therese realized that I'm not going to do this on my own. I need to be lifted. She talked about this new invention called the elevator, you know, in the homes of the

rich that I I just have to be lifted up into the heights. I can't do it on my own. I'm broken. I'm broken. Yes. So, what you said is the key, because you just said the scrupulosity and the sphere. You know what the answer was?

The entire diary of St. Faustina, and really the Bible, because what is the Bible? The Bible is a love story. The Bible is an entire account of God the groom trying to call back his wayward bride. In the Old Testament, it was Israel. In the New Testament, it's the church. And it's trying God to woo, God's trying to woo back his bride. While you're talking, I need to look a story up that you don't like. Sure, please, no, please go right ahead. Keep going. Okay, so the whole Bible is an account of a good God trying to call back his wayward bride.

What is the problem? She's skittish. She's afraid. Now, the whole essence of the diary of St. Faustina can boil down to one word. One word. See if you can guess what that word is. Well, mercy or confidence.

Okay, close. Mercy, yes, that would be probably the best answer. That'd be the word, yeah. But the number one word is what Jesus told St. Faustina, pained him more than anything on his passion was not our sins. Okay. Lack of trust? That's it. You nailed it. It's trust. So what the scrupulosity is that you brought up, what this fear is, is a lack of trust. The whole role of St. Faustina is to take all of salvation history, this is why he told her,

you will help me prepare the world for my final coming, is because the one thing that is most needed in the world right now is that we trust Him. Pete Yeah. Jared We don't trust Him. We're scrupulous. Pete Yes. Jared We're fearful. We're skittish. We're apathetic. We don't believe in the promises of the church. We don't believe in the grace of the sacraments. Pete Yeah. Jared We don't believe. We don't trust. We don't believe. Trust, what is trust? Trust is accepting the help somebody offers you.

If I trust you, and you see Father Chris, you gotta go to this restaurant in Jacksonville. It's the best restaurant you're ever going to experience. If I trust you, I'm gonna be like, you know what? I really like this Matt Fratt guy. I trust him, I'm gonna go there and I'm gonna go out of my way, I'm gonna have this meal. If I don't trust you, I'm not going to do that.

Trust or if I trust someone that is going to get me out of trouble with their advice, it means I accept their help. What was the biggest two things Jesus gave us on this earth as a way to help us was the gift of a mother from the cross and the church, Matthew 16, 18. The gift of the church, Matthew 16, 18, and Mary from the cross. This is the two biggest things God gives us to help us, Mary, His mother, and the church. If we accept that help, we trust Him. That is the key. But what has happened, I don't need Mary, I reject her. I don't

need the church, I do it my own way. Cultural relativism. If we accept the help that God gives us in those two beautiful gifts, we are showing trust. And that's the biggest thing Jesus told St. Faustina that pained him on his way to Calvary. Here's a quote from Catherine of Siena, right? Our Blessed Lord says to her, almost verbatim here, let's see, my mercy is greater without any comparison to the sins creatures commit, therefore it greatly displeases me when they think their sin is greater. I mean, this is all throughout the saints, isn't it? Thérèse of Légere on her deathbed said that even if she had committed all the sins imaginable,

all of that sin would be like a drop of water and God's mercy would be like a raging furnace. There's no comparison. So I like what you're saying there because it seems to me that we don't trust, we don't put our confidence in the good God, but instead we put our confidence in ourself. And are you a Lord of the Rings guy? Yeah. And you know, Lord of the Rings guy? Yeah. And you know, people always ask me that. I probably a little bit more Narnia and CS Lewis,

but I love them both. Well, you know, is it the minds of Moria? Is that where they go through in the Fellowship of the Ring where Gandalf falls? Yep. To me, asking the question, how do I know am I saved? Am I, that's a godless question. It's like if Frodo was to say,

do I have what it takes to get through these mines? The answer is no, you don't. But if the question is, can I trust Gandalf? Then the answer is yeah, you can trust Gandalf and infinitely more with our blessed Lord, of course. I'd love to throw another one from the diary at you that you may not be aware of because what you just said about the drop compared to the furnace. Do you know Jesus told St. Faustina in the diary, if you took all the sins ever committed and put them together, they would be just a drop compared to the ocean. Now what happens when you drop, have you ever, have you literally ever put a drop into the ocean?

You notice how high the ocean raised? Of course not! It was so infinitesimal, it disappears. It doesn't exist anymore. That's what Jesus said, and St. Faustina knew nothing about these writings. So that's the kind of thing that confirms that it was supernatural. The quote you just read is incredibly important because it shows Faustina almost gave that same verbatim quote and never heard of that. She said that Jesus told her that all the sins combined, ever done, put together, are but a drop compared to the ocean

that is my mercy. This... This is why Christians ought to be joyful and at peace. motion, that is my mercy. This! This is why Christians ought to be joyful and at peace. Claude de la Colomier was the confessor of St. Margaret Mariella Coke. Do you know, he died on the exact same day as the confessor of St. Faustina? No, but I love that you know all of these facts. Yeah. Well, anyway, just for the, as it let it be healing balm to our viewers, he's got this great quote where he talks to God in prayer and he says, I glorify you in

making known how good you are towards sinners and that your mercy prevails over all malice, that no matter how many sins creatures can commit, or how criminal or something to that effect. He says criminal, a sinner need never be driven to despair of your pardon. It is in vain that your enemy in mine, Satan, should set new traps for me daily. He will make me lose everything else before the hope that I have in your mercy." More of that. See that, but it has to only be heard after you come into consciousness of your own wretchedness. Because the good news without the bad news is often treated as no news. If a fireman barges into my house at five in the morning and muddies up my carpet and

I don't think there's a fire here, and maybe there isn't, I'm just a little upset really, or just put out. And that's how most of us are with the gospel. We're just upset that you're telling me about it or a little put out. But if there's a fire, I've never been happier to see someone. Exactly. You know, I love what you said, Matt. Here's another complaint against divine mercy. Okay. That there's a promise made by Jesus called the extraordinary promise.

What's that? It's what's given on Divine Mercy Sunday. And I'm so excited that this will be heard prior to Divine Mercy Sunday. And really, it can be heard any day of the year because then you can prepare for the next Divine Mercy Sunday. There is something that Jesus promised to St. Faustina in the diary to all of us in the paragraph number 699. It is what we call the extraordinary promise. This is such an incredible grace that has been called by many scholars, including John Paul, Rogitsky, others.

It's like a second baptism. Now, it's not a second baptism. We don't get baptized twice, but it's like a second baptism. Because what happens at baptism? Let's suppose you're an adult and you get baptized. What happens? Yeah, freed of original sin, incorporated into the body of Christ, yeah, cleansed of all sin. And punishment. And punishment. And temporal punishment.

So a lot of people don't realize when you come out of the confessional, if you have a valid confession, which is confess all grave sins you can remember, have some form of contrition, doesn't have to be perfect. Thank goodness. Yeah, no kidding. I believe I've reached perfect contrition one time in my life. Help me, Lord. And you do some form of satisfaction equitable to the sin that's been committed, you have a valid confession. If you come out

of that confessional after a valid confession, people say, well, does there any punishment remain? Everything's gone. No, the eternal punishment due to sin is gone, aka hell. But there's a great chance that the temporal punishment may remain, even after confession. We think, well, Father, what are you talking about? All right, the temporal punishment due to sin is very scary if you listen to the saints, because it's terrifying. I equate it to my own story of a father with a boy in the yard playing baseball, all right? The boy's playing baseball in the yard, the dad comes home, sees this, and says,

no son, you're not to play baseball in the yard, you're gonna break this window. And the son thinks, because he's playing baseball the other way, that a foul's not gonna go backwards and break the window. Now, the dad makes it very clear. You're not to play baseball in the yard. You're gonna break the window.

Dad goes to work. His buddies come over, talk him into it. It's a little devil on the shoulder. And they talk him into playing baseball in the yard. Sure enough, foul ball, go straight back, breaks the window, dad comes home after giving him a commandment not to do that. The son willfully broke that commandment. So the dad comes home.

Does the dad withhold forgiveness? Does the dad disown him? Does the dad remove him from the house to never, ever come back again? No, the father forgives him. But does the dad say, go back to playing baseball now, son. Go enjoy your day. No. He says, you're grounded for two weeks and you're going to pay for this out of your allowance

because you disobeyed me. I love you. You're forgiven, but you're going to pay for this out of your allowance. This is the temporal punishment due to sin. And the promise of Divine Mercy Sunday is not only is all your sin forgiven, but all that temporal punishment due to sin is forgiven. Now, back to your point about the naysayers. You pointed out something excellent. You said you have to have consciously aware, you know, a lot of naysayers about divine mercy will say, you know what,

you're treating it as a free ticket to sin. No, you don't get this extraordinary promise. You don't get this grace unless you have rectification of the will. You have to have some rectification of the will that I don't want this sin. I'm going to try to put these sins behind me. I can't just say, you know, I've been carrying on an affair. I've been cheating on my taxes. I can just say, you know, I've been carrying on an affair, I've been cheating on my taxes, I've been embezzling money, laundering money, but you know what? I can run to the church and get this cool grace and wipe my slate clean. Hey, I'm going to go do that. Now, I can continue to sin in the past and the future, but at least I've cleaned up my

whole past from the background. No, without rectification of the will, this grace is not effective. So what does Jesus say to do to get this grace? Simply go to confession. Now, it doesn't have to be on Divine Mercy Sunday. It can be sometime before, as long as you're in a state of grace. So, St. Faustina went to Saturday before. Go to confession and receive Holy Communion in a state of grace and basically ask God for the grace of the forgiveness of sins and the remission of the temporal punishment due to sin. There's no other conditions. Now, somebody might say, Father, that's pretty lame. You're saying that nobody has to do anything, but do that? There's a lot in going back to the sacraments. It's powerful going back to the sacraments, but you must have that rectification of the will to go with it.

The Old Testament prophet, and the name's escaping me me hopefully you can help me who tells the fellow to go and wash him Naaman yeah to go wash himself in the the pool the river or pool yeah and he was frustrated because it was that simple yeah and he said look if you were asked to do something elaborate or difficult you would have done it but because it's something simple you despise it and it's something like that, maybe. Yeah. Naaman is a good example. And because we can't believe that it's something this simple. Anybody, all right, any snake can crawl out of the gutter, go to confession,

and receive Holy Communion. And as long as he has a rectification of the will, can receive this incredible grace. Well, why is this impossible to believe? The church offers the same thing in a plenary indulgence. The plenary indulgence is the forgiveness of sins and the remission of the temporal sin for the sins confessed. You know why Divine Mercy Sunday is even greater than a plenary indulgence? Two reasons. One, we can still be broken and get this grace. You mean attached to sin? Yeah. Do you know how happy that makes me? Because whenever somebody told me I can get a plenary indulgence, if I'm not attached to sin, I'm like, what does that mean? That's like saying you can

fly up there if you can fly up there. Exactly. Do you know Philip Neary was revealed to him in the cathedral that there were 1200 people at the cathedral together doing an act of plenary indulgence. It was revealed to him that two people got a plenary indulgence. That's huge. What's funny is we've got Protestant listeners who are very lost, but we'll get to them in a second. But these Catholics who are listening, that's important to realize. What does rectification of the will mean? Rectification of the will means I am broken, I realize what I'm doing is sinful, I realize that without your help, God, and your mercy, I'm not going to get out of this hole, but I have a desire to get out of this hole.

So I'll give you an example. A person, I hear a lot of confessional sexual sins, pornography, masturbation. This is a great struggle, not just for men now. I hear this a lot from women, surprisingly. This was nothing that we would have thought of back even in the 1950s that women would be struggling with this. This is not gender-bound. If somebody goes into the confessional and says, Father, I feel like a broken record.

I don't want this sin. I hate this sin. I'm struggling with this sin and I'm not going to lie to you. I feel helpless. Can I still absolve this man? Yes, I can. But is he ready for heaven? No, he's not. But is He ready for heaven? No, He's not. He's got to have this temporal punishment for all this attachment that He still has, and not just the attachment, for the sin that He's already done. There's consequences. You know, another example, Matt, is like the board example.

You've probably heard this one. Think of a board. Your sin is like a nail. When you sin, it's like you drive a nail into the board, because sin is not private. Sin is public. When I sin, it affects you. And when you sin, it affects me. It affects everybody. It's a disharmony.

The definition of sin is a disharmony to God's universe. So when you sin, you drive a nail into a board. Now, Christ did it all on the cross to remove that nail. That's what the Protestants will tell us. Christ did it on the cross. Yes, He did. He did it all to remove that nail. Your sin is forgiven. The door to heaven is open. In the confessional, through the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus and the merits that He granted through that, received in the confessional, that nail's pulled out. That sin is gone.

It's forgiven. Not even Satan can bring up the confessed sins at your judgment. Unconfessed sins, free game. But you pull that nail out, what's left in the board? A hole. The sin is gone, the nail is gone, but there's still a hole that's a result of the effect of that sin, and that hole has to be filled. And the only way that you can do it is by accepting the temporal punishment that you're owed because

you have to make reparation. Either you go and make reparation or God will do that reparation. And you know one of the greatest gifts? Suffering. If we offer up our suffering, we actually can make reparation for those holes in the board. It's like fascinating. This is why euthanasia is so dangerous. You're cutting off a person's opportunity to offer up that suffering to make reparation for the sin that may be causing them from heaven, burying them from heaven. But now, through their suffering offered up, they can start filling in those holes all over the board that they nailed all over the place.

So here's the beauty of Divine Mercy Sunday. You are owed a lot of temporal punishment if you still struggle, if you haven't made reparation. Let's suppose for years the guy in the confessional was addicted to pornography, as I said, and masturbation. All those times he fell, there's consequences to those faults. He's been forgiven, but there's consequences. Now all that sin and punishment that he is owed, the sin is forgiven in the confessional, that's why Jesus said, go to confession.

But also the promise of Divine Mercy Sunday is even the temporal punishment is gone. It's gone. It's wiped away. And that is because the person can then say, my God has given me a fresh start. But it's not without a desire. It's not like I want to take advantage of the system. I want a fresh start. But it's not without a desire. It's not like I'm gonna take advantage of the system. It's, I want a fresh start. I want a start anew and God's giving it.

You know what it gives you? Hope. Because if I've been so much debt, if I have so much debt to the Lord from 25 years of alcoholism, even if I'm forgiven, I still say, you know, I got so much doggone debt that I have no hope.

But now the Lord, and that's the point of a Jubilee year. The point of a Jubilee year is a complete forgiveness. It's returning the land to its owner. It's setting captives free. For years you've been a captive to sin. The Jubilee year is setting you free. This is what happens on Divine Mercy Sunday. If we want it, if we want that grace, it sets us free and we're wiped clean. It's amazing.

Glory to Jesus Christ. Tell us about the Novena, because doesn't the Novena lead up to Divine Mercy Sunday? It starts on Good Friday and finishes as most Novenas do the day before the feast day, so it goes from Good Friday to the Saturday before Divine Mercy Sunday. Unique that it's the only Novena that we have in the Catholic Church that's not our intentions, it's God's intentions. Who do we pray novena to if we lose something?

Saint Anthony, that's our intention, I wanna find it. Who do we pray novena to if we have cancer? Saint Peregrine, why? Because I wanna be healed of cancer. It's our intention, it's good. But Divine Mercy is the only novena we have that's God's intention. He tells us every day what to pray for. Bring to me the souls of priests and religious.

Bring to me the souls of lukewarm sinners. So He tells us what to pray for. Beautiful. It's a beautiful novena. People who are watching right now might want to participate in this novena. Where's the quickest way they can go or where they can go? Absolutely. Please visit thedivinemercie.org. That's our website. Bam! Right there on the front page. You can click it and you can pray along with us. Every day we repeat it all year long. We repeat all nine days. We repeat them next day. Oh, you do? We've been praying it uninterrupted since 1941.

Wow. Yeah. Okay. What's your congregation's relationship with Faustina's sisters? How did that happen? We are the congregation that's been entrusted by the Church to be the caretakers of divine mercy and the message and devotion. Not so much the message, that's from God in Scripture, but the devotion. How we got involved was St. Faustina's confessor was named Blessed Michael Sapochno, incredible man, died on February 15th, same day as St. John Claude de Colombier, the confessor St. Margaret Mary, both died on February 15th. But our priest, Father Michael Jorginbalski,

who was a Marian father, got to know Blessed Michael Sapochnik. Truthly is a groundbreaking Catholic AI app built to help you know, live, and defend the Catholic faith with clarity and confidence. Whether you're navigating a tough conversation, deepening your understanding, or looking for daily spiritual guidance, Truthly is your companion on the journey. It's like if ChatGPT went through OCIA, got baptized and made it its mission to proclaim the truth of the Catholic Church. But Truthly is more than just a Q&A tool, it's formation in your pocket. Take audio

courses on topics like the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Eucharist, Purgatory and why the Catholic Church is the one founded by Jesus Christ. Each course is designed to be accessible, engaging and deeply rooted in the teachings of the Church. You'll also receive daily audio reflections, short powerful meditations to help you grow in prayer and stay grounded in your spiritual life. Already downloaded by thousands of people worldwide, Truthly is transforming the way we learn, share and live our faith. One question, one course and one prayer at a time. Start your seven-day free trial today.

Download Truthly on the App Store, coming soon to Android. Blessed Michael Sapochnikow entrusted when the war was raging and St. Faustina had already died to try to get out, to get to the United States with this material, the image, the writings of St. Faustina, the summary of the Navina and the chaplet. And so, Blessed Michael Sapochnik, her confessor, gave it to our priest, who had a miraculous journey. He couldn't go west, he had to go east through Siberia, through Japan with expired paperwork. Try doing that in World War II with expired paperwork

or just on the eve of World War II. And- Where's he trying to get to? To the United States. So he made it a miraculous journey, which I've done entire talks on his miraculous journey. Oh my gosh, what a book that would be. Fascinating, it's fascinating. I'll send you the journeys. What a book that would be. Fascinating.

It's fascinating. I'll send you the link. I did an EWTN show on it. Real quick, how was he traveling? By boat. Okay. So what about the train through Siberia and then boat to Japan? To Japan.

And in Japan, they would not approve him. And the office had closed. he was out of luck, he had expired paperwork, and out of nowhere appeared a man in the Japanese consulate that just looked around, saw nobody was looking, and approved him for everything. It was totally miraculous, totally miraculous. So where does he show up? So he comes, he landed in Seattle,

he then went to Detroit, worked with the Felician sisters, then came to Stockbridge, where we Marian Fathers had just gotten a new property, and now it's the home of the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy. And we started issuing the prayer cards, the pamphlets, and it took off. Then it went to the soldiers in World War II, they took it to the Philippines, the Filipinas, they spread it everywhere. It's an incredible story. I'll definitely send you the link that I did on EWTN that took the whole story. It's only 25 minutes. If you maybe text it to me too, we'll throw it in the description for you to check out.

Oh, beautiful. Beautiful. That's a great story. So anyway, we Marian Fathers now have been entrusted, and we're the ones who translated the diary into English, and we have the copyrights of the diary and the image of Divine Mercy, even though you can't copyright God. You know, you can't... But the point is what? We have to safeguard it. We have to encourage that this is the official message. There are people out there that are saying things that are so crazy that we have to safeguard it.

What is the message of St. Faustina? Not the message which is in the Gospel, but the message of St. Faustina. Okay. And has there been any updates to the translation, nevertheless? We found throughout the years, even sometimes some typos, some little clerical errors, but those were all in our fault, not Faustina's fault, because they were in the translation from the Polish to the English. You need to reach out to Ascension Presents to do it.

Oh, they're good. Faustina in a year. Yeah. To define Mercy. We talked about that. That would be beautiful. We talked about that at the diary. I read two pages and you can do it in a year.

Really? If you read two pages a day. Is it on audio? It is. We have an audio diary. And how do you get that? Shopmercy.org. That's our website.

Is it read well? Nothing kills a book more than someone who's got an ugly voice like myself. To be all fairness. Oh, maybe don't. It was done before I was involved as the director of the Association of Mirror and Helpers. I feel that they selected a beautiful lady, but her Polish accent was too thick for me, and it got to be a little hard. Yeah. That's beautiful. I haven't read the diary in a while. I remember

reading bits of it quite regularly, maybe about 10-something years ago, and I really enjoyed it. I got a lot out of it. I remember thinking, my gosh, one of the first things that she says that I love, it's the beginning of the book, and I really enjoyed it. I got a lot out of it. I remember thinking, my gosh, one of the first things that she says that I love, it's the beginning of the book and I'm sure you know it so you can say it, but something like, she talks about the past and the future, only the present moment is given to me and precious to me. Do you know that? Yeah. And that's what I go back to what I was talking about earlier. For God, there's only the present moment. And this is what St. Thomas Aquinas talks about.

Everything is like a canvas to God. It's like one big present now. Not past for God or future for God. Well, everything is one big present moment. What she says is, why fear about the future? The future may not even enter into my soul. And I think it's so true that our fear of suffering is often a greater burden and suffering

than the suffering we end up suffering. Because the fear of suffering, goodness gracious, it could be. Good point. Now, if I could actually, for a second, if it's okay with you, go back to Divine Mercy Sunday. A lot of people ask, well, what is it and when is it? Now, Jesus tells Saint Faustina it has to be on the Sunday after Easter. Now, that begs the first question, why? I mean, why that day? And he said, it has to be. In the tradition of our faith, we come from the Jews. And we remember the Jews would celebrate a feast. They wouldn't celebrate it in just one day. They sometimes celebrated it over multiple days. Well, we Catholics have adopted that tradition. We call it an octave. There used to be many octaves in the

Catholic Church. We had the octave of Corpus Christi, we had the octave of Pentecost. Now we only have two octaves left in the Church, the octave of Christmas and the octave of Easter. And an octave is eight days celebration. So what are the eight days of Christmas? The eight-day octave is between Christmas Day and New Year's Day, the solemnity of our Blessed Mother, the Mother of God. That's because you can't separate Jesus from Mary. All eight days are Christmas Day. It's the same with Easter. All eight days, starting with Easter Sunday, day one, so you have day one of the Easter Octave, Easter Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Divine Mercy Sunday.

It's the eighth day. Now, all eight days are celebrated as one. It's the only day that we eat meat as Mary is on a Friday, because it is a solemnity and it's treated as this is the Easter. This is Easter. Yeah. So, if you go to the divine office, all eight days are treated as Easter. It's the same divine office. Now, here's what's fascinating, Matt. Jesus said it has to be on this day. Now, what is the perfect number to the Jews? Seven. Seven. But that represents time, creation.

God created in six days, rested on the seventh, creation was done seven days. Perfect number regarding creation, time. But what was the number eight to the Jews? It was the perfect number that represented eternity. Eight represented eternity, so seven represented time, but what happens when time runs out? We die, what do we enter into? Eternity. So, the eighth day to the Jews was symbolic of eternity, or the number eight, the number eight. Jesus builds on that and says, on the eighth day, I want this feast. Why?

This is the most beautiful part of the whole teaching. We all know from church teaching that Christ is the groom, we are the bride. The Bible even says it, Jesus says, are the guests going to fast when the bridegroom is with them? There will come a time when the bridegroom is not with them. It's very clear Christ continuously revealed himself as the bridegroom. Who is the bride? The church.

Who's the church? We are. When you walk up that aisle, you are making your wedding march at mass. Because whether you're man or a woman, the church is the bride. That's why we call her Mother Church. She's the feminine. Even though it's made up of men and women individually, it's collectively she, she, Mother Church. But when you walk up that aisle, you are making your wedding march.

You are the bride. And who's waiting for you at the altar? Your groom. Just like in a Catholic wedding, the bride, and who's waiting for you at the altar? Your groom. Just like in a Catholic wedding, the bride is dressed in white, she's supposed to be spotless, she comes up the aisle, who's waiting for her, her groom. And what happens that night is consummated. The groom enters into the bride.

In the same way, at Mass, you come up that aisle, you are the bride, and who's waiting for you at the altar? Your groom, Jesus. And what happens is consummated. In the Eucharist, it enters into you. The Eucharist, the bride, the groom enters into the bride. It's consummated. Now how does this tie into Divine Mercy Sunday, Father Chris?

Okay. Because on the eighth day, you're going to enter into eternity and the groom is going to come for his bride. Jesus is the groom and now he's coming in for the bride. Why? He wants to take you to the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb. This is what the book of Revelation, according to Scott Hahn, is about. It's not about the rapture. It's not about the antichrist. It's about the wedding feast in heaven. The Mass is a foretaste, a foreshadow of that.

So here's what's powerful. Scott Hahn says that the wedding feast of the Lamb is what we experience the foretaste of it on earth in the mass, because the word apocalypse doesn't mean destruction or earthquakes, it means unveiling. So heaven is unveiled to us in a way, in the mass. So Jesus is the groom, we're the bride. At the mass, you're getting a foretaste of heaven. But what really happens when you die, now you're ready to go to that wedding feast. So Jesus comes as the groom.

He wants you as the bride, but what did every Jewish man want his bride to be when he took her home to meet his parents? Spotless. And so, Jesus wants to take us home as his bride to meet his mother, and Mother Mary and God the Father, his father and mother. But is it, is He going to find us spotless? Probably not. He's going to probably find a stain on our soul. Remember the other parable? The guy that was in the, the king had held the wedding feast for his son and all the guests were there and he saw the man that didn't

have the right wedding garment on. What did they do? He didn't say, oh, you know, welcome. He kicked them out and threw them out with the wailing and gnashing of teeth and locked the door. We have to have the proper wedding garment. So we have to be spotless. And there's two stains that can stain our wedding garment, which is our soul. Sin and the result of sin is the temporal pun, the consequence of sin is our temporal punishment. It makes perfect sense this is the promise of Divine Mercy Sunday, because He says, go to confession, that wipes out the sin, that's the first stain on my soul, and the second is the consequence of sin, the temporal punishment, that's wiped away in Divine Mercy Sunday. So theoretically, after Divine Mercy

Sunday, you're spotless. You're ready for heaven. You're completely clean. That's why it's like a second baptism. Never will your soul be cleaner other than the moment of your original baptism. Beautiful. It's beautiful. So, y'all are in charge of the promotion of this devotion. So what are you doing to do that? Well first of all, we're trying to do, up until COVID, we were doing a lot of missions,

parish visits. We have parishes in the US, some in the Midwest and Chicago area, Plano, Yorkville. We have some in the Kenosha, Wisconsin area. We have houses in DC, Steubenville, Ohio, and we would have guys go out, kind of being missionary priests. Some communities still do this, like the Fathers of Mercy, they're excellent, they go on the mission band. But then something strange happened, COVID. And by a total miracle, we

had no capability to live stream before COVID. Oh, really? And by a complete miracle, one man named Brother Mark went to our superior at the time, provincial superior, Father Kaz. And he said, Father Kaz, now remember, COVID hit March 2020. I forget the exact date. Was it March 13th, March 18th? March 2020. Literally five days before COVID, Brother Mark went to our superior and said, listen, in case we ever want to live stream in the future, all this stuff is on sale right now. I can get switchers, switchboards, what do they call it, all the equipment, the technology needed

to do a live stream. We had bad lighting. We had bad sound system, he ordered everything to replace that. Five days later, COVID hit, you couldn't order that stuff. They were on backlog for a year because everybody was ordering all of these soundboards and switchers and all this kind of stuff. And we got it. We started live streaming. So there's lectures, do you call them lectures

or homilies? Both. We do the mass, so we have the homily. Sometimes we'll cut the homily out and create a video. And then I started something that everybody told me I was crazy. I started something called explaining the faith because I went to seminary.

Was that crazy? Yeah, well, because they told me you cannot do a video Less or more than eight minutes. You'll you'll you'll you'll never go anywhere. Everybody told me they said I can't do interviews with three hours exactly Everybody told me this. Yeah everybody and they said father you're crazy. You can't do this I said I want to go back to seminary and share my notes see I took meticulous notes in seminary and I learned things Matt in seminary and share my notes. See, I took meticulous notes in seminary, and I learned things, Matt, in seminary that I would jump up and down, like, why don't Catholics know this? Oh my goodness.

I learned. I can't tell you. My life changed in seminary. It was the greatest time of my life. I've never had a better time of my life than my time in seminary. I love that. It was like a sponge. I was absorbing everything. I couldn't learn enough. I was taking every note and I saved it. I got stacks. And so after COVID hit, I said, you know what?

I'm going to teach people what I learned in seminary. They don't have to pay tuition. They don't have to go to class. They don't have to pay or they don't have to take tests. But I't have to go to class. They don't have to pay, or they don't have to take tests. But I started these 90 minute, 80 to 90 minute teachings on every topic you can imagine. Spiritual warfare, Marian apparitions, God won in triune, who's the Holy Spirit,

who's God the Father, what happened to Jesus during Holy Saturday? All these things. Everybody told me I was nuts. Everybody said this is impossible. We started doing 80 to 90 minute shows. All of a sudden, 50,000 views, 100,000 views, pretty soon millions views.

We have several videos over a million views. And I'm like, this is unbelievable. Like, how did this happen? And all of a sudden, EWTN contacts me. And they said, we'd like you to start a show on the network that models after what you're doing, but we can't give you 90 minutes. Can you do it in 27 minutes? So we formatted a whole thing that calls it now Living Divine Mercy. It's on whole thing, it calls it now Living Divine Mercy. It's on prime time on Thursday nights on EWTN, so it's seven o'clock in California, eight o'clock Mountain, nine o'clock Central, and ten o'clock Eastern. But everything took off and all of a sudden we got explosion of interest in Divine Mercy. So, you know, Satan thought he won with COVID, but God will bring a greater good out of

even the worst evil. So when I think of y'all, I think of Gately who wrote that consecration book, and Calloway who wrote his book to St. Joseph. Why aren't they focusing specifically on the divine mercy, if that's supposed to be your thing? Okay. That sounds like an accusation. It's not. No, no, no, no, no, no, they do. It's the core of it, but those are ways to get to God's mercy. St. Joseph, Mary in consecration, these are ways to get to God's mercy. Remember, we don't go straight to Jesus and say that's the only way. Mary is a mediator. Even though the gospel says, or I'm sorry, the letters to Timothy says that there's only

one Mediator, Jesus Christ. And this is true to the Father. Mary doesn't take us to the Father. Mary takes us to Jesus. And remember, the word used in the Greek is not monos. The language used in the Greek is eis, e-i-s, which does not mean only one. It means first in a series, primary. Jesus is the primary mediator. That means that doesn't mean we can't have submediators. Do you know, Matt, you're a submediator if I ask you to pray for me.

Right. You know, if you need a prayer intention, you say, Father, can you remember this in the Mass? I'm a mediator. Right. You don't scold me and tell me to go directly to Jesus. Exactly. And I'm not going to go straight to the Father. I'm going to give you the intercessional prayer to lead you to Jesus who takes you to the Father. That's what Mary does. All right. So then are you guys mass producing? I just, I think if this is your core mission is to God and to promote this devotion, I mean, how many books then have you printed and distributed all around the world? Are you doing it in different languages? Is that your job?

The Diary of St. Faustina, behind the Bible, is the best-selling Catholic book. No way. Didn't it used to be the Imitation of Christ? Yeah, it's right up there. I'm talking in recent times, since its publication. Overall, yes, you would be right. But since its publication, this is an amazing gift. And really, though, the essence of the Marian Fathers, the essence of our charism is actually the Immaculate Conception.

We are the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate conception. We are the Marian fathers of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We have Mary three times in our title. So how then do you guys end up the caretakers of divine mercy when your essence is the immaculate conception? Easy. The answer is easy. A lot of people say, well, it should be the fathers of mercy. And they're great guys. They're phenomenal guys. But the reason we are caretakers is because God's greatest act of mercy ever bestowed upon a creature is the immaculate conception. And He wanted this under the mantle of Mary. So He chose the community. We were the first community in the world to bear the title Immaculate Conception. The first one. 17... Excuse me, 1670. That's when we were founded. What do you guys experience in terms of spiritual warfare? And as a priest in this day and age,

I'm hearing from other faithful priests that spiritual warfare and possession is rare, I know, but sort of demonic interference seems to be on the rise. And I really can't tell if that is due to our fixation on the bizarre that gets a lot of clicks on YouTube and that's why it's becoming more of a thing, or if no, there is actually more demonic activity that people are experiencing today objectively. Actually, Father Rippaker says it's becoming harder and harder to exercise the demons. And he says this, the reason is because our faith has become so watered down. Our faith has become so watered down that it's harder and harder to exercise the demons.

Now, our answer, when people ask us about spiritual warfare, as we go back to the diary, the only time in recorded history that we have of Jesus leading a retreat is in paragraph 1761 of the diary of St. Faustina. It's multiple pages, and I did a whole talk, I do whole talks on this. Jesus walks St. Faustina through how to fight the good fight in spiritual warfare. And He tells you 25 things on what to do to give you victory against the evil one. It's masterful. It's better than any exorcist I've ever read. I'm excited. You don't have to give us all 25 unless you know them. So, for instance, if you go to paragraph 1761 in the Diary of St. Faustina, he lays it out

in more detail. I've summarized it and I've given a whole talks on that. Yeah. I could, if I had my cell phone, I don't know where I put it. I can look it up right now. Yeah. Diary of 1761. 1761. Diary of St. Faustina. All right. Let's see.

My daughter, 1761. It's long. And I can send you a link to where I summarized it. 1761. It's long and I can send you a link to where I summarized it. My daughter today consider my sorrowful passion and all its immensity consider it as if it had been undertaken for your sake alone. That is really important. Is this application when I began to immerse myself in the divine passion?

Okay. Did you tell me this? I would have my glasses. Okay. Your glasses are right passion. Okay, did I? You tell me. I have my glasses. Okay. Your glasses are right there. Okay, there we go. Oh, it's, it's a one, it's, it's 1760. My mistake is I see it right here.

My daughter, I want to teach you about spiritual warfare. Never trust in yourself, but abandon yourself to live to me. My will and desolation, darkness and various doubts have recourse to my mercy And my spirit in your spiritual director have always He always will answer in my name do not bargain with any temptation Lock yourself immediately in my heart and do not at the first opportunity reveal temptation to the concrete to your confessor Put yourself love and lesson. Yeah, that's it. I love it. So it's almost like 25. I'm sorry. I said 1761, 1760. Yeah.

1760. It's just like short punchy, do this. Yes. 1760, my mistake. 1760. So people can check that out. Yeah. Yeah. Please. Let me rephrase that if you're chopping this recording up. So where Jesus told St. Faustina and led her in a retreat on spiritual warfare is Diary 1760.

Yeah. Yeah. Correct. Courage itself often intimidates temptations. Yeah. And they dare not attack us. You know, if the Lord gives us, okay, one of the... Sorry, real quick, listen to this.

Know that you are now on a great stage where all heaven and earth are watching you. Fight like a knight so that I can reward you. Do not be unduly fearful because you are not alone. Powerful. Powerful stuff. Powerful stuff. That's amazing.

And so he's leading around this retreat of spiritual warfare. And you are right, Matt, the four levels of... There's ordinary demonic activity and there's extraordinary demonic activity. The ordinary demonic activity is just the way he can hit us with senses. I went to Times Square to do a pro-life, I suppose, the keynote speaker at a pro-life event. All right. We went down there.

I mean, just the bombardment of the senses and the temptation to the flesh, it's unbelievable. The ordinary means of demonic activity will try to sway you in those ways, but there's the extraordinary, and there are four ways, are infestation, oppression, obsession, possession. So you have infestation is the demonic attack on objects, you know, haunted houses or, you know, Father Don Calloway had that box thrown at him his first night at the Shrine of Divine Mercy. It literally lifted up off the dresser and flew across the room and smashed him in the head.

Back up, what happened? You can't just throw that out there. Okay, so Father Don Calloway tells the story, his very first night ever at the Shrine of Divine Mercy, because the devil, as he told you in his interview, the devil appeared to him the night where he had his conversion. And he said he experienced Satan that night. And you did a great interview with him. And the devil never gave up on him. So when he finally then had his conversion, he ended up becoming to the Marian Fathers. This very night, this very first night at the Shrine of Divine Mercy, he was there in the room, our little cloister, and there was a box on the

dresser. And he felt this weird presence. And all of a a sudden he watched the box, it lifted up and flew across. He thinks it was meant to hit his eye, to blind him. I want to tell you about Hello, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Sign up over there right now and you will get the first three months for free. That's like a lot of time. You can decide whether it's useful to you or not, whether it's helpful. If you don't like it, you can always quit. Hallow.com slash Matt Fradd. I use it, my family uses it. It's fantastic. There are over 10,000 audio guided prayers, meditations and music, including Mylofi. Hallow has been downloaded over 15 million times in 150 different countries.

It helps you pray, it helps you meditate, helps you sleep better. It helps you build a daily routine and a habit of prayer. There's honestly so much excellent stuff on this app that it's difficult to get through it all. Just go check it out. Halo.com slash Matt Fradd. The link is in the description below.

It even has an entire section for kids. So if you're a parent, you could play little Bible stories for them at night. It'll help them pray. Fantastic. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. And he was protected. Some of just turn at the and smashed into the side of his face. He said it was so clear that this was not a, this was a supernatural event. It wasn't something that in the natural realm of physics and gravity could have happened. And so we have infestation where the demonic can influence objects. Oppression

is where the demonic extraordinary activity of the demonic can influence our exterior life, our relationships at work, sickness, physical ailments, apathy, laziness, sloth. Then obsession is where the devil gets into the interior. He can start telling you, take your life. You're worthless. The world's a better place without you. He starts to get into the interior. And possession is where the demonic actually becomes usurpers in your human

person. They actually take up residence. Now remember, you can't sell your soul to the devil because you don't own it, God does, but you can let him live rent-free. You can let him usurp your very being or sometimes your victim. There's been a cases where some possessions were not the fault of the person. And any of your fathers involved in these sort of exorcisms? Yeah, yeah. We look to some of these outside exorcists more, but we do have some that are formally

in deliverance ministry that involve it, but it's not our charism. Okay. Yeah. Well, I have asked my local members for questions. Excellent. For you. And we are going to look at them, if that's okay. You haven't seen these? Absolutely. So let's see what they have to say. I haven't read them either. Zachary Heron says, what advice would you have for a husband who wants to convert to Catholicism from a Calvinist church with a wife who hates Catholicism? So both are, were married as non-Catholics. It seems that they are both currently Calvinist and his wife hates Catholicism, but he wants to convert. And I was looking for your advice. Okay. This is a great question because, yes, the bond has been made, and if they're both

baptized you have a sacramental marriage, so it's a bond that cannot be dissolved. It's a bond that, when it's sacramental, cannot be unless of course, we know that the conditions for an annulment, there is, you know, if the marriage never took place in the first place, right? But Christ did say He would bring not peace, but a sword. And He said, mother will hate brother, sister will hate daughter, or mother will hate daughter, brother will hate sister, father will hate son. Not meaning hate in the sense of despise, not in the sense of, Scott Hahn says it very well, hate in that sense does not mean to despise or detest.

It means to love less. As much as we love our spouse, we have to love God more. So you have to follow your conscience. If you are convicted, this is what God is calling you to do. Now, the question, be very careful, is you have to be convicted. This is where a spiritual director is very important. I would say something of this serious nature, don't rely on your own. Seek a spiritual director and see where God's will, because God speaks to a spiritual director.

Then you know it's the will of God, because you're not getting your desire mixed in. You're following God's will. This is why I love the religious life. As long as I'm obedient to the superiors, I'm doing God's will automatically, even if they're an error. Do you know Aquinas? Here we are in pints of Aquinas, said we must follow our conscience even if it is an error. We must follow our conscience even if it is an error. So my advice to him is really discern this. Get a spiritual director. But if you are convinced and

convicted that this is what God is calling you to do, you have to do it. Yeah, and then work out the details with your good bride because, you know, you want to take into account obviously, yeah, her conscience. The Catholic church. Now, she's wrong to hate the Catholic Church, but you love her. Yeah, you don't abandon her. Yeah, you don't abandon her and you don't want to kind of drive the dagger in. I think Scott Hahn's book, Rome Sweet Home, would be an excellent book actually for you to read if you haven't since you are a Calvinist. He was a Calvinist and it was his wife who was very resistant to becoming Catholic and he said to her at some point, Kimberley, you know...

Wasn't he Presbyterian? Yeah, he was. But that's a big... Okay. Yeah, he was a Presbyterian minister. But he said, the longer I wait, the more delay feels like disobedience to our Lord or something like that. So that could be a book. It's a nice book because it's written from his perspective, and the next chapter is Kimberley's perspective. So it's a story as well as just a book. But remember this whole recent controversy

over Ordo Amoris, the order of love. Well, remember, the order of love is God, spouse, children. I had a beautiful employee who said to me, I love my children first, my husband next and God third. I'm like, you're completely opposite. God bless you. God bless you. It is God first, spouse second, children third. So if we are convicted in our conscience and God has made it very clear to us, yes, we have to follow that. Yeah, that's what I say to my kids. Of course I love your mother more than you. It was from our love that you came into existence and from our love that you'll be sustained. Good for you.

You're great. Don't get me wrong. I just... Well, you don't need child worship. God bless you. That's right. Will Green says, what would it take for Cardinal Burke to get the nod as the next pope? And where is the coolest place you've said mass? Okay.

He snuck in two questions there. And he said, thank you for inspiring me and my wife to take our faith more seriously, talking to you. But anyway, do you have any opinion on the next conclave and Cardinal Burke? You know, I think it's, I don't want to pass judgment. We remain faithful to the Magisterium. We as Marian Fathers are devoted to the office of the papacy. But I'll be honest with you, it really begs the question of some of the appointments to Cardinal. begs the question of some of the appointments to Cardinal. I won't mention any specific names, but it's pretty clear some of the largest diocese in the United States. The support that's been given to certain priests that are teaching, obviously contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church. They've been endorsed and embraced.

I feel Cardinal Burke was mistreated, in my own personal opinion, when he was relegated. Not that the Knights of Malta was a beautiful thing and that was a very needed role, but he was sidestepped, if you will. I would love to see him. His health was very bad for a while, so I know that a lot of people would question his health, but I have the ultimate respect for him. I have the ultimate respect for him,

and I would love to see the church go that direction, and because we need that type of leadership too. Yeah. And oh, he asked about the most interesting place to say mass. For me, there were three. One was right in St. Peter's to be able to celebrate mass. Right in St. Peter's was a beautiful grace. The other was at the foot of the original image of the painting of St. Faustina's Divine Mercy image in Vilnius. To celebrate Mass right there was beautiful, was absolutely stunning for me to be able to do that. And probably the other one would have been Notre Dame before the fire and Sacre Cur in Paris.

I've been there, yeah. Excellent. Justin Perry says, first, how are you feeling? I would have been Notre Dame before the fire, and Sacre-Cœur in Paris. I've been there, yeah. Excellent. Justin Perry says, first, how are you feeling? I heard you blacked out during Mass a week or so ago. Hopefully you're doing well. Oh, God bless all the prayers. What happened was very strange.

I've never had this happen to me. I didn't faint, but I did have a blackout. All of a sudden, in the middle of Mass, I had no idea where I was. Oh, wow. And I knew I was in the shrine of divine mercy, but I had no idea where I was in the Mass. I had no idea. Did I consecrate the host? Wow, yeah. Did I bless the gifts? Did I say the prayer over the offerings?

I had absolutely no clue where I was in the mass. All I knew was I was holding the chalice. So what did you do? So I went back to the prayer over the offerings of the blessing, blessed are you, Lord God of all creation. Through your goodness, we have received this wine we offer you, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become our spiritual drink.

I have no idea if I repeated that, but I figured I wanted to go back to get that in case that's where I was. You told? Did somebody say to you? I had no clue because I was the only priest celebrating Mass. Did any of the faithful come up? Well, it was funny because there was a server there and I almost turned around to him, but we're live streamed, so everybody's afraid to do anything. You can always go back and watch it, I guess. Yeah. And I almost turned to the server and say, what did I just pray? I had no clue.

Oh, man. I had no clue. What was the reason for it? Any idea? Well, again, I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse, but I've been living for a long time, especially I've been Provincial Superior, I'm only about three hours of sleep a night. God bless me. Yeah, and I'm just wondering if it's, some people close to me are like,

maybe this is a sign that your brain is just not. Yeah, you should definitely be sleeping more than that. Yeah, yeah. I sleep three to four hours every night. On purpose? No, I just, even if I go to bed at two in the morning, I'm up by five. I'm like that.

It's crazy. I always wake up 5.30 or six. No matter what time you go to bed. It used to be the case, I could go to bed at two in the morning, I'm up by five. I'm like that. It's crazy. I always wake up 5.30 or six. No matter what time you go to bed. It used to be the case, I could go to bed, I'm gonna stay up until three in the morning, I'll sleep in. You can't do that. Exactly.

For me, I think it's just age. So you know what it is, yeah. I want a good night's sleep, I gotta go to bed earlier at night. Good for you. But my wife, she does her best sleeping in the morning. So it's almost like if my wife went to bed at 7 p.m. and woke up at 7 a.m., she would probably rather go to bed at midnight

and wake up at 10. She'd feel more rested. I don't know what that is. Well, mine is really bad because I got so much work that I'm usually working to at least midnight before I can even think about bed. But then I wake up at five or four anyway. So you don't drink coffee. I do not. God's gift to the world is I don't drink coffee. before I can even think about bed. But then I wake up at five or four anyway. So it- You don't drink coffee. I do not. God's gift to the world is I don't drink coffee. Is that right?

You wouldn't sleep- No, I would be this guy on speed it would look like. I don't know. I actually was Cardinal Burke who told my friend that drinking coffee doesn't break the fast when it's black coffee because it's medicine. Well maybe that's the problem. Wouldn't that be cool if that was the diagnosis? You'd be drinking coffee. Anyway, okay then he says and I like this question Justin Perry says, what made the shrine

decide to put in the new altar rails? They look great in my opinion and I'm hoping to get up there for Mass soon. Thank you. First of all, we are an Orthodox community. You are never going to hear a Marian priest get up in the pulpit and teach abortion is okay, marriage can be redefined, religious liberty in the name of COVID should be stripped, and churches should be closed. You're never going to hear that. In fact, I've probably got myself met in a lot of trouble because I've stated very publicly, we will not close these shrine doors on the next pandemic. I refuse, I'm not gonna close. I'll probably end up in jail, but I'm not gonna do it.

So I made the comment one day, it was funny, that you'll never hear a Marian priest say that. And somebody on one of my missions said, well, Father, you have priests all over. How do you know what they're gonna say? And I said, because I'm the provincial superior and they'll never say it again. If they do say it, they'll never say it again.

But the reason we went to the altar rails is I'm a big proponent of communion on the tongue. It's important, I feel. You know how Jesus said in divorce that it was only a concession that Moses gave at the bill of divorce? It was because of your hardness of heart that He had to give a concession. I believe communion in the hand was a concession because of the stubbornness of the people in the United States of our individualism, and the USCCB got this indult. So you're not sinning by receiving in the hand. I gotta be clear on that. People think that I say you're sinning, you're not. But you can see the importance of receiving on the tongue, and I can

go through many reasons why, but we had a kneeler prior to the altar rail, one kneeler in the front, and we would, people would kneel down and we would give on the tongue. And then we realized we need to expand, and we went to the altar rail. Thanks for doing that. Yeah, and it was my decision and I fully approve that. And a lot of people were surprised. I said, no, this is the way we're going.

I do have to add one thing, Matt, that's funny. Not funny, but eye-opening. You know who Maria Sima is? She's a famous mystic. She wrote Get Us Out of Here, a book on purgatory, Holy Souls Appear to Her. She made a very interesting comment that bishops, that receiving communion in the hand was not a sin because the church granted the indult, mean in the hand was not a sin because the church granted the indulge. But the bishops who approved it will remain in purgatory until the rule is changed. Okay. Fair enough. You know, there's been this big push for a Eucharistic revival in

the church, and I think much good work has been done, and I'm grateful to the bishops and priests who have promoted that. But it seems to me, from where I'm standing, and you tell me if I'm wrong, that if we want to increase the faithful's reverence of the Holy Eucharist, Face East, give us altar rails. It's that simple. And I think this is great advice for multiple reasons, but one of the good reasons is there are many confused and hurting Catholics right now who are leaving the church for some set of a cantist group or Eastern Orthodoxy, and sometimes I'm sympathetic with why they leave. I don't agree with them leaving, but I'm sympathetic because they just desire reverence. They desire to have their faith treated with seriousness.

Yeah. Okay, well, just how about we do that? And I don't understand. It breaks my heart when I speak to priests who are afraid to do it because they'll know they'll get a slap on the wrist and they'll get moved out to some remote parish somewhere. Tell me if I'm overstating the case. If I'm not overstating it, what is your advice to the priests and even bishops? I've had a few bishops tell me they listen to this show on this area, in this area.

First of all, I agree with you. I do empathize as well, as long as you're not rejecting the novosortil mass. That's my stance. I embrace, I mean, Pope Benedict talked about the hermeneutic continuity, okay? We have two beautiful forms, and there's nothing wrong with having two beautiful forms of the mass. I completely embrace the extraordinary form. Again, I support it. I've been lobbying to find a way to, by doing it here at the shrine. We are looking to offer the extraordinary forum mass at the shrine. I feel almost an obligation because the shrines are one place that it can be allowed, different

from like a regular parish. My opinion is this, the priest should not be afraid. First of all, they did have more freedom, if you will, prior to Pope Francis, because there was a lot of questions about, well, Pope Benedict, we know, the problem is now with the latest rulings and, you know, motu proprios and things given by Pope Francis, more restriction, okay? We ought to know. So I empathize with those who are also afraid to do that. So,

you know what I mean? You empathize with those who do break away to go with, but I also empathize with those who are afraid to. The problem is, let's get to the root of the problem. The problem isn't, should our priest have courage to stand up to it? The thing is, let's go to the root of the problem. This should never be treated as a, the extraordinary form should never be treated as an invalid form of the Mass. And this is how it's being taken in some of the, well, now we have to get permission from the Dicastery. You know, it used to be Pope Benedict made it such that the priest himself could make that decision. Then it was, then we had to go to the bishop. All of a sudden now it has to go to the Dicastery.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not talking about the Latin Mass. When I say ad orientum and alterels, I'm just like, oh, within the nova sortum. Oh, I'm sorry. No, that's okay. Maybe I wasn't clear. But my point was if we want to rejuvenate devotion to the Holy Eucharist, it seems like these are two easy things you could do. Show me in the Vatican two documents where it wasn't clear. But my point was if we want to rejuvenate devotion to the Holy Eucharist, it seems like these are two easy things you could do. Show me in the Vatican two documents where it says to turn the altar around. Yeah. Tell me in the Vatican two documents where it says to remove the altar rails.

So you know, all the priests who are watching this and are sympathetic to what you and I are saying, they agree with you. But I guess my question is how do they approach their bishop and get permission? Because I'm talking to individual priests around the country who are saying, I would love to do this. The faithful desire it. My understanding- What's funny, you go to Franciscan University of Steubenville right now, and you go to a daily mass, the majority of the women are veiling.

The majority of people are kneeling for communion. So even if you wanted to take the, we're going with the spirit, then you should be putting up altar rails. Yeah. You know, I know it's a little different in the diocese than it is in religious life, but I did not ask for permission to put the altar rail in. I did it. Who would you presumably ask the bishop for?

What is it? It's better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. But I do think that is a tactic that a priest could take with his bishop to say, hey, I'm seeing these people leaving the church. And so how about instead of them leaving the church for some set of accountants group, we implemented what they desire

to make the mass more reverent. A hundred percent with you. I agree a hundred percent with you. Well, if only you and I were Pope, we could tag team. God forbid, at least for me. Megan J says, have you ever heard of people having intense spiritual attacks at 3 a.m., reverse divine mercy hour?

Do you see credit or substance in this? I've heard of this and believe I've experienced, but I also don't want to turn it into one of those people who blames everything on spiritual warfare. Yeah, no, that's a great question. Actually, a lot of people are surprised to hear this. It's actually great question. Actually, a lot of people are surprised to hear this. It's actually the reverse. 3 a.m. is not the hour of the devil.

Many, many studies have been done and traditions are that Jesus resurrected at 3 a.m. Oh. Yeah. So while the tradition is that the devil wants to take that hour, of course he's gonna wanna claim that hour, because if it is the hour of the resurrection, the devil's going to want to twist it.

What does he do? He wants to twist anything that's good. He twists marriage. Sexuality is probably the biggest one. Something that's most sacred and beautiful is the thing most commonly twisted and misused and abused. The beautiful love and sacredness has turned into some of the biggest sin. So actually, the three o'clock hour is the belief that is when the hour that Jesus resurrected.

So when you're prompted at that time, it may not be from the devil, it may be Jesus prompting you to pray at that time for a soul that's in need or a soul that needs prayer because there's a lot of grace in the hour that Christ resurrected. Beautiful. Michael Kupras says, ah, Father Hela! Exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. Which of your Saturday live stream series do you think is the most important for the laity to watch? Your stream on the Trinity was important for me and my reconversion. Thank you, first of all, for watching the Saturday series talks. I think one of the ones that got over a million views is prayer. I did a talk on the forms of prayer from,

you know, personal prayer to public prayer in the mass. Also, we know the traditional lines of vocal, meditative, and contemplative prayer. I went through and did a lot of background of like when we pray, suggestions on how to pray. That one got over a million views. I think that one is probably a very good one, probably one of the most important. But I would say I've done one on each of the sacraments. And what makes the Catholic Church different from any other Christian religion is the sacraments. We don't believe they're symbols of grace, we believe they are actual grace. And I'm excited, Matt, to announce I just finished my latest book on doing a series under the Explaining the Faith series called Understanding. So, I already did Understanding Divine Mercy. That book is on Shop Mercy in Amazon. And I just finished Understanding the Sacraments, which I go through each of the seven sacraments.

Where are they in Scripture? For instance, why do we baptize infants? Where's confession in the Bible? for instance, why do we baptize infants? Where's confession in the Bible? Is my marriage valid? I go through all that. So to answer his question, I would say, probably my talks on the seven sacraments, and I do separate talks on each one, but prayer and the seven sacraments and yeah, the Trinity and who's God the Father, who's the Holy Spirit, and I did one, Who is Jesus? — Cody Hayes asks, I've heard Father mention in some of his YouTube talks that St. Faustina prayed the Jesus Prayer. Do you know if he's ever cited a source for that or so? What's your basis for making that claim? — Well, I don't think necessarily I've said that he prayed the exact

that term, but she has said, have mercy on me, a poor sinner, which is the Jesus Prayer. — Yeah, yeah. — You know, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a poor sinner, which is the Jesus prayer. You know, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a poor sinner. In fact, you know, I teach one thing that I've never heard anybody else say. You know, the act of contrition, which a lot of people have a tough time remembering because it's long, oh my God, I'm heartily sorry, Frank, I'm offended, the NID test all my sins because you're just punishments, but most of all. The actual right of the Catholic Church has for act of contrition is the Jesus prayer. Really?

Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a poor sinner. And so, Faustina, I'm sorry if I've actually said, meaning she used the term Jesus Prayer, that I'm not aware of, but she basically prayed the Jesus Prayer, because continuously said, have mercy on me, a poor sinner. I was going to ask you, how do you think maybe the Jesus Prayer is more palatable to the Protestant? Because, you want to pray the Rosary? No, it's to Marian, but not just the Jesus, I don't mean the Jesus prayer, sorry, I meant to say the

Chapel of Divine Mercy. So have you found in your experience that Protestants are more open to that? Yes, I feel it's, you know, we focus a lot since Vatican II on ecumenism. I feel it's a great tool for ecumenism because everybody believes in Jesus, everybody believes in mercy, everybody knows He went through the Passion. It doesn't matter if you're Catholic or Protestant. And that chaplet ties that all together. Unlike the rosary, which does bring in the concern of Mary, which shouldn't, but because, you know, the whole rosary is scriptural. Right. But...

You want to meet people where they're at. Yeah. Yeah. This is beautiful. Beth Carroll. Thank you for your comment She says just a comment your personal testimony father and devotion to the divine mercy was Imperative to my healing after my son died from suicide. Oh My god bless you. God bless you and you know, um, I want to thank the people who have gotten the book. It's bittersweet, but the largest group of people I've ever spoken to in my life was 13, 12, they said 12 between

12 and 14,000, so I'll just say 13,000 people in Dublin, Ireland. And Dublin, Ireland is unique because it's, Ireland is unique because it's, Ireland's such a Catholic nation. But do you know they're the first country in the world where the people voted in both abortion and gay marriage. They're suffering now, they're suffering. Well anyway, I just found out that a couple, this book was written over five years ago

and just a couple years ago, it was the number one best-selling non-fiction book in Ireland, years after it was written. Yeah, a lot of suicides. I used to live there. Yeah. It's bittersweet. In one sense, I'm elated that people want to turn to an answer to God for a problem that this is a reality.

But in another sense, I'm really disheartened that it's that big of a problem. Yeah. All right, my final question for you. Thank you for your patience. This has been lovely to talk with you. Yes, thank you. And that would be, what's your advice to the Catholic who's just, I don't know, struggling? We live in chaotic times.

Some of that chaos is self-inflicted because we spend most of our time looking at news feeds and social media dumpster fires, but some of it isn't. And it also feels like the chaos that we experience in secular culture, we're also seeing within the church and we're frightened and we want to know how to do what we should do. What's your last bit of advice? So you're saying for seeing some of that reflected in the church, I'm sorry if... So here's what I would say just to kind of flesh it out a bit. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's like we think a lot of people used to think of the church

as a refuge from the chaos of secular culture. Now we're getting caught up in it ourselves. Yeah, because I'm not saying it isn't, it is the refuge. But there's so much infighting and you go online and people are tearing each other down on YouTube and Twitter and attacking each other and it feels, it feels like a place that's very divisive for some people. Remember the Marian apparitions? Was it Our Lady of Good Success?

Was it Akita? Bishop will turn against Bishop? Men in the church, she specifically laid this out. I mean, Our Lady of Good Success from Ecuador, Mother Miriam or what her name was, in the 1600s, the turn of the century then, projected that shortly after the middle of the 20th century, there would be a crisis in the church that we would lose our way, modesty would disappear, reverence would disappear,

there would be scandal in the church. And I believe it was that one, please, your viewers could correct me on this, because I've been going through so many Marian apparitions in my head, I haven't had much sleep. I'm trying to remember if it was that one or another one like Akita,

that she did warn that even within the church, there was going to be bishop against bishop, cardinal against cardinal. We're seeing that. Why? Because we haven't heeded her warnings going back to some of the first apparitions. Warning after warning after warning. You know what Mary's favorite word is? If. Okay. If you don't stop offending God, this is gonna happen.

If you don't stop sinning, this is gonna happen. She tells us over and over and over, and pretty soon she's gonna lose credibility if some of these things don't start happening. And I don't, trust me Lord, I'm not asking for them to happen. We're begging for your mercy because Mary's hand withholds the justice of God many times. But we haven't heeded the warnings. I mean, Fatima, that if you don't change your ways, a second, a greater war is going to break out. That's exactly what happened with World War II. Kabeho with the slaughtering in Africa, yeah?

Yeah, yeah. And so, honestly, this was prophesied that this was going to happen. You know why I think it did? And it is, just like the scandal, the church has to go through her crucifixion. The church has to go through her purification for her sins. Jesus went through the cross because of our sins. But as the bride of Christ, Jesus told St. Faustina, the bride must resemble the groom. And he appeared to her full of spittle,

disfigured face, beaten, tortured. And he said to her, because she was asking, why are we going through this suffering? And she specifically asked about the church. And he told her the bride must resemble her betrothed. I believe the church is going through her crucifixion phase right now. I believe, well we know we're in the end times because the end times began with the death of the last Apostle, but I believe the end times are nearer now because of exactly that. We are going through purification. A wound will not heal unless it's exposed to the air. The scandal had to be exposed. That was a virus that was hidden, that was under a damp cloth and was festering. Finally, it had to be exposed to the air. Now it's being

purified. You know, the guys that are the younger priests right now, you never hear this before. You always think the older are the more traditional. Our younger priests are better than our older priests. They're coming in, Orthodox. They're coming in faithful to the teaching of the church. Some of our older priests, I mean, they would baptize, not Marian's, but in the church, in the name of the creator, the Redeemer, and the sanctifier. And so I believe the church is going through its crucifixion phase and part of that is its purification, because before the church can be wed to her groom, we're the bride can be wed to her groom,

we're the bride, she's got to be purified. We just want to make sure that this purification that's been sent upon us for our sins isn't a cause of our own sin. What I mean is, but what I mean is, I understand if this is the case, that this is a purification for the church, we don't want to be so rattled by it that we start tearing down, slandering our brothers. But that's what's happening. I know, but that's not okay.

Yeah, but that's what I mean when I say the purification shouldn't be a license for me to now lose my peace. Well that's the, you know what, that's a great point. It's just like the scandal. Jesus picked, as I said earlier in this talk, one betrayed Him, one didn't believe in the resurrection, one denied Him three times, they all ran away at the cross and said, John, Jesus didn't pick an all-star team, He picked people. But when Judas betrayed Jesus, which is what a priest does in the scandal. People say, father, those priests were never called.

They were called. They betrayed their calling. When Judas betrayed Jesus, did any of the apostles get up and say, you know what, Jesus, I'd love to stay with you, but I can't, I'm out of here because I can't believe what just happened. You don't leave Jesus because of Judas.

You don't leave Jesus because of Judas. And this is what's happening. You said, it gives us an excuse for people to give up, to throw in the towel. No, it makes it just that much more the reason you have to fight. Fight like a knight, Jesus said in paragraph 1760. Fight like a knight, especially for your church. Yeah, amen. And fight within the church. Don't leave the church. No, fight somewhere else. So I'm excited. I really am. I was at the NAC in Rome recently, and I got to meet all these young

seminarians. Great guys. Normal, cool, holy men, you know. and I'm seeing this everywhere. Not transgender or homosexual. Yeah. That's right. They just seem like really good, decent fellows. Yeah. And I'm seeing that more and more. So, all right. This has been great.

Where can people learn more about you? Please come visit us at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy. We're in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. If you're ever there, stop by, ask for Father Chris. If I'm there, which is not often always, but I am there, I'd love to come meet you. And if you'd like to check out more, visit our website, which is thedivinemercie.org for material on Divine Mercy, like articles. If you want to get products on Divine Mercy, please visit shopmercy.org. And lastly, if you want to watch videos, either our YouTube channel, which is Divine Mercy,

or our own platform, because we're worried that YouTube might shut us down, they've threatened us, is divinemercyplus.org. Okay. So the videos. P-E-L-U-S. Yes, correct. Okay, awesome. Thanks so much. God bless you, and continue the great work.

I love following you, and your followers themselves are good, good Catholics. We need more of that. Please go. It'll be a help, folks. Thank you. Thank you.