A perfect companion to 7 Secrets of the Eucharist, this chapter-by-chapter study guide is a great resource for individual use, discussion groups, CCD classes, or RCIA formation. You’ll learn how to personalize each “secret,” gain fresh insights into its relevance to your daily life, and find new ways to respond to Christ’s Eucharistic presence. Each chapter offers:

• thought-provoking ideas for personal reflection
• down-to-earth questions for discussion or journaling
• meaningful challenges for daily life
• additional readings from Scripture, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Diary of St. Faustina
• the author’s own personal insights, which will invite and inspire you to make a similar
• personal response to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus

About the Author
Mary Flynn is currently in her junior year at Franciscan University of Steubenville, pursuing a major in theology. A talented writer and musician, she has long been involved in music and youth ministry and is an active member of the MercySong parish mission team.

6 x 9 Softcover, 88 pages
Price: $6.95

Today the final phrase really hit me, and I was flooded with the reality of it: “You are divinely and eternally loved.”

Here’s the reality: You are not an accident. You didn’t just happen, no matter what the circumstances of your birth. You were not merely born; not merely created. You were fathered — lovingly, personally formed in your mother’s womb by God, who wanted you to be born, wanted you as His child.

There were millions of other human persons who could have been conceived through the union of your mother and father, each with his or her own completely unique DNA. Your parents, of course, couldn’t see all the possibilities and choose the one they wanted. But God could — and did.

Quite simply, you exist because God choose you, from all the millions of others who could have been born. You are — at the very least — “one in a million.” As Pope John Paul II wrote in his “Letter to Families,” “Parents, as you beget children, never forget that God wanted them born.”

That’s why abortion is always wrong, even in cases of rape and incest. No matter how unexpected, inconvenient, dangerous, tragic, or even violent the circumstances may be, one reality is always the same: from all the millions of possibilities, God chooses the child He wants born. And when God chooses to give life to a child, He also chooses to love that child forever, one-on-one, in a different way than He has ever loved any other child.

I have 7 children and (at last count) 23 grandchildren; and I do not love them all the same. I love each one differently and have a different relationship with each one. The more I get to know each one, the more unique that relationship becomes, and I can truthfully say to each, “I love you differently than I have ever loved anyone else.”

This is the way God loves you. When you can put aside all distractions and concerns and focus exclusively on God — in other words, when you become present to Him who is present to you — you will find yourself loved in an entirely unique way. It’s as if no one else exists at that moment — just you and God. You are His entire focus, the delight of His heart.

This then, is what it means, first of all, to be “divinely and eternally loved: to be chosen and set apart from all others in the heart of God.

What else does “divinely loved” mean? It means you are “thrice” loved. There is no separation in the Trinity. As St. Faustina expresses it, “Whoever is in communion with One of the Three Persons is thereby united to the whole Blessed Trinity, for this Oneness is indivisible” (Diary, 472). At every moment of your life, you are being held in the loving embrace of three divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

How do divine persons love? Unconditionally. Not based on behavior, but on relationship. God doesn’t give or withhold love depending on how you act. There is nothing you have ever done or could ever do that can make God stop loving you. You don’t have that power. You can’t change God. He is always loving you, always wanting the best for you. The things you think and say and do don’t change Him; they change you. They either draw you closer to Him and His love, or they pull you away from Him so that you can’t feel or respond to His love.

“Eternally love?” It means that this personal, one-on-one, unchanging love of God for you is not bound by time. He knew you and loved you before He formed you in your mother’s womb, and His love for you will never end.

You are divinely loved — forever!

On this particular day I was praying for a family member, and I found myself mentally placing him in the rays, asking the Lord to let him stay there all day to be soaked and saturated with grace in this outpouring of God’s mercy. Looking for a way to remember this intention throughout the day, I dug up a photo of him and stuck it in the corner of the frame so that it was right below the rays – a visual reminder that would prompt me to renew my prayer each time I looked up and noticed it.

It made my prayer seem so much more real that I soon purchased a much larger, unframed image. I glued it to a thick piece of cardboard and, within a few weeks, there were pictures tacked all over it: my wife and children, other family members, the Pope, special friends, anyone I wanted to remember to pray for.

A variation of this photo prayer soon emerged. My wife and I decided to assign a specific day of the week to pray in a special way for each of our children (very easy to do since there are 7 of them). So we gathered photos of each and set up a little “prayer table” on which we could display a different photo each day. This became especially powerful during Lent, as it prompted me to also give up something specific for each child on his or her prayer day.

But as meaningful as these two types of prayer were, the next variation that evolved proved to be the most fruitful for me and has become a permanent part of my daily prayer life. Years earlier I had learned that praying the Liturgy of the Hours (the 4-volume set of prayers known also as the Divine Office) is not reserved exclusively for priests and religious, but can be a fruitful practice of daily prayer for laity as well. I especially love to “pray the Office” in front of the Blessed Sacrament during Eucharistic adoration. One day, concerned about a friend who was in need of prayer, I found a photo of her and put it in my breviary so I would remember to pray for her the next morning at adoration. It was the first of many photos that I now keep in my breviary.(It doesn’t have to be a breviary; any prayer book or prayer journal would serve the purpose just as well.)

How do I pray using the photos?

I just look at them. “Prayer,” wrote St. Therese, “is a surge of the heart.” I just look at the pictures, one by one, and let my heart surge to God for each person. A photo captures much of the essence of a person. As I gaze at each photo, the person it represents becomes present to me, complete with personality traits, strengths, weaknesses, memories, conversations, specific needs, etc. Sometimes actual words of prayer come to mind and are offered; sometimes there are no words. Essentially I am simply lifting each person up to God in whatever way and for whatever period of time seems called for. It varies from day to day. Sometimes a brief glance and momentary entrustment of the person to God is sufficient. At other times, the same photo may bring a flood of thoughts and a longer period of prayer. I just let it happen, trusting that the Holy Spirit is directing it all.

I am now in the habit of carrying a small digital camera with me when I travel; and when someone asks for prayer, I say, “Sure! Say “cheese.”

Ever notice that in this prayer God is referred to first of all as “Father” and only then as “creator”? There’s a whole teaching here. Pope John Paul II, in Rich in Mercy, explains that God is not just the creator, but “He is also Father,” and He is linked to us “by a bond still more intimate than that of creation. It is love, which not only creates the good but also grants participation in the very life of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For he who loves desires to give himself” (#7).

God doesn’t create as an all-powerful but distant artisan with no real interest in His creations. He “fathers-forth” from His heart, not just creating beings, but begetting children who are to be His own. Lovingly and tenderly he forms each of us in our mothers’ wombs, fashioning us in His own image and likeness, and breathing His Spirit into us, so that one day we may return to Him “holy and spotless” to live like Him and with Him forever. For “such is the ‘plan of his loving kindness,’ conceived by the Father before the foundation of the world” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #257).

What should our response be to such a gift? To simply live as His children, trusting that His love never changes, His fathering never ends. In the midst of life’s busyness, we can rest in His heart, trusting and rejoicing and giving thanks, letting our daily lives form an endless song of praise.

“He fathers-forth whose beauty is beyond change. Praise Him”(Hopkins, Pied Beauty).

I’ve often wondered who was really transformed that day. The Fathers of the Church teach that Jesus was not changed but was transfigured in their sight. It wasn’t that He was suddenly different, but rather that, through a special grace, the veil was lifted for a while from their eyes, and they were allowed to see some of the glory that was always His.
Jesus wasn’t just “showing off.” Because of all that would happen later, these men needed to see who Jesus really was. The “Tabor experience” became a touchstone for them, an event they could look back upon and draw strength from. Remembering the glory they had seen, they came to understand more fully who Jesus was and who they were called to be.

What does this have to do with the Divine Mercy Image?

Everything. There are thousands of different versions of the Divine Mercy Image that have been created by artists from all over the world in the last 60 years. But there is one important fact I would like you to remember: There is only ONE Divine Mercy Image.

That may seem a bit contradictory at first, but it’s not. There is only ONE Divine Mercy Image. Yes, there are many versions (just as there are many different sizes, shapes, and styles of crucifixes, each attempting to represent the one actual cross on which Christ died). But there is only ONE Divine Mercy Image — and it’s not a painting. It is Jesus, Himself, Mercy-made-flesh — Jesus, who came to reveal God as the Father who is “rich in mercy” — Jesus, who told us, “the Father and I are one (Jn 10:20) … He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9)

Blessed Faustina did not see a vision of a painting. She saw Jesus, the visible “image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). And, whenever she looked at the man-made image painted to represent her vision, she saw beyond it to the real Image. Like the disciples at the Transfiguration, she saw “the glory of God” (Diary, 1789).

In the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, we are told that God created us in His image and likeness — but we keep trying to create Him in our image and likeness. We keep thinking that God must be like us, instead of realizing that we were created to be like Him. “God created man in His image; in the divine image He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen 1:27).

What does it mean to be created in the “divine image?” What does this really mean for you and for me in practical terms?

Let’s take a look at the passage in the Diary of Blessed Faustina (47-48) where she describes her initial vision of Jesus as The Divine Mercy. She starts out, “In the evening when I was in my cell, I saw the Lord Jesus clothed in a white garment.” The white garment is the sign of the priesthood. Christ is appearing to us as the ONE Great High Priest who offered a “once–for–all” sacrifice for our sins (cf Heb 9:26).

Next, she tells us that “one hand was raised in the gesture of blessing.” This, too, is a reference to the priesthood. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the first ministry of the priest is to bless. Indeed, in Jewish law, if a member of the priestly tribe of Levi refused to bless someone who asked him, he was excommunicated from the people.

To me, this is an awesome symbol. St. John tells us that “God is love.” And, in God, love is always a verb. It’s what He does. God is always loving us, always blessing us, and the one priesthood that today’s priests share is essentially a ministry of blessing. Everything a priest does is supposed to be a form of blessing: a here-and-now expression of the Father’s eternal blessing.

The next thing Faustina tells us is that Christ’s “other hand was touching the garment at the breast” — the gesture of invitation. This is Christ saying to us, “Come to My heart. … Come and receive My blessing.”

Why is He inviting us to come to His heart? Faustina’s next description makes it clear: “From beneath the garment, slightly drawn aside at the breast, there were emanating two large rays, one red, the other pale.” The pierced heart of Jesus, from which blood and water gushed out for us, is the source of mercy, the fountain of all grace and blessing.
The two hands tell us all we need to know about God’s love for us. He is always blessing us, always inviting us to come to His heart and receive His mercy.

Faustina then switches from what she sees to how it affects her; and, to me, this is the most important detail of the entire description: “In silence I kept my gaze fixed upon the Lord. My soul was struck with awe but also with great joy.” After this, Jesus speaks to her, but not immediately. Faustina relates, “After a while, Jesus said …” Jesus allows her to be in awe for a while, simply gazing at the Divine Mercy image.

Earlier, I mentioned the Transfiguration. In St. Mark’s account of this event, we see Peter, James, and John struck with a similar feeling of awe and joy as they gazed upon the Lord in His glory. Peter exclaimed, “Lord, how good it is for us to be here!” And St. Mark tells us, “He hardly knew what he was saying, for they were all overcome with awe” (Mk 9:2-10).

Do you want to know how to use the Divine Mercy image most effectively? Look at it. Gaze at it. Keep your gaze fixed upon the Lord until you are struck with awe and joy, contemplating the incredible goodness of God, who is always loving you, always blessing you, always inviting you into His heart to receive mercy.

St. Paul records the wonderful fruits of this contemplative gazing upon the Lord: “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18).

As we gaze upon the image, contemplating God’s great mercy, we come to see who God really is. Gradually, as though looking at a constantly changing mirror reflection, we behold the image of ourselves as we were created to be. Moment by moment, through the grace of God, we are transformed into the image and likeness of what we see. We become what we behold until we, ourselves, are living reflections of God, living images of Divine Mercy.

What does that mean? It means that we are each called to share in the one priesthood of Christ, to bless, to invite, to be a living fountain of mercy. We are each called to be a unique version of the same One Image.

There are opportunities everyday where we can growl, get anxious or angry, say unkind words, or simply respond to a negative situation with a positive blessing. If we curse the darkness, we become part of it. If we bless the darkness, we break through it with light. We can become the image in that sense.

These are not just pious thoughts or suggestions. The prayercards and paintings that represent The Divine Mercy are not just religious objects to carry in pocket or purse or pray before in our homes and churches. The Divine Mercy Image must become our “Tabor experience,” our reminder that God is Mercy, and that He expects us to become like Him.

Christ made this unmistakably clear to Blessed Faustina: “By means of this image, I shall grant many graces to souls. It is to be a reminder of the demands of My mercy, because even the strongest faith is of no avail without works. … I demand from you works of mercy” ( Diary, 742).

How did Blessed Faustina respond to this? She came to understand that God is calling each of us to be divinized, to be so completely transformed into Christ that we can say with St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives within me” (Gal 2:20).
Her Diary is filled with explanations about this transformation process and with beautiful prayers, in which she asks God to transform her into Himself.

One of these seems a perfect prayer for each of us to offer every time we look upon the Divine Mercy Image:

“I want to be completely transformed into your mercy and to be your living reflection, O Lord. May the greatest of all divine attributes, that of your unfathomable mercy, pass through my heart and soul to my neighbor” (Diary, 163).

In the midst of the Year of the Rosary (2002-2003), he issued an encyclical letter on the Eucharist: Ecclesia de Eucharistia. To many it came as a surprise, not only that he would present an encyclical on the Eucharist during the Year of the Rosary, but also that he would devote the entire final chapter to Mary under the title “At the School of Mary: ‘Woman of the Eucharist.’”

Reminding us that he had first used the phrase “at the school of Mary” in his earlier letter on the Rosary (Rosarium Virginis Mariae), he explains that Mary is “our teacher in contemplating Christ” in the Eucharist. She is “a woman of the Eucharist in her whole life,” he continues, and she “can guide us toward this most holy sacrament, because she herself has a profound relationship with it” (#53).

What is this “profound relationship?”

It begins, he explains, with her “interior disposition,” her “sheer abandonment to the word of God.” Emphasizing that the mystery of the Eucharist calls us all to this ‘sheer abandonment,” he points out that “there can be no one like Mary to act as our support and guide in acquiring this disposition” (#54).

How can we begin to learn from Mary?

To come to understand the Annunciation and Visitation from a Eucharistic perspective. There is “a profound analogy,” the pope writes, “between the Fiat which Mary said in reply to the angel, and the Amen which every believer says when receiving the body and blood of the Lord” (#55).

Mary, he says, was asked to believe that God Himself would take flesh in her, and by her Fiat she became “the first ‘tabernacle’ in history” (#55). As the Catechism of the Catholic Church expresses it, “for the first time in the plan of salvation … the Father found the dwelling place where His Son and His Spirit could dwell among men” (#721).

As Mother Teresa loved to point out, the Annunciation was Mary’s First Communion. But she didn’t keep Christ for herself. She went “in haste” (Lk1:39) to take Him to her cousin Elizabeth. In this Visitation, Pope John Paul explains, she was a tabernacle, “in which the Son of God, still invisible to our human gaze, allowed Himself to be adored by Elizabeth, radiating His light … through the eyes and the voice of Mary” (#55).

Each time you and I walk up to receive Communion, we, too, experience an annunciation and are called to visitation. The priest stands before us in place of the angel and announces to us: “The Body of Christ,” and through his words we, like Mary, are being asked to believe:

Do you believe that God Himself has taken flesh for you and wants to dwell in you? Are you willing to become a living tabernacle, bearing Christ to others, and allowing Him to radiate His light through you?

And we say, “Amen.” … “Fiat, Lord.” … “Let it be done to me according to your word.”

“Ultimately, the place of purification is Christ himself. When we encounter him without disguise, then as a matter of course everything that is wretched and guilty in our lives, which we have for the most part kept carefully hidden, in that moment of truth will stand before our souls in flames of fire. The effect of the presence of the Lord upon everything within us that is interwoven with injustice, with hate, and with lies will be as a burning flame. It will become a purifying pain, which will burn away from within us everything that cannot be reconciled with eternity, with the living cycle of Christ’s love.”

Opening Prayer
O my Jesus, … I unite my desires to the desires that
You had on the cross (1581). I call upon You
and … beg Your mercy for poor sinners. …

O Most Sacred Heart, Fount of Mercy from which gush forth
rays of inconceivable graces, …
be mindful of Your own bitter Passion
and do not permit the loss of souls
redeemed at so dear a price. …

O Jesus, let every soul trust in [Your] Passion
and place its hope in [Your] mercy.
[You] will not deny [Your] mercy to anyone.
Heaven and earth may change,
but [Your] mercy will never be exhausted.

Jesus! I desire to bring all sinners to Your feet
that they may glorify Your mercy
throughout endless ages (72).
I now embrace the whole world
and ask You for mercy for it (1582).

The Agony of Jesus

I entered into the sufferings which Jesus underwent in the Garden of Olives (646). The Lord pressed me to His Heart and said,

I shall give you a small portion of My Passion, but do not be afraid, be brave; do not seek relief, but accept everything with submission to My will (1053).

When Jesus was taking leave of me, such great pain filled my soul that it is impossible to express it. Every beat of Jesus’ Heart was reflected in my heart and pierced my soul. In the course of this suffering, my love grew immeasurably. Together with Him, I underwent, in a special way, all the various tortures. The world still has no idea of all that Jesus suffered.

I accompanied Him to the Garden of Gethsemane; I stayed with Him in the prison; I went with Him before the judges; I underwent with Him each of the tortures. Not a single one of His movements or looks escaped my notice. I came to know all the omnipotence of His love and of His mercy toward souls (1054).

The Scourging

I saw the Lord Jesus tied to a pillar, stripped of His clothes, and the scourging began immediately. I saw four men who took turns at striking the Lord with scourges. My heart almost stopped at the sight of these tortures (445).

I saw how the Lord Jesus suffered as He was being scourged. Oh, such an inconceivable agony! … His blood flowed to the ground, and in some places His flesh started to fall off. I saw a few bare bones on His back. The meek Jesus moaned softly and sighed (188).

The Lord said to me, I suffer even greater pain than that which you see. And Jesus gave me to know for what sins He subjected himself to the scourging: these are sins of impurity. Oh, how dreadful was Jesus’ moral suffering during the scourging (445)!

The Crowning with Thorns

After the scourging, the torturers took the Lord and stripped Him of His own garment, which had already adhered to the wounds. As they took it off, His wounds reopened. Then they threw a dirty and tattered scarlet cloak over the fresh wounds of the Lord.

They wove a crown of thorns, which they put on His sacred head. They put a reed in His hand and made fun of Him, bowing to Him as to a king. Some spat in His face, while others took the reed and struck Him on the head with it. Others caused him pain by slapping Him; still others covered His face and struck Him with their fists.

Jesus bore all this with meekness. Who can comprehend Him – comprehend His suffering? Jesus’ eyes were downcast. … Let every soul reflect on what Jesus was suffering at that moment. They tried to outdo each other in insulting the Lord (408).

Carrying the Cross

I saw a multitude of souls crucified like Him. Then I saw a second multitude of souls, and a third. The second multitude were not nailed to [their] crosses, but were holding them firmly in their hands. The third were neither nailed to [their] crosses nor holding them firmly in their hands, but were dragging [their] crosses behind them and were discontent. Jesus then said to me,

Do you see these souls? Those who are like Me in the pain and contempt they suffer will be like Me also in glory. And those who resemble Me less in pain and contempt will also bear less resemblance to Me in glory (446).

The Crucifixion

I saw the Lord Jesus nailed upon the cross amidst great torments. A soft moan issued from His Heart. After some time, He said,

I thirst. I thirst for the salvation of souls. Help Me, My daughter, to save souls. Join your sufferings to My Passion and offer them to the heavenly Father for sinners (1032).

I saw two rays issue from His side, just as they appear in the image. I then felt in my soul the desire to save souls and to empty myself for the sake of poor sinners. I offered myself, together with the dying Jesus, to the Eternal Father, for the salvation of the whole world (648).

(Excerpted from “Divine Mercy in My Soul: the Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska,” copyright 1987 Congregation of Marians, Stockbridge, MA 01263. All rights reserved. Used with permission.)