Michele Faehnle - Divine Mercy for Moms: Sharing the Lessons of St. Faustina

I hope you will read this book and help save the world. We need you, Catholic moms! From your often overlooked love, God will grant us extraordinary gifts of grace in the present time of mercy.

From the foreword by Fr. Michael E. Gaitley, MIC

Author of 33 Days to Morning Glory

Divine Mercy for Moms makes whats all-too-easily an abstract concept into a tangible approach. Roll up your sleeves and prepare to dog-ear your copy as your family life and personal devotion are challenged and enhanced.

Sarah A. Reinhard

Catholic blogger, speaker, writer,

and author of A Catholic Mothers Companion to Pregnancy

Divine Mercy for Moms is profound yet simple, compelling yet gentle. Sharing their own lived experience, the authors testify to the transformative power of the devotion in their families and marriages with encouragement that is candid, wise, and very practical.

Nancy and Patrick Madrid

Radio host and author of Why Be Catholic?

Jesus, I trust in you! Why is trust often such a stumbling block for todays busy moms? Divine Mercy for Moms invites us into a profound consideration of the life and spirituality of St. Faustina Kowalska from the vantage point of motherhood. We moms are often called to be angels of mercy in our home as weoften literallycommit ourselves to the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. And yet far too often, we neglect to appreciate that our home is our primary mercy mission field. Let Michele and Emily introduce you to the beauty of St. Faustinas Divine Mercy devotion and help you bring this amazing spiritual gift to life in your home. Perfect for small groups and anyone looking to draw ever closer to Jesus Christ.

Lisa M. Hendey

Founder of CatholicMom.com and author of The Grace of Yes

Through engaging stories and practical applications (good for any busy mom), Michele Faehnle and Emily Jaminet show how the simple, ordinary tasks of motherhood can have extraordinary results when done with a heart that knows the power of Gods Divine Mercy. This book is a must read for any mom who has ever uttered the words, Lord, have mercy.

Kelly Wahlquist

Founder of Women In the New Evangelization and author of Created to Relate

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, Revised Edition 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, DC, and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All rights reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Passages cited from the Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul 1987 Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception of the B.V.M. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

___________________________________

2016 by Michele Faehnle and Emily Jaminet

Foreword 2016 by Michael E. Gaitley, MIC

Afterword 2016 by Lisa M. Hendey

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews, without written permission from Ave Maria Press, Inc., P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556, 1-800-282-1865.

Founded in 1865, Ave Maria Press is a ministry of the United States Province of Holy Cross.

www.avemariapress.com

Paperback: ISBN-13 978-1-59471-665-2

E-book: ISBN-13 978-1-59471-666-9

Cover image Saint Mary Faustina Kowalska Ivona Staszewski, available on shop.evonagallery.com and www.etsy.com/shop/Evonagallery.

Cover and text design by Katherine Robinson.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

Contents

by Fr. Michael E. Gaitley, MIC

St. Faustina, Apostle of Divine Mercy

Developing Trust in Jesus through the
Divine Mercy Devotion

Showing Mercy to Our Neighbor

The Corporal Works of Mercy

The Spiritual Works of Mercy

Mary, Mother of Mercy

by Lisa M. Hendey

: Prayers

: Thirty Days of Mercy

Publishers Note

Michele Faehnle and Emily Jaminet wrote this book as a joint project. They collaborated on the introduction, study guide, and appendixes. Michele penned chapters 1, 4, and 6; while Emily handled chapters 2, 3, and 5.

Quotations from St. Faustinas Diary follow a distinctive style: Plain text signifies Faustinas own thoughts, bold type indicates words she received from Jesus, and italics denote Marys words to her. Parenthetical citations in this book refer to paragraph numbers from the Diary, rather than page numbers.

Foreword

Now is the time of mercy! Now is a time of great and extraordinary grace for the Church and the world. This was the insight of St. John Paul II for our time, something that has been repeated by subsequent popes.

John Pauls insight came from his assessment of our modern world. Specifically, while he clearly recognized the blessings of technology and science, he also recognized that, in many ways, the times were living in are marked by unprecedented evil. But for that very reason, the pope knew, God is also reaching out to our hurting, broken world, in a certain sense, more than ever.

One of the most powerful ways that God is reaching out to us is through the Divine Mercy message and devotion that comes to us from St. Faustina Kowalska, about whom youll learn more in this book. Through her message, which reminds us that mercy is the central message of the Gospel, God seems to want to start a chain reaction. Having revealed his great mercy to us in a special way through the testimony of St. Faustina, though her, he wants to inspire countless more people to be living images of Divine Mercy.

In this book, Emily Jaminet and Michele Faehnle refer to a beautiful prayer of St. Faustina, A Prayer of Transformation from Within. In this prayer, St. Faustina asks to be transformed into a living reflection of Gods mercy, specifically praying that her eyes, ears, tongue, hands, feet, and heart be instruments of Gods tender mercy. She essentially wants to be Gods mercy for the world, to be a channel of Divine Mercy, a place through which Gods mercy can pass through her heart and soul to everyone.

Now, we might ask, Why did God put the desire of that prayer into St. Faustinas heart? I believe he did so to reveal a key part of his strategy of bringing his gift of salvation to our world, in this present time of mercy. He wants to use not just Faustina but all of us as instruments of his mercy. More specifically, he wants to transform us into living images of Divine Mercy, so he can reach everyone with his tender love and save them.

But hes not looking for just anyone for this important mission. In fact, I believe that his first picks for this solemn mission, his desired special ops, are those who are most forgotten, overlooked, and underappreciatedthe ones who, in the eyes of the world, dont amount to much. And who are they?

Well, I would argue that some of those who are most overlooked by the world, the ones who the world tends to scoff at are mothers , especially stay-at-home moms. Really. Modern pagans often dont take motherhood as serious business. Of course, they probably recognize that its necessary for continuing the species, but it seems that they see it as something like farming: a dirty, difficult job, that somebodys got to dobut who would want to? It requires an enormous amount of effort behind-the-scenes, lots of thankless self-sacrifice, and involves work that isnt very glamorous.