Blessed Divine Mercy Sunday

Wishing you all a very blessed Divine Mercy Sunday! 🙏 

I wanted to share with you all a recent experience of mine with the amazing mercy and love of God. I forgot how it is connected to the promises of the Divine Mercy devotion, and so thought it appropriate today to share it with you. 

On Christmas Day 2023 my uncle passed away from cancer. He had been baptised Catholic and had his First Holy Communion as a boy, but was not practicing and more or less an atheist. He had been the driver of a car in an accident when he was younger that killed his sister - and so all his life he blamed himself for her death and believed he would go to hell. 

2 weeks before he died, my Aunty (his wife) called me and asked me to come pray with him as they didn’t think he had long to live. This surprised me as he often mocked my faith in a semi sarcastic loving way. He would say to me “just remember lad where you come from, don’t think your sh@? doesn’t stink”. To which I would reply back to him “even the most beautiful flowers have to grow out of sh@?!”. It was how we bonded with eachother. 

During his last two weeks I tried to visit him most days and would sit in the loungeroom with him while he was asleep. I’d pray the Divine Mercy chaplet and Rosary for him, praying for his soul. He let me pray the prayers for the dying with him and I blessed him with Holy Water. Then the next day, through a miracle - he agreed for my parish priest to visit him and hear his Confession, receive Anointing of the Sick and Holy Communion. The next day, he agreed to me bringing him Holy Communion again as well. 

Praise God for his loving mercy! 

To appreciate the miraculous nature of this you had to know my uncle. He had been a drug dealer as long as I can remember and a regular drug user. He mocked religious people as being “do gooders” and hypocrites. Plus all his life he genuinely believed he deserved to go to hell because of the car accident that killed his sister. I don’t think he would have received any of the Sacraments for at least 40 years or more. So you can understand my shock when not only did he let me pray with him and for him, but then to agree to have a random priest come for his Confession! I would never have thought that would happen in my wildest dreams. 

Then after his death I was asked by the family to do the funeral service. They are all non Christian atheists. 3 out of his 5 children have been in and out jail, and have drug addiction issues. Another one of our cousins was in jail and so at the funeral he attended with two prison officers and in handcuffs. Yet there I am at the cemetery in my habit and wearing a surplice - praying the Final Commitment prayers and incensing my uncles body as it lay in the coffin. 

One of my uncles best friends was shocked and said to my mum “how did you manage to get a priest to agree to do the funeral??”. She laughed and responded “That’s not a priest. That’s my son, he’s a hermit monk!”. She then had to convince him that it was not a joke and she was being serious. That’s how unconverted and far from God my uncle and all those around him were. Yet through a miracle he repented on his deathbed, died in a state of grace and had a Catholic funeral! Praise God for his mercies! 🙌

I never preach to my family or try to convert them in the sense of debating with them. I pray for them all and try to live my faith by example. Over time, the graces from my flawed example is bearing fruit, and even if I never saw any fruit again - I would still be in awe and thankful for the grace of my uncle’s conversion before he died! 

I believe this all happened due to the graces from the Divine Mercy. One of the promises of the devotion is that those who are dying with receive Mercy and conversion.

Jesus I trust in you!