And so what was your childhood like? I mean, were you brought up in a Catholic family?

Yeah, born and raised Catholic, so I was a cradle Catholic, but I would say we were Sunday Catholics.

And I just heard a talk this past weekend by a good guy, Doug Barry, who's on different shows and stuff.

Yeah, we know Doug.

And he said, you know, I was a Sunday, we used to punch in and punch out.

He said, we'd go to Sunday Mass, punch in into the holy water, bless yourself, and then as you're leaving, punch out, put your hand into the holy water, bless yourself, and you go.

And he said, that was my clock time.

And

and

she died on October 5th of that year.

So let me just kind of summarize what he told her there because there's so much richness in – this passage 1760 that are some beautiful things there's like 20 or 30 different lessons he has for her um but just some of the things he told her um is that when we have a desolation or darkness or doubts um you gotta go to your spiritual director and he he will answer you in his name And he says, bring darkness into light.

Cause remember nothing will be left in the darkness.

Everything will be in the light.

This is your chance to not have it done at judgment.

You're going to have it done, uh, with your spiritual director.

They don't

Wow.

Every one.

Because she withheld a grave sin.

So if you confess all grave sins you can remember, you have some form of contrition.

Now, usually just walking into the confession of your own free will is enough because you're seeking God's pardon and you're sorry for what you did.

Even if it's tainted with self-interest that I want to avoid punishment, it's not perfect.

Remember your three levels.

How do you differentiate that from works of the law?

So maybe we can just start with how do you onboard? So how do people kind of enter into the devotion if it's something to which they're attracted or by which they are allured?

Yeah, the first thing we do is try to teach that divine mercy is unique in that it's not just a devotion.

Divine mercy is also a message, the message of the gospel.

And Pope Benedict said it well.

He said divine mercy is not just a secondary Christian devotion, but an integral part of Christian life and prayer.

He called it the nucleus of the gospel.

And so God's mercy is not something new that was just given to St. Faustina in the 20th century.

yeah so um thinking specifically about how christ makes the divine mercy known it seems like you know he could he could accent any number of things god's omnipotence or he could accent god's loving kindness or tenderness what do you find like the picture that christ is painting obviously you know like we think about the gospels the sacred tradition but i want to focus especially on those accents that he draws out in his revelations to saint maria uh saint faustina maria kowalska Are there particular ways in which the portrait takes on a distinctive aspect or things that you think from which we could profit in that regard?

I'm wondering, I mean, faithful Catholics are wondering, are church authorities going to come down and have a meeting with her and talk about excommunication? I mean, what is the response?

Yeah, I've already drafted a letter myself requesting a meeting with Governor Healy.

I put a lot of time and attention into that letter.

I presented it from the point of not condemning or beating her over the head with a Bible.

The approach I took was education, that she professes to be a Catholic, so it was in her best interest for me to just be able to attempt to educate her on why the church teaches, not just to lecture to her that the church teaches this, but to bring about education as to why the church teaches what she does and hopefully to waken an awareness.

But at least the bishops are starting to speak up.

Bishop Byrne here in our diocese of Springfield wrote a beautiful piece explaining the same thing on the impact that this is going to have.

could you help our listeners to understand more exactly what you're talking about it's about making their own bishops i think right