My friend Michael

Theresa and Michael LaRosa with Father Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, 7 months before Michael passed away.

After a year-long battle with cancer, Mike LaRosa passed away on August 28, 2004. This was the feast of St. Augustine. I knew Micheal for over 30 years, and I will always remember Micheal because of a wonderful experience I had with him just before he was diagnosed with cancer. Micheal was a very devoted Catholic who was always seeking the greater glory of God, and striving to bring the youth back to the Church.

The feast of his death (St. Augustine) is very significant to me, because one day during breakfast with our wives, I noticed a beautiful light coming from Michael's eyes and face. I commented to everyone about it, but no one seemed to notice. Later I heard that another man had seen the same thing. What was this light? Interestingly, I had written my thoughts about one of the writings from St. Augustine that really caught my attention, which I happened to have on this web page, to the right, long before I connected it to Micheal. I believe it answers quite completely what I saw in Micheal. Again, he died on St. Augustine's feastday. Notice the very last paragraph that begins with "When Jesus told Faustina...", and notice that in the photo above, Micheal stands with the Image of The Divine Mercy behind him.

During a visit to Micheal in the hospital just before he died, I had the privilage of holding him in my arms and we spoke into each other's ear for a few minutes. We spoke about the great Mercy of God and the need for trust and confidence in God's Mercy, no matter what we remember about our past lives. This is the key to Faustina's comment in her diary, verse 1541:

"Write this for the benefit of distressed souls; when a soul sees and realizes the gravity of it sins, when the whole abyss of the misery into which it immersed itself is displayed before its eyes, let it not despair, but with trust let it throw itself into the arms of My mercy, as a child into the arms of its beloved mother."

And Our Lord's words in 1073, "At that last hour, a soul has nothing with which to defend itself except My mercy. Happy is the soul that during its lifetime immersed itself in the Fountain of Mercy, because justice will have no hold on it."

And in 1540, Our Lord says: Today the Lord said to me, My daughter, write down these words: All those souls who will glorify My mercy and spread its worship, encouraging others to trust in My mercy, will not experience terror at the hour of death. My mercy will shield them in that final battle...and again in 1520, "Whoever places his trust in My mercy will be filled with My divine peace at the hour of death."

Therefore, it is so important that we begin now and practice everyday throwing ourselves at the merciful feet of Jesus, and learning to have trust and confidence in His love and mercy for us. It is so important that we do this and if we are Catholic, avail ourselves of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where Jesus Himself imparts forgiveness of our sins through the person of the priest. It is so important to learn about this great Mercy and Love God has for us, so that when we, like Micheal, are facing eternity and are being buffeted with all the sins, failings and hurts we have caused God and others in our lives, we can once again with confidence turn to our Merciful King and say, "have mercy on me, Lord, a sinner", and then "into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit, let your servant go in peace!", and not be afraid of where we are going.

This is what Jesus means when He says that we will not experience terror at the hour of death if we have had recourse to His Mercy during our lives, and especially if we spread this Mercy to others and help them to realize it also.

I believe one of the reasons Jesus makes this promise to those who spread His Mercy is because when we trust in His Mercy we won’t despair. Remember that Judas despaired – when he realized the gravity of his sins he did not turn to Jesus for forgiveness as Peter did, but went and hung himself. This because He never knew Jesus. He never penetrated the treasures of His Merciful heart, and still clung to worldly earthly treasure. Faustina tells us that Satan hates this work of Mercy more than anything else! Why? Because he works a whole lifetime on a soul and in the final hour the soul with trust can escape his clutches just like the good thief on the cross next to Jesus. This is God’s Mercy, not His Justice.

So when we teach others about God’s Mercy, and they grow to have this confidence, Satan looses the soul, because all it takes in the final moment before the soul leaves the body is one gasp for God, "forgive me God, a sinner", and the soul is saved. We cannot, however, presume we will choose to be repentant and do whatever we like here on earth. Faustina says it like this:

1698: I often attend upon the dying and through entreaties obtain for them trust in God’s mercy, and I implore God for an abundance of divine grace, which is always victorious. God’s mercy sometimes touches the sinner at the last moment in a wondrous and mysterious way. Outwardly, it seems as if everything were lost, but it is not so. The soul, illumined by a ray of God’s powerful final grace, turns to God in the last moment with such a power of love that, in an instant, it receives from God forgiveness of sin and punishment, while outwardly it shows no sign either of repentance or of contrition, because souls [at that stage] no longer react to external things. Oh, how beyond comprehension is God’s mercy! But — horror! — there are also souls who voluntarily and consciously reject and scorn this grace! Although a person is at the point of death, the merciful God gives the soul that interior vivid moment, so that if the soul is willing, it has the possibility of returning to God. But sometimes, the obduracy in souls is so great that consciously they choose hell; they [thus] make useless all the prayers that other souls offer to God for them and even the efforts of God Himself...

HOW IMPORTANT IS THIS MESSAGE OF MERCY FOR OUR TIMES!

Joseph Lim, Singapore

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(jlim642@singnet.com.sg)

Images of God and the Image of The Divine Mercy

We are all made in the image and likeness of God. Jesus Christ is the perfect Image of the Father, for He said to Phillip, "he who sees me sees the Father". The Image of The Divine Mercy is the Image of one who is both true God and true man, and is given to us to show what we are intended to be. Jesus did not take on human nature for Himself alone, nor was it to only suffer and die for our salvation. As infinately great as these things are, He also took our nature to raise us up by divine grace to a perfect union with Himself and the Father. He was at the same time the spotless Lamb slain for our sins, and the example and forerunner of our perfected humanity after rising from the dead. As Jesus is the head and we are the body, we must follow where the head went, and after our period of trial here on this earth, we will share an eternity with God in glorious freedom and joy, with our bodies fashioned after the glorious and immortal risen Christ, never to suffer or cry again.

As Jesus became man through the mystery of the Incarnation, through the grace of our Baptism we are brought up into the Divine Life of the Trinity, and partake in His Divinity through grace, though not by nature as Jesus did. "Human nature was in this case predestined to so marvelous, so sublime, so perfect a dignity that it could not be raised higher..."(Augustine).

Our Lord told St. Faustina that this message will prepare the world for His final coming. Keep in mind that according to the Jerome commentary, the 2nd coming of Christ is referred to as "The Divine Presence", and the "Incarnation of the love of the Father and the Son".

St. Augustine also said that the humanity of Jesus did not merit being chosen as the humanity of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. "How did his humanity merit to be taken up by the Word, coeternal with the Father, into unity with his person and so to be the only-begotten Son of God? ...The grace which makes any man a Christian from the first moment of his coming to believe is the same grace which made this man the Christ from his coming to be as man". (Augustine). Anotherwords, we in our humanity have the same potential as the humanity of Jesus to rise to the full measure and stature of the perfect Image of the Father, that is, Jesus Christ, and the same graces that were held out to Jesus's humanity are held out to ours, or He could not ask us to be perfect "as the heavenly Father is perfect".

When Jesus said, "you are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect", He wasn't asking the impossible, because through our cooperation with divine grace, we are transformed into Christ as we mature spritutally. We come more and more to resemble, to actually become, the Image of The Divine Mercy, the Image of the Father.

The Image of The Divine Mercy is not just a picture of Jesus, and it is not simply a reminder that we too must become reflections or Images of the Father. Jesus said of the Image, that He gives grace through the Image. Why did Jesus choose an Image of Himself to give us grace? Because in part, I believe, He wants to remind us that we are made in this Image. That this Image is our destiny, our sublime calling, and not to distort the Image of God in us.

So in our workplace, our marriages, our recreation, our single or religious vocation... let us always strive to be a reflection of Jesus, the Image of the Father, another Image of The Divine Mercy.

When Jesus told Faustina, "Not in the beauty of the color, nor of the brush lies the greatness of this Image, but in My grace" (313), imagine what He can do with precious living temples of the Holy Spirit, you and I, when we begin walking around radiating Divine mercy, forgiving love, and grace! The light which radiates through the humanity of Jesus The Divine Mercy is a prefigurement of the light which will radiate through the Church, His body, you and I, as we grow in holiness. And didn't Jesus confirm this when He told Faustina, "These rays of mercy will pass through you, just as they have passed through this Host, and they will go out through all the world. (441)

God bless you,

Jim Mattingly,
Mercy Films, Inc.

For the full text of St. Augustine's writing referenced above, roll over the image at left.

This is the oldest surviving portrait of Augustine, from the Lateran in Rome in the sixth century.

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