I grew up unaware of Christ's fathomless mercy during my formative years. A sword hung over me - I thought God the Father and His Son were waiting for - almost wanting - me to do something wrong so they could punish me.

I think that is how a lot of people perceive God.

A Wonderful Gift from Jesus this Sunday

Jesus offers us forgiveness constantly, but the Feast of Divine Mercy this Sunday is special.

If everyone understood what Jesus wants to give us on this day, they'd drop everything and beg for His mercy. 

Jesus told Saint Faustina that no sinner has offended God so much that he or she cannot be forgiven:  “Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet.”

Jesus died horribly in order to be able to offer us His forgiveness. Why aren’t we taking advantage of His gift?

The Words of Jesus to St. Faustina

Jesus said to St. Faustina in entry 699 of her diary:

“It is My desire that (the Feast of Mercy) be solemnly celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter.”

That feast is this coming Sunday, 27th April 2014.

 “On that day the very depths of My tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the fount of My mercy. The soul that will go to confession, receive Holy Communion, pray for the intentions of the Pope recite the Our Father, Creed and a devout prayer to the merciful Lord Jesus before the Blessed Sacrament (exposed or reposed) shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishments.”  My italics.

Look at what Jesus is offering us and what little He asks us to give Him in return. Is it really so hard for us Catholics to fulfill those requirements?

Jesus Asks so Little of Us

If you didn’t go to confession during Lent, here’s your perfect opportunity. If you've been away from the Church for a long time – a few years or even decades – and are in need of some encouragement to go , read The Light Is On For You to be reassured of what a loving reception you can expect in the confessional.

Confession is the biggest hurdle to completing Jesus’ requirements for His mercy. He’s asking us to be humble, and that's tough. It’s difficult for us humans to get over ourselves, but we must if we are to move forwards in our spiritual lives.

Back in the Fold

Once you’ve been to confession, a powerful feeling of peace will come over you. You’ll look forward to receiving your first Communion after the long absence, and enjoy a strong sense of coming home.

If you go to Mass, but sit in your pew while others go up to receive, or walk up Sunday after Sunday with your arms crossed for a blessing – imagine how wonderful it will be to receive the Body and Blood of Christ again!

I went through that experience after being away from the Church (and Mass) for over twenty years. A tremendous sense of serenity filled me after my ‘first confession’ and I was so excited to receive Communion again.

I had not appreciated until then just how much I’d missed the Mass. I knew this was where I truly belonged, and I’m confident you will, too.

Get ready to receive Our Lord this coming Sunday!

Hurry Before This Offer Expires!

Once we die, Jesus becomes the Just Judge.  We can no longer prevail upon His mercy and forgiveness - it is too late.

Can any of us afford not to take Him up on His offer? 

I guess it’s become almost a cliché to watch Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ during Lent, but I’d managed to avoid watching it ever since it came out in 2004. That’s 10 years of successful evasion!

I was quite happy to keep it that way.

Not being a fan of gore, and fully aware of Mel Gibson’s penchant for bloodiness, I had a good enough imagination to visualize Christ’s sufferings without seeing his extended version of it.

The Escape Is Over

This Lent a friend of mine bought the DVD and wanted me to watch it with her. No one had asked me to see the film before, and I felt this was God’s way of telling me It Is High Time I Did.

Reluctantly, I agreed. Two other Christian friends were invited to come the very next evening to my house. I wanted to get this thing over and done with! It wasn’t the kind of movie I looked forward to viewing.

They said they’d love to join us. There: I was going to have to suffer through Christ’s Passion with Him.

What Does ‘Satan’ Mean Again?

Throughout the day of our gathering, I was forcefully reminded that the name ‘Satan’ in Hebrew means ‘the opposer' as he is opposed to what God wants.

I’m not good at switching the TV into DVD mode. After twiddling the knobs for about an hour that afternoon, sweating buckets because I was getting nowhere, I called my husband for help. (I hate doing that!)

He told me that he ‘twiddles the knobs until it works.’ I thanked him profusely for his valuable help and texted my son in college.

He was in class and would get back to me at 3:15 p.m.  Relieved, I pottered around the house until the appointed time.

3:15 p.m. came and went with no phone call. To stop myself from obsessing, I twiddled the knobs a bit more and got the sound but no picture. After fifteen more minutes I could stand it no longer and actually phoned my son.

No response.

To calm my nerves, and praying to the Holy Spirit to make everything O.K. for that evening, I took my cell phone down to the barn and started brushing my horse.  Immediately my cell rang and it was my son.

I ran back to the house and my son directed me through the process. Two wires had come out of the back of the TV, and reattaching them was crucial to the outcome in addition to twiddling the right knobs.

Ha, take that, Satan!

Again, What Does ‘Satan’ Mean?

Flushed with success, I went about getting food ready for my soon-to-be-arriving guests.

In the middle of slicing the tomatoes I gashed my finger. My immediate thought was, ‘Satan, you really don’t want us to watch this film, do you? Well, we’re gonna, so there!’

I still wasn’t completely ready by the time my friends arrived, but luckily they’re my friends because they like me not for my food. (This is where I remind anyone who doesn’t know or remember that I’m British.)

We ate and chatted, while trying to calm down my English bulldog Jeeves,  who was thrilled to have so many people to say ‘hello’ to.

The Movie

The movie was tough to watch, as anticipated.

I doubt whether I have anything more meaningful to say about it than others who’ve done so before me. But that won’t stop me adding my two cents’ worth!

Imagining the sufferings of Christ is very different from ‘witnessing’ the gratuitous cruelty of the Romans in those days. Even if Mel Gibson included details that aren’t historically true, it is well documented how cruel those people were. The truth is, Christ suffered horribly for us.

It was also interesting to see the dilemma of Pontius Pilate, faced with either putting Christ to death or virtually being put to death himself. He knew he was sending an innocent man to a wretched torture.

There, But For the Grace of God, Go I

The Jewish leaders were clearly jealous of Christ’s authority. But some of them genuinely believed they were dealing with a heretic who had delusions of being God, who needed to be silenced.

If I had been a Jew in those days I, too, would have strewn Christ’s path with palm fronds as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Carried away by the sentiment of the crowd, I’d have shouted “Hosanna in the highest!” with the best of them.

And seven days later, swayed by popular opinion yet again, I’d have cried out for Christ’s blood: “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Do you ever stop to think about how lucky we are to be born after Christ’s time? 

As wonderful as it would have been to witness His miracles, I’m pretty sure I’d have agreed with whatever the Jewish authorities told me to believe.

Being alive in this day and age, we have the benefit of hindsight. We have the support of centuries of faith, the example of the saints – ordinary people who exhibited extraordinary love and proved that it is possible to follow in the footsteps of Christ.

I love that last line in the Creed: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” It is wonderful to know that the saints and the angels are with us at every Mass!

Every Day We Are Redeemed

Not just at 3 p.m. on Good Friday, when He dies on the cross, but every day, we need to truly appreciate what Christ went through for our salvation: ‘we have been bought at a price’ (1 Cor. 6:20). A very high price.

Whenever we’re inclined to make selfish decisions, let’s remember His selflessness in suffering torture and humiliation to redeem every last one of us. 

Whatever wrong we’ve done, God wants to forgive us. We just have to repent and ask Him for forgiveness. His Son died so we could be forgiven.

This Easter will we spurn Jesus' sacrifice on Good Friday by refusing to beg forgiveness, thereby condemning ourselves to eternal damnation?

If you haven’t watched The Passion of Christ, our pastor - and I - recommend it as a way of grasping the awesomeness of what Jesus did for us in order that we might join Him in His Resurrection.

My New Year’s resolution was to become a brave rider.

I used to be a very brave rider, going over high cross-country jumps and stadium obstacles at one day events, and taking my horses on trail rides in hail storms.

That changed with one big, bad rear from my horse at a show where he dumped me and ran off. I had to buy two canes to hobble around with for days, and was in a lot of pain!

From then on I’ve been wary of how my gelding might react to whatever stimuli happen to be present, and as a result my riding world had become pretty much limited to being in indoor or outdoor arenas. No trail riding or cross-country training.

I used to laugh at people like that and had now become one of their number. It was humiliating, and had been going on for far too long.

Changing From Within

This year I was determined to change and bought two books: one on overcoming riding fears, Inside Your Ride by Tonya Johnston, and the other a generic sports psychology book, With Winning in Mind by Lanny Bassham.

I read them voraciously and made copious notes. Then I incorporated ideas from both volumes into a short list of self-affirming and mind-changing statements with which to indoctrinate myself daily, as suggested in both books.

A few days into my recitations of this statement, I realized with horror that a vital component was missing.

I had failed to include God in my deliberations. How could I call myself a practicing Catholic when I was excluding God from any of my activities, let alone one of those most important to me?

Make Me Brave So I Can Be Useful

Horrified with myself, I rewrote a key line of my daily mantra into: “God is watching over me and I am a very good rider.”

As I looked at what I’d written, it occurred to me that I was asking God to help me be brave when riding, but it stopped there.

Shouldn’t I also be asking God to help me be a brave Catholic? In these secular days when it’s unfashionable to stand up for God’s natural laws, when we’re told that our religion is ‘out of touch’ with a modern world where gay marriage and abortion are absolutely fine and that disagreeing with this is ‘being intolerant,’ it takes a lot of courage to side with God in public.

I resolved then and there to ask God to give me courage on my horse so that it might spill over into the way I live my faith.

Today a Water Jump, Tomorrow the World!

Today I took my horse to a new venue where we’d mingle with a group of horses he’d never met, and a trainer, in order to tackle the water jump.

This is basically a shallow pond, with gentle slopes into it and wooden banks for jumping into the water from. My horse isn’t fit, so it would be enough for him to walk into the water.

At first he wouldn’t go, then the trainer told me to watch her friend whose horse stood in the water already. “Don’t look down into the water, look ahead at Jennifer,” she said. It reminds me of Christ asking Peter to look at Him and not at the water.

About five minutes later my horse jumped into the water. I was ecstatic, and my equine buddy was also pleased with himself. In no time at all he was happily trotting into the water and cantering boldly through it!

Through the trainer God gave me the right encouragement to be brave with my horse and not worry about him leaping to the side or bucking or lunging into the water and throwing me off. I had asked God to help me before I got on my horse, and he gave me faith in my trainer. The result – success!

Luck or Faith?

Recently while beginning to ride my horse again this year, I’ve been wearing a bracelet with a cross on it. I relied on it as some kind of lucky charm. Why, I don’t know, since I already wear a silver cross and the brown scapular.

Moments before I mounted my horse on this occasion, the bracelet broke. For a few seconds I panicked, and I had no pockets on me to carry it in.

Then it occurred to me: Satan wanted me to lose faith by breaking my bracelet but God was telling me to rely on Him, and not on some token made of steel and stone. (The golden calf comes to mind.)

I swung into the saddle without a second thought for the missing bracelet on my wrist.

Letting Horses Work for God’s Kingdom

I’ve been so lucky to have horses in my life that I often ask God if He’s O.K. with this. I very much hope that I correctly understand His answer!

Over the past two years I’ve discovered that the majority of my riding pals are practicing Catholics or active, believing Christians. Some are lapsed.

My job is to set a Christian example, together with my Catholic friends, and hopefully bring back those who have left the Church. I must monitor my own behavior at all times, and this is a good thing. It makes me strive to live the faith that I profess in order to save souls.

This includes being brave enough to acknowledge Christ and speak the truth. Even when people don't want to hear it, just as they didn't in His time.

He Doesn't Allow Me Too Much Riding Success!

I’ve got used to God keeping my feet on the ground by not allowing me to win too many blue ribbons!

I used to think this was God’s way of telling me to stop riding. But because of the abundance of Catholics who ride with me, and the good I hope to do with them, I now see this as God’s way of keeping me humble.

I’ve recently had some wonderful successes in my faith life, indirectly related to the horses, and it would be very easy for me to get complacent and pleased with myself, forgetting Who’s really in charge.

So God whacks me over the head at regular intervals with a lousy dressage score or a bad spook from my horse to keep me in line!

I’m so happy He’s making good things come out of my passion for horses, while keeping a firm grip on my ego!