March 16, 2013

His Great Delight

At age 15, Maureen Digan, contracted lymphedema. It is a disease that causes pain and complications resulting from the failure of lymph fluid to drain. From age 15 to 20, she had 50 operations. She was in and out of hospitals over a 10-year period, during stays lasting from 1 week to 12 months. At 19, she had spinal surgery that left her paralyzed from the waist down for 2 years. At age 20, she had her first amputation.

In March of 1981, she travelled from Roslindale , Massachusetts to the tomb of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, which is located just outside Cracow, Poland. She had come at the urging of her husband, who hoped that she might be healed through prayer there. She herself did not believe in miracles. As she prayed at the tomb, she somewhat cavalierly said to the Saint, “OK Faustina, then do something.”

She then thought that she was having a nervous breakdown. The pain ended and her swelling went down. She stuffed tissues into her shoes so that people would not notice the lack of swelling. She stopped taking all her medications.

Four independent physicians had all agreed that her disease was incurable and that it never went into remission. Still, she was healed.

St. Faustina was a Catholic nun who lived from 1905 to 1938. Strictly due to her vows of obedience, she wrote a book that is now famous and known, simply, as her “Diary.” It formed the basis for a devotion to the Divine Mercy of Jesus, which she describes as an endless reservoir in which all, absolutely all, may trust.

She relates that in one revelation, on November 19, 1937, He said: “My great delight is to unite myself with souls. Know, My daughter, that when I come to a human heart in Holy Communion, My hands are full of all kinds of graces which I want to give to the soul. But souls do not even pay attention … Oh, how sad I am that souls do not recognize Love! They treat Me as a dead object.”*

This Lent, let us not treat the Eucharist as a dead object. Let us be a delight for Him. Let us be open to the graces He wishes to give us.

*Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, par. 1385.

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