Fighting the diabolical lies of the culture of death

On November 7th, the citizens of Ohio vote on Proposal 1. If passed, this proposal will enshrine unrestricted abortion within the state’s constitution. The culture of death has pulled out all the stops in their efforts to get the measure passed, including television ads that claim it is not the government’s place to interfere with the “right to choice.” The issue, it is claimed, is solely a matter of conscience and personal belief.

One of these ads even depicts a man praying in what must be a Catholic church, because he is in front of a Divine Mercy image.

There is obviously much to be upset with about this situation, but this last detail has me extremely angry. I’ve known about the Divine Mercy devotion as long as I’ve been Catholic, over twenty-five years now. The private revelations to St Faustina Kowalska and recorded in her Diary are a moving reminder of the unfathomable mercy of God and call all of us once again to be merciful as our Heavenly Father is merciful. At various points in my personal journey and struggles, the devotion has proved a great comfort to me.

But it’s only in the last year or so that I learned about the connection between the Divine Mercy devotion and the sin of abortion.

In 1935, the evening before the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, Sr. Faustina was in prayer within her room at the convent. While praying, she reports:

I saw an Angel, the executor of divine wrath. He was clothed in a dazzling robe, his face gloriously bright, a cloud beneath his feet. From the cloud, bolts of thunder and flashes of lightning were springing into his hands; and from his hand they were going forth, and only then were they striking the earth. When I saw this sign of divine wrath which was about to strike the earth, and in particular a certain place, which for good reason I cannot name, I began to implore the Angel to hold off for a few moments, and the world would do penance. (Diary 474)

While St Faustina does not specify the place threatened here but divine judgment, one of the foremost experts on the saint and her diary fills in the gap. Fr Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, claimed that it was Poland, especially the city of Warsaw. Inspired by this frightening vision, the saint understandably began to pray for her native land, but her prayers received no answer. In her own words, “my plea was a great nothing in the face of the divine anger.”

As she persevered in prayer, St Faustina received a vision of the Most Holy Trit. She fell silent contemplating the awesome majesty and unspeakable holiness of the triune God. The saint felt the movement of the grace of Christ in her soul and she heard words within her. She turned these words into her prayer. “I found myself pleading with God for the world with words heard interiorly.”

These words she received while standing before the throne of the triune God proved most effective in turning aside the angel of judgment. “As I was praying in this manner, I saw the angel’s helplessness: he could not carry out the just punishment which was rightly due for sins. Never before had I prayed with such inner power as I did then.”

What were these powerful words Faustina received? She tells us:

The words with which I entreated God are these: ‘Eternal Father, I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ for our sins and those of the whole world; for the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us.’ (Diary 475)

Those familiar with the Divine Mercy devotion will, of course, recognize this prayer. These words form the basis of what we now know as the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. In the next paragraph of the Diary (476), Jesus instructs St Faustina to pray the words on a set of rosary beads in the form now in use. But the context of the revelation directly connects the Chaplet to Faustino’s desire to offer reparations to God in the hope of forestalling the wrath of divine judgment against Poland and the world.

But what sins caused the angel of judgment to overshadow Poland in the first place? St. Faustina’s spiritual director, Blessed Michael Sopocko, claimed it was “especially for the killing of infants not yet born, the most grievous crime of all.”

Fr. Michalenko notes further that “Between the First and Second World Wars, the city of Warsaw, which as the capital of Poland, was also one of the great capitals of abortion in the world.”

The Chaplet of Divine Mercy, one of the key practices of modern devotion to Divine Mercy, was given to St. Faustina especially in reparation for the sin of abortion.

The chaplet may be prayed for other intentions, and this is encouraged elsewhere in the Diary. But once one sees the connection between the Divine Mercy devotion and the sin of abortion, it cannot be unseen. So a pro-choice group using the Divine Mercy image in their advertising cannot be “merely” blasphemous. The only adequate word for it is diabolical–this is another instance of the devil aping God, of mocking one of the means given to us to do battle to Moloch.

Believers know that God will not be mocked. We know Who wins in the end. Yet here and now we are still in the midst of the battle. We must use the weapons at our disposal to fight the good fight. Though the Divine Mercy devotion may have given us new ways to wield the weapons of spiritual combat, the weapons are the same as always—prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. It is only through these weapons that we have any hope of defeating the culture of death and its originator, the devil, and especially the tares of the culture of death that live in our own hearts.

Let us take what is happening in Ohio as a call to renew beseeching the mercy of God, to do acts of penance and reparation, and to carry out the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. Regardless of how the vote turns out today, this is the only way forward.

O Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the living God, have mercy on us and on the whole world…