Pictures of the Day: Mercy Sunday, National Shrine of Divine Mercy

I drove a couple hours south yesterday, down to the National Shrine of Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.  That's right where Massachusetts meets New York, about 20 minutes from the Vermont border.

It was cool and blustery, but there were 15-20,000 other pilgrims there with me. The crowd was heavily Latino, Pilipino and (this was a bit of a surprise to me) there were many black folk there as well.  Most of them were Haitian or Caribbean, but some were Afro-American as well. A good third of the people there were probably speaking Spanish or Tagalog. I was quite amused and pleased by all of it.

There was a mass in the afternoon, but I arrived late because - after departing not giving myself quite enough time - I got briefly lost (a difficult feat with a GPS, but I still somehow managed it) trying to find a gas station with diesel along the way, and then took well over a half hour to find parking and walk a half mile up the hill to the shrine. I arrived just in time for the consecration, and decided to spend an hour and a half in line to confess while mass concluded. There were a few hundred of us in line, so they came and gave us all communion while we waited, granting us dispensation to receive before confessing if we needed one. We were singing the Chaplet of Mercy as we stood there. It was beautiful.

There were over a dozen priests hearing confessions in Spanish and English, and (I thought this was great) one of them was the local bishop. My confessor was a Franciscan of Primitive Observance from Boston, who wear grey habits and scraggly beards (like the Friars of the Renewal, Fr. Groeschel's group) but are probably even more hard core.

(No, edit that, they are more hard core. Follow the link there - they have little to no web presence beyond their wikipedia page, which states that the Franciscans of Primitive Observance live a strict observance of the Rule of St. Francis. They do not carry money, and rely on the donations of individuals to pay for their needs. In their houses they do not utilize modern appliances and seek food door-to-door in the neighborhoods in which they live. The FPOs live a mixed contemplative and active life, spending considerable time in prayer each day in the chapel, as well as time in the community. The FPOs do not wish that details of their penitential life be widely known, living by the Lord's admonition to "pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly" - Matthew 6:6.)

(Not mine, I stole this image from here.)

This fellow seemed very unimpressed by me at first, but I shot my mouth off in fine form, and he came around, stroking his beautiful beard, saying "hmm, I think that was a pretty good confession.." 

High flattery, that. I was pleased. I often wonder how it would be to confess to Christ himself, or one of the apostles, Augustine, Francis, Ignatius, Dominic or Padre Pio.. I got the next best thing, yesterday. That alone was worth the drive.

We were joking that with the wind and rain we were chalking time off purgatory whether we received the indulgence or not. One of the conditions of the indulgence is detachment from venial sin. I am not even sure what that means, precisely, and I've long since decided that I will be very happy if I am received into purgatory. I really do not understand why people used to be so obsessed with suffering there. I want that. To be there would be a great joy, because it means that you will see God. Right now, all this suspense and uncertainty is really terrible. To suffer for the sake of love is what we are meant for, and it is a beautiful thing.. I'm just too much of a sloth and coward to do it very well here. So, let me do it then. Please.

I never got to see the icon in the formal shrine, that charming gothic chapel that you can see in the image above here, because they had closed it by the time I'd confessed. You can see the line there filing into the chapel, there were thousands of people filing through after mass to venerate the icon.

I did spend a while in one of the tents they had set up for adoration, after they had removed the monstrance but had left an icon, though:

A truly great day. I'll be back there later this spring when there's less of a mob scene, to see the chapel.


Today, incidentally, is the Annunciation. A significant feast in my mythic universe. I've got a bit that I'll post tomorrow on that. It needs a bit of polish, and I'm not really up to finishing it off it tonight.. Until tomorrow, then.  



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