As a priest, I have always enjoyed preaching on the Saints because it provides an opportunity for examples to encourage the faithful. A few months after I got to my first assignment, I was gently called out by one of the daily Mass congregants because I had referred to over a dozen individuals in my homilies as “one of my favorite saints,” and the term was beginning to lose all meaning. It was a fair point, but I hope it doesn’t detract from the fact that Pope St. John Paul II is in fact one of my favorite saints. I have the phone case and the keychain to prove it.

This Sunday the Church celebrates the Feast of Divine Mercy, and JPII was instrumental in bringing about this feast day and giving it a place on the calendar. Entire books could, and in fact have, been written about the amazing story of Pope St. John Paul II, Sr. Faustina, and this celebration of Mercy, so I will spare you all the details. (Though I highly recommend The Second Greatest Story Ever Told by Fr. Michael Gaitley if you’re interested in learning more.) But as we celebrate God’s infinite mercy, it’s worth thinking and praying about what made JPII so special, and how we can imitate his witness to sharing God’s love with others.

He always said that the true secret to his life, the force which held everything together and allowed him to live out his incredible vocation, was the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, JPII encountered God’s love and mercy more deeply every single day, and that was what made him perhaps the most influential man of the 20th century.
If we want to be as effective as this great saint was in spreading the Gospel, and if we strive to share in the same depths of love that he experienced, then it would serve us well to take up his devotion to Divine Mercy.

Make the Chaplet of Divine Mercy a regular devotion in your home, and see how it changes the way we approach each other, and offer everything for the salvation of those we love.

Prayers always,
Fr. McCullough