Believe in the Mercy of God, Lectio Meditation
Streams of Mercy: Reflections from St. Faustina’s Diary
The following meditation is a lectio style reading of the following portion of the Diary of St. Faustina On the evening of the last day before my departure to Vilnius, an elderly sister revealed the condition of her soul to me. She said that she had already been suffering interiorly for several years, that it seemed to her that all her confessions had been bad, and she had doubts about whether the Lord Jesus had forgiven her. I asked her if she had ever told her confessors about this. She answered that she had spoken many times about this to her confessors and she said "the confessors are always telling me to be at peace, but I still suffer very much, and nothing brings me relief, and it constantly seems to me that God has not forgiven me." I answered, "You should obey your confessor, sister, and be fully at peace, because this is certainly a temptation." But she entreated me with tears in her eyes to ask Jesus if He had forgiven her and whether her confessions had been good or not. I answered forceful, "Ask Him yourself, Sister, if you don't believe your confessors!" But she clutched my hand and did not want to let me go until I gave her an answer, and she kept asking me to pray for her and to let her know what Jesus would say about her. Crying bitterly, she would not let me go and said to me, "I know that the Lord Jesus speaks to you, Sister." Since she was clenching my hand and I could not wrench myself away, I promised I would pray for her. In the evening, during Benediction, I heard these words: "Tell her that her disbelief wounds My heart much more than the sins she committed." When I told her this, she began to cry like a child, and great joy entered her soul. I understood that God wanted to console this soul through me.