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By ks. Andrzej Trojanowski TChr,
By sparing Jesus an occasional moment in routine prayer, and perhaps devoting a few thoughts to Him, while at the same time being careful not to let these “get in the way” of “more important” things in my life, I prevent Him and His salvation from getting past the door of my heart. He will not enter, if He is not invited inside. Last year one of my fellow priests invited me to give a Lenten talk at a chapel on the outskirts of Paris. During the meeting, the faithful passed around a reproduction of a drawing of the Face of Jesus. Everyone had a chance to gaze intently at the image and meditate on it. Among them, there was a man who had for several months been suffering from burning pains to the chest and bloody coughing bouts. Earlier medical tests had failed to yield any conclusive results and, as a result, no appropriate treatment could be found to heal his condition. The man pressed the image of the Face of Jesus to his breast and prayed a while. I did not see him again until July. He told me then that his bouts of persistent coughing had stopped the very next morning (his housemates noticed this even before he did) and that he had been restored to complete health. Without any hesitation he believed that it was precisely this encounter with the Crucified One that brought his struggle with sickness to its crisis. This summer someone presented me with a photo-reproduction of the image of the Merciful Jesus. A trickle of fluid can be seen flowing from it, not vertically, as the laws of gravity demand, but along the rays emanating obliquely from the heart of Jesus. The fluid is oily and gives off a strikingly pleasant scent. The phenomenon was first observed on October 16, 1995 in the house of Paul Soos. There would no point in mentioning this if it were not for people’s testimonies about healings though contact with this holy picture. On White Sunday (the Feast of Divine Mercy), I stopped to wonder how well known the image was in Paris. Every year on this day the Polish Pallotines invite the faithful to the Shrine of Divine Mercy at Osna, a locality not far from Paris. On this occasion the religious sisters in Krakow had sent along St. Faustina’s relics. We also gave out fifty icons of the Merciful Jesus. These had been blessed by the Holy Father and were intended for use in the chapels and churches of France and francophone countries. Three to four thousand people took part in the prayer, and several priests heard confessions for two hours outside the great gymnasium hall in which the ceremony was held. Now I asked myself this question: “How many out of this great mass of people see this image bearing the inscription, ‘Jesus, I trust in You’ as a fingerpost to an encounter with the living Christ in the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist? How many of these people take seriously the call to trust raised by all these signs and healings, which the world of science is unable to explain?” We have no way of knowing this. But there is something more important here; namely, the certainty of the fact that keeping Jesus at a distance will not change anything in my life. By sparing Jesus an occasional moment in routine prayer, and perhaps devoting a few thoughts to Him, while at the same time being careful not to let these “get in the way” of “more important” things in my life, I prevent Him and His salvation from getting past the door of my heart. He will not enter if He is not invited inside; not because He lacks the humility or the power to do this, but simply because Jesus knows that we could neither bear nor love Him as an uninvited guest. Nor could we accept His gifts. Today Jesus is using all manner of signs to signal His presence at the door of our hearts — the hearts of us who are constantly looking for signs. Images of Jesus that shed bloody tears and give off fragrant scents are all examples of such signs. They neither violate our free will nor substitute empirical certainty for faith. On the other hand, they do prompt us to ponder life more deeply and take a personal stand regarding matters of God and salvation. Thus they are a source of “divine discontent” in the hearts of those who are content to be left alone in their idolatry or indifference to God. To ascribe to Christ a desire to impose His will through scientifically unexplainable phenomena is to make a mockery not only of Him but also of ourselves — and especially of the seriousness of our salvation. For salvation is accomplished in the context of God’s love for man and man’s for God. To concede the supernatural character of a given sign is not yet to make a declaration of faith, which must be “worked out in love,” although it does, to a greater or lesser extent, clear the way toward faith, by removing the various intellectual impediments, which we set before ourselves, or which others place in our path. Spiritual benefits may flow from these extraordinary signs observed in the visible realm: benefits such as an increased sense of trust and a drawing closer to God. Satan is aware of the threat, particularly in the realm of visible phenomena where he is a master of deception. Small wonder, then, that he has prompted so many attacks on that most extraordinary of signs calling us to faith and repentance — the Shroud of Turin. God only knows how many people have discovered the road to conversion or strengthened their faith through encountering this relic. It is worth noting that the last fire at the Basilica of Turin was no unfortunate accident, but rather a diabolic attempt to put a final end to conversions and healings. God’s Providence miraculously preserved the Shroud. The Liar tried to save the situation by putting it out in the mass media that this “counterfeit” owed its survival to the guard — a communist! Saving the Shroud from a fire ignited by a phosphorous bomb was a divine sign underscoring the extraordinary and miraculous value of this relic of Jesus’ passion and resurrection. In reality, it is not about the Shroud at all, but about what it represents. It is Christ (not a few yards of fabric) who evokes so much controversy and opposition. It is fear of Him that incites others to resort to lies. The sheer number of recent phenomena, which science is unable to explain, tells us something about the character of our times. God knows the extent to which humanity is afflicted by the lies imbedded in today’s slogans, ideologies, and fashions. God uses His extraordinary signs to tell us that He is present among us: “I am with you.” For some, these are the first clear signals they can make out in the din and frenzy of our paganized society. It is precisely here that their journey toward faith, love, and God begins. Jesus responds most fully to the deepest cry in the heart of man: “Come!” Our trust in Him levels every barrier and opens up the broadest road for us. Trust is a personal act par excellence, the most profound we can make, for it springs from the bottom of the heart. Jesus tells us how to invite Him in. He does this through His image, which he instructed to be painted through the mediation of Saint Faustina. The purpose of this holy picture is to lead us to the boundless immensity of trust in Christ, which makes possible the manifestation of His redemptive power in our lives. Trust is the straightest and shortest way to union with God. It is an instantly acting remedy offered at a time when the lengthy process of healing our hearts may well be running out of time.
Fr. Andrzej Trojanowski SChr
Published in February 2012.
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