#709 The Divine Mercy Image, Sister Faustina, and the Battle for Souls

A quiet chair facing the sunrise changed the way we see the battle that surrounds us. In the soft light before daybreak, we talk about the power of beauty to steady the heart, the reality of spiritual warfare hiding beneath cultural noise, and why so many young men feel numb, angry, or lost. From there we chart a clear path: awe that awakens desire, prayer that clears the signal, and mercy that rebuilds what sin tried to destroy.

We name the targets of our time with open eyes: the human person, marriage, and the child. We explain how early exposure to confusion, porn, and corrosive ideologies fractures identity and fuels anxiety and depression. 

Yet the story doesn’t end in despair. We turn to Sister Faustina and the Divine Mercy image—two rays, one invitation—to trust Jesus in a way that is anything but passive. Mercy is not a loophole; it is the strength to rise again, to pass through the narrow gate, and to become fully alive.

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Transcript

Sunrise, Silence, And Awe

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Become Who You Are podcast, the production of the John Paul Two Renewal Center. I'm Jack Riggard, your host. I'm so glad to be with you. I'm an early riser. Needs before the phone, as you know, with the Claymore morning ritual. I love to go outside, and that's why I really love spring, because I can actually walk outside today. I have to just look outside. Because one of my favorite things to do is watch the cosmos wake up. So I have a chair that faces the sun rising in the morning, huh? And even before it comes up. And and before it comes up, you can see the light hitting the clouds and reflecting. And today it was just this beautiful rose-colored glass uh rose-colored clouds and with some gray wisping in there, and it was just spectacular, huh? You connect to your own heart, to prayer, to God, and then to his beauty. And I think about different artists, you know, that he has up there. And he says, Michelangelo, who wants to paint the clouds today? It's spectacular. You know, you think you're just this little tiny person, you know, sitting on a on a planet. And I and I'm connecting to the God of the universe. And I get that calm and I see that beauty in the midst of this insanity in this world today. And yet, as tiny as I am, I know that the God of the universe wants to connect with me, wants to connect with you and walk with us and more. You know, Saint Catherine of Sienna said that if you knew who you were and became who you were, and who you were created to be, that you would set the world on fire. St. Athanasus, an early church father and a doctor of the church, said the Son of God became man so that we could become like God. St. Irenaeus said that the glory of God is man fully alive. That's what these young people, especially these young men who we're working with, we're discipling with, but it's really just the journey together. And it's amazing that how much we learn too as we're journeying with these young men and answering these beautiful questions. You know, what is the truth of things? They're waking up and they they realize I've been lied to, and they're seeking the truth of things. You know, they're realizing this is a spiritual war. This it's an old spiritual war that's coming down to us since the fall from grace, but it has intensified. It's a great time to be alive because you can see the evil and the good and the good all around us. Despite growing up in this most toxic culture in history, the young men we're meeting have a sense of this. It's very exciting when they start to awake. Not a woke, not woke, but awake, huh? There are two camps when we meet uh young guys. Some have been so radicalized or pacifized on that one hand, you know, apathetic, addicted to porn and and and smoking pot, you know, and and masturbating down in their in their basements, uh, or radicalized. You know, they don't even know why. They go, you know, they're they're out on these protest lines or sending out by the schools to protest ICE, and they have no clue what's going on. They have no clue of what communism, socialism, all these things just did in our recent history. My dad is still alive today. He's a hundred years old, or almost a hundred years old, uh, old World War II vet. Just fought in the in World War II against these tyrants that that murdered millions of their own people. And here we are voting for them. We have no idea. But now, on the other hand, we're meeting these young people that are awakened to the desires of their own heart for something more. See, that's what prayer and beauty does. It moves you out of this present darkness and your heart will soar. It's amazing. Uh, it it's you know, when when when you compare it to the darkness of the world, you see right away that there's this spiritual battle is intense right now. So, what these Claymore men are are what they're realizing, they they're counter-revolutionaries against the darkness. They're men who seek all the true, the good, and the beautiful. And they know what began when when the government schools, along with the culture, stole their innocence. They're starting to understand that because otherwise they grew up in the fall. The world around them is normalized sin. They were exposed so early to the L B G T Q IA S plus, it never ends ideology with his books full of pornography that stole their innocence, and then the CRT, the critical race theories and ideologies that just sows division and hatred. And they stood, then they grew up in this, in this toxic stew, like the like the frog in the proverbial pot. And things just got heated, hot, hotter and hotter and hotter, and then the anxiety, depression, all kinds of things start to come at them, and they go, There's got to be something more. Or on the other side, they become radalize, radicalized, even though that anxiety and depression doesn't go away, it becomes violent, doesn't it? Uh, or pacified. You know, and when you're a pacifist, you know, when you're lukewarm, as Jesus would call it, you know, you you you you never come alive, like St. Irenaeus would say, how the glory of God is man fully alive. Well, that that that uh those ideologies, stolen their innocence, creating divisions, has now become, for so many of these younger generations, a roar of confusion, deception, destruction, even in their own lives, and and for others. And the reality is dawning on them that they are the targets in this spiritual battle. They are out there protesting as pawns in this battle, but they're the targets. And so many of those young people don't realize that. Well, these young people we're working with do, they realize this is not merely political, it's not merely cultural, it's not merely psychological. This is a battle for their internal souls, a battle between the God who created us in love and an enemy who seeks to destroy that love. Very clearly seen today. The God who in Jesus Christ, who in Jesus Christ Himself takes on a body, enters human history, takes on flesh, and allows himself to be crucified to redeem us and offer every human being salvation and a union and a communion with him that will fill you up. And today you can feel it and sense this battle around. History feels like it's accelerating towards something, and it is, some type of climax. We'll see what happens here. But Christians who love their families, who love the church, who love their nation, we see them under increasing attack because they have the answers, and you see that the evil of our day is always going to attack the human person, just like I said earlier. They're after the the the you, me, all of us. You know, they're using it at pawns, but the pawn is just on the battlefield, and they want you to get picked off. On the uh other hand, when you start to wake up, you start to realize, wow, marriage and the family is really under attack in essence and Christ and the church, isn't it? And you see the churches, 500 churches were burnt down in this in this in this last five or ten years, Catholic churches I'm talking about. In our country, let alone in other countries. Uh the persecution against Christians is amazing. And so why is that? You gotta always watch and you see, wow, why is marriage taken down? Why are these LBGTQ ideologies? Well, it's always a twisting and distortion on marriage. Why abortion, huh? Because it destroys the human being. Why these gender ideologies? Because if they get escape the womb, we'll render them sterile, we'll mutilate their very little bodies, huh? We'll turn them into sex addicts. But we were warned, huh? We were warned of all this. In the Gospel of John, chapter 15, 20, Jesus said, if they persecuted me, they will also persecute, persecute you. We got to expect this. There's an enemy out there, but there's only one way to live. And don't forget that this little tiny person that I am and that you are is loved by God, wants you into eternal life with him, wants to bring you into eternal life. Beginning today. You know, eternity doesn't start tomorrow. It's there at the day that you were exploded on the stage. Eternity doesn't mean tomorrow either. It means forever. You're already an eternal being. So we shouldn't be surprised by this battle. There's a power out there. God wants your eternal soul. He came right into the world to do this, and he took on a human body. And in a sense, he took on all of our bodies, connected with divinity on that cross, takes all the pain of punishment, and then pours that out to us. It's a love story. You say, Well, you could never make that up. The beauty of self-sacrificial gift, this is my body given for you, right? So we shouldn't be again, we shouldn't be surprised by the target of the human person, marriage, family, the child, especially. The attack today is clear. There's two pillars of human flourishing throughout history. Remember this marriage in the family and the child in the womb. Every single civilization is built on this. Of course, we're going to take this down. There is no human civilization without that. So you see, they're under relentless attack. The reason I bring that up, remember those two pillars. When you you get confused and you say, okay, well, what you know, every I uh do I how do I even vote? Always remember those two pillars. Who's standing up for the child in the womb? Who's standing up for marriage and the family in general, right? And and and you start to clarify it right away because you always see that attack. Who's trying to suppress Christ and his church? Who's trying to push all this down? Ooh, this is quite a battle out there, right? So this is nothing new. But the spread, the aggression, the viciousness, that is new, huh? We're even seeing uh um many atheists and seculars sense something destabilizing is happening. You know, even they are saying there's something wrong. They're seeing mental illness skyrocketing, anxiety, depression, uh suicidal ideation. Remove God and there vacuum forms, and Satan gladly fills it in our hearts. People attempt to numb the emptiness with what? Always the same things. Power, money, control, alcohol, drugs, social media, pornography. Either take the power, take the money, seek and try to fill yourself up with the world, or I just give up and I try to numb myself, right, with endless distractions. But numbing is not healing, and hopelessness isn't it's spreading. There's no answer there. The wheat and the weeds are separating more clearly by the day. So what's the solution that in in this spiritual warfare? What is the solution? Ah, God doesn't leave us alone. We know it's not going to be a political solution alone that's going to save us. What is the solution then, Jack, to this madness of human destruction? Well, throughout history, whenever a crisis of spiritual, social, or political nature threatened humanity, God in his mercy raised up visionaries to help the people survive it and even profit from it. In the 20th century, to counteract atheism, materialism, secular humanism, God sent the Virgin Mary to three children in Fatima. And when Adolf Hitler was rising in power, Jesus himself came to a Polish peasant girl known in religion as Sister Faustina. They would be followed by the prophetic voice of Saint John Paul II, who dedicated much of his work to Our Lady of Fatima, and who beatified Sister Faustina in 1993 and then canonized her in 2000. Today she's known and loved by millions as Sister Faustina, the great apostle of Divine Mercy. Almost exactly on February 22nd, just a couple of days ago when I'm recording this, it was 95 years ago, in 1931, that Jesus appeared to this simple, uneducated Polish nun known as Sister Faustina. The vision led to the painting of the divine mercy image that you see right behind me. And I'll put that up for those of you who are watching this in video format. It's so beautiful. We need to have this in our houses today. This image has become a source of amazing grace for souls who trust in Jesus by venerating or honoring it. On that day, Sister Faustina Kowalska, a sister of our Lady of Mercy, was in her convent in Plak, Poland, when Jesus appeared to her. She said, I saw the Lord Jesus clothed in a white garment. One hand was raised in a gesture of blessing, the other was touching the garment at his breast. You could see back here. From beneath the garment, slightly drawn at the breast, there were uh emanating from there two large rays, one was red, the other pale. In silence I kept my gaze, she said, fixed on the Lord. My soul was struck with awe, but also with great joy. After a while Jesus said to me, Paint an image according to the pattern you see right here on me, with the signature, Jesus, I trust in you. You could say that small phrase all day. It's so beautiful, it'll bring uh a calm to you. Jesus, I trust in you. I desire, Jesus said to her, that this image be uh venerated first in your chapel, Sister Faustina, and then throughout the world. This is the diary of Sister Faustina. If you see if you have her diary, uh get her diary if you don't, you know, you get a paperback version, they're cheap, and just read a little bit every day. The merciful Savior also promised that the soul who will venerate this image, all of us, will not perish, and even promised such a soul victory over its enemies already here on earth, especially at the hour of death. You know, the hour of death. That's our our blessed mother and the Hail Mary, right? Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. At the hour of our death, something that's very powerful is happening to people. Um, and and in Jesus already says, You know, I'm gonna have victory over your enemies here on earth, especially at the hour of death. You can see this cosmic battle for your soul all the way up to the last hour, huh? As Jesus told her, I'm offering people a vessel with which they are to keep coming for graces to the fountain of mercy. That vessel is this image with the signature, Jesus, I trust in you. So I want to give you a little uh introduction to the diary of Sister Faustina, if you don't already know her. She said, Let the sinner not be afraid to approach me, Jesus said to her. The flames of mercy are burning me, clamoring to be spent. I want to pour them out upon souls. Throughout history, again, whenever a crisis of a spiritual, social, or political nature threatened humanity, God in his mercy raised up visionaries. And this is one of those visionaries for our time is the image of divine mercy. And I clearly feel, Sister Faustina said, that my mission does not end with my death, but just begins, Sister Faustina wrote in her diary, and it truly did. In this homily for her beatification on Divine Mercy Sunday, uh April eighteenth, nineteen ninety three, John Paul II said this. He said, Her mission continues and is yielding astonishing fruit. It is truly marvelous how her devotion to the divine, merciful Jesus is spreading in our contemporary world and gaining so many human hearts. You know, that image is in every church I go into now, every Catholic church I go into. This is doubtlessly a sign of the times of our 20th century, he said. Again, this is 1993, right? The balance of this century, which is now ending, in addition to the advances which have often surpassed those of preceding eras, presents a deep restlessness and a fear of the future. That was in 1993. Think about with AI and the different things that happened since then, how restless we've become, right? And again, this is accelerating, so we're starting to see this even faster and faster. And John Paul, the prophet of our times, he he saw this as did Bishop Sheen. Where, if not in the divine mercy, can the world find refuge and light of hope? He said, believers understand that perfectly, he said. As we have all clearly witnessed, the sign of the times that our Lady of Fatima, Sister Faustina, and John Paul II warned of us, has not abated. In fact, today, as the advances of this modern age, again, artificial intelligence, thrown drones, robots, etc., performing surgeries, all this stuff is accelerating. But so does the deep restlessness and the fear of the future. Why is that? Well, there's a good reason for that. In our post-Christian world, the vacuum left when we as a people rejected the saving grace of Jesus Christ, it was quickly filled by the power of the evil one. As a result, modern man has become blind and does not even accept divine mercy, falling once again for that age old allure of the world, the flesh, and Satan. But God, in this humble, gentle, and loving way, does not give up on us. Many of the church's greatest saints testify to this truth, having first spent a fair amount of time as great sinners before finding the narrow gate. Jesus said to Sister Faustina, Let this sinner not be afraid to approach me. The flames of mercy are burning in me, clamoring to be spent. I want to pour them out upon these souls. And Jesus continued complaining with these words to her. Distrust on the part of souls is tearing at my insides. Can you imagine the God of the universe say that? Distrust on the part of souls is tearing at my innocent my insides. He said that distrust, the distrust of chosen souls causes me even greater pain. Despite my inexhaustible love for them, they do not trust me. Even my death is not enough for them. Right? Just think the sadness in his voice when he says this. Woe to the soul, he said, that abuses these gifts that I'm pouring out. Woe to the soul that abuses these gifts. That statement from Jesus should be a wake-up call. Divine mercy is not lowering his God's standards, right? When he's pouring out this mercy, because he's a God of justice too. Is he lowering the bar? He's saying you can just trip over the bar no matter what you do. No, it's not God lowering his standards. It's God giving us the power to rise again after we're fallen. Mercy does not excuse sin, but it heals the sinner over time, huh? A sheer search for the narrow gate. When we come to know the saints, we not only learn from them, but over time we experience their love and concern for us. At the heart of every conversion is a single decision to stop negotiating with the Spirit and to begin trusting that Christ truly desires our salvation more than we desire our sins. As I came to know Sister Faustina, I learned that we share a common similar experience as we sought the narrow gate, huh? Looking for that narrow gate. Remember in Matthew chapter seven, you have two gates, that's it. The narrow gate that leads to right to the heart of divine mercy or the broad highway that leads to nowhere. As I sought the narrow gate, just like any saint is in each person is is invited to go through that narrow gate. Each one of us, each one of us is called to be a saint. Do you know that? At the center of every conversion stands one decisive act. Choosing to trust Christ more than we trust our guilt, our fear, our past. Divine mercy does not work automatically. It waits for the heart that dares to open even slightly to the possibility that God truly desires to forgive and restore the moment when grace begins to transcend and overcome the bondage of sin, of your sin, of my sin. We experience this. You know, people ask me all the time, how do I know it's true? I said, have you have you open your heart up? Knees before the phone, open your heart up, and then watch the universe open up and go into the awe and wonder of all that's true, good, and beautiful. Sister Faustina relates in her diary, from the age of seven, she said, I experienced the definite call of God and the grace of vocation to the religious life. But I was all I was not always obedient to that call. I came across no one who would have explained these things to me. Right? She's feeling these things in her heart, but I came across no one that would explain what's going on. She continued, the eighteenth year of my life, an earnest appeal to my parents for permission to enter the convent. My parents refused. They said no. After this refusal, I turned myself over to the vain things of life, she said, paying no attention to the call of grace, although my soul found no satisfaction in any of these things. But the incessant call of grace caused me much anguish. This is the anxiety so many people feel God is calling us. And we want to become persons of the world, you know, for all kinds of different reasons. She said, I tried, however, to stifle it with amusements. Think about today now. You know, in 1900s, I mean, how many amusements could have been out there, right? But yet we hear the saints talk about this all the time. Can you imagine with these phones and social media and Hollywood, Madison Avenue today? Amazing bombardment. That's why we got to get into silence. She said, interiorly, I shun God, turning with all my heart to creatures. However, God's grace went out in my soul. She eventually entered the convent, though not without trials. In my own case, too, now this is my personal life. I can still vividly recall my deep desire, beginning at age seven, and I've talked about this many times on this podcast, to be a missionary priest. I also sought adventure, and I wrote by snail mail in those days to every missionary order I could find that sent priests to exotic places with names like Tanzania, Xinjanga, and the Congo. And they would respond with letters and brochures that I treasured, and I and I kept those and I would compare which order I might be called to. But I too came across no one that would have explained these things to me. By the time I was 18, I left home to seek the meaning and purpose of life. Like Sister Faustina, I for a time turned myself over to the vain things of life, paying for No attention to the call of grace, although my soul also found no satisfaction in any of these things. The incessant call of grace caused me much anguish too. I tried, however, to stifle it with amusements, just like her. Interiorly I shunned God, turning with all my heart to creatures. Unlike Sister Faustina, though, I would continue to search into my late thirties before I was finally introduced to John Paul II's theology the body, and sometimes later to Sister Faustina and the Divine Mercy. I had taken a longer road, like the great Saint Augustine, but God would not give up on me, and neither would my restless heart, right? This is inside of us, this restless heart. I seek, ask, seek, and knock. I began to uh attend Mass again after a 20-year absence, yet something was wrong. I could feel it in my heart, a heaviness closed, a door to Jesus Christ. Why? I was going to Mass. I was I was beginning to pray more. And then I turned to our blessed mother and I started to pray to her and I said, Blessed Mother, please open just a crack in my heart for your son. And then it happened. Near the end of a weekday mass as I once again prayed to our blessed mother to intercede for me. The priest that was celebrating Mass looked up and said, If anyone ever needs the sacrament of reconciliation, confession, at any time, any place, just let me know. And he gave us the final blessing. Of course, I was cradle Catholic. You would think I would know to go to confession after being away from the church for twenty years? Well, I sought him out immediately. And the grace and mercy I received that day through the sacrament of reconciliation put me at the narrow gate and changed my life forever. The confessional is not merely a place of pardon, it's a battlefield where chains are broken, lies are exposed, and grace restores what sin tried to destroy. As John Paul II said in a homily for Divine Mercy Sunday, he said, I ardently hope that each of you can experience what our lady one day assured Sister Faustina. She said, I am not only the Queen of Heaven, Blessed Mother said, but also the mother of mercy and your mother. This is why the Claymore morning ritual begins by kneeling with our lady. Her immaculate heart will always lead you to the sacred heart of her son. Right here, here's that heart. They get hit with the lance, water and blood, huh? Confession, baptism, just washing away so that we can unite ourselves with the red, with Jesus Himself, especially in the Eucharist. So men who receive mercy are never meant to keep it private. They become witnesses, protectors, evangelists, living proof that Christ still rescues souls in every generation. That's what we're called to do. That's what this claymore is all about. We receive this grace, we experience it. We're a changed humanity, and then we go out and share it with others. Sister Faustina wrote, All grace flows from mercy, and the last hour, these are the last hours, abounds with mercy for us. Let no one doubt concerning the goodness of God. Even if a person's sins were as dark as night, God's mercy is stronger than our misery. One thing alone is necessary, that the sinner set ajar the door of his heart, be it ever so little, to let in just a ray of God's merciful grace, and then God will do the rest. Begin today. Join our movement to support young men who are waking up. Claymore Militus Christi. Download the Claymore Battle Plan linked in the show notes and initially focus on the beginning, the beginning of the formation part. It's part three. Start with the Claymore 10-minute morning ritual. Time is running out, guys. Time you we don't know when the end of the world's coming. We don't know, but we know something big is happening. Whatever happens, any time you have left, turn to God so that the rest of your life is full in the midst of this battle, and you start to understand what's going on. You know, my book, The Claymore Battle Plan Handbook for Young Men and Spiritual Warfare, is almost finished. It's going to be available soon. Watch for it and join us. This is going to give you a whole year full of things to talk about and formation where we're growing, we're building, and we're building, and we're building with QA and everything. And there's going to be a very exciting time. This is a battle for salvation of souls, and God is on our side, for he seeks his children to join him in heaven. God bless you. Subscribe, hit like, share this, email me to learn more about uh Claymore Militus Christie. Hey, God bless you. Talk to you again soon, everybody. Bye bye.