MERCY...

...and a most inspiring day conference - really more like a day's retreat with a contemplative and prayerful mood throughout - exploring the theme of God's mercy.

Held at St Joseph's, New Malden (famous for, among much else, its Mary Garden, loved by local people of all faiths and featured on EWTN), the day was held to mark the Year of Mercy. Sponsored by the Guild of Our Lady and St Joseph, it began with an excellent explanation of the great Mercy Door, created in 1949 and  opened by Pope Francis to launch this special year. Each panel on this door tells about God's great love and, telling the story of our redemption from the beginning. Incidentally, the speaker as also produced a rather good booklet on the theme  of mercy, available from the CTS...

We were then introduced, Fr Father Dariusz Mazewski, to the story of St Faustina, and the Divine Mercy prayers. This brought back memories of visits to Krakow, and that big Mercy shrine on the road leading out towards the quarry and factory area where St John Paul worked as a labourer in the grim years of WWII.  What I had not pondered, until this talk, was how innovative  and important Sister Faustina's message was...and how magnificent that, half a century later, she would be canonised as the first saint of this 21st century, by the young labourer whose daily trudge to work had taken him past that convent...the labourer recalled his personal memories when dedicating the great shrine...

The day's talks were interpersed with prayer and with a good soup-and-sandwiches lunch, and the final session of the day was devoted to a talk by Fr Dominic Allain of Grief to Grace, showing a practical work of mercy in action. And then we finished with Vespers and Benediction...