O Most Sacred Heart of Jesus: 

You know the longings of our hearts, and you desire that we enjoy friendship with you. 

From your pierced side, you have poured out the wellspring of life, for which we thirst. 

Your heart burns with a love for all people to return to a right relationship with you. 

We celebrate the abundant gifts you have given this nation, founded on the self-evident truths that our Creator has endowed all people with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

We make reparation for the offenses against you and against human dignity that have taken place in this nation. 

May our hearts be united to yours, so that our families and communities enjoy peace and happiness; may broken relationships be reconciled, injustices repaired, and the wounds of our land be healed. 

May your holy Catholic Church serve as a sign, pointing all people to your infinite love. 

O Desire of Nations and Center of History, we ask you to bless these United States of America. 

Who live and reign with God the Father  

in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 

God, for ever and ever. 

Amen. 

There are certain things in life which are too beautiful to be forgotten, such as the love of a mother. Hence we treasure her picture. The love of soldiers who sacrificed themselves for their country is likewise too beautiful to be forgotten, hence we revere their memory on Memorial Day.

There is nothing that man needs more than Divine Mercy — that love which is benevolent, which is compassionate, which raises man above his weakness to the infinite heights of the holiness of God.

In this place we become particularly aware of this. From here, in fact, went out the Message of Divine Mercy that Christ himself chose to pass on to our generation through Blessed Faustina.

And it is a message that is clear and understandable for everyone. Anyone can come here, look at this image of the merciful Jesus, His Heart radiating grace, and hear in the depths of his own soul what Blessed Faustina heard: “Fear nothing. I am with you always” (Diary, 586).

And if this person responds with a sincere heart: “Jesus, I trust in you,” he will find comfort in all his anxieties and fears. In this “dialogue of abandonment,” there is established between man and Christ a special bond that sets love free. And “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 Jn 4:18).

Our Lord, before He began his ministry, was tempted by Satan in the wilderness. The temptation that He faced was exactly that which we ourselves face, and which our first parents faced in Eden. It’s temptation of the world, the flesh and the devil. And equally, Our Lady endured these temptations as well. The fact that she had consecrated her virginity to God was itself a challenge, but it was one that she triumphed, for which reason the Church doesn’t just call her a virgin but Ever Virgin, and in particular, Virgin of Virgins because of the particular victory that she had.

The greater battle that she had to face was, in fact, in the confrontation with Satan, the temptation to doubt, because that was the temptation by which Eve was overcome; she doubted God’s word. God had said, “you shall not eat of it. The day you eat of it you will die.” God was very definite and very clear on this matter but Eve doubted this, and she said to the serpent, “God said we shouldn’t eat of it. Perhaps we might die.” Our Lady likewise, at the foot of the cross, stood there, and the possibility of doubt did arise when her son expired, and His dead body was placed in her arms. What grief she must have endured. The grief that she endured was of such intensity that most of the mystics, especially those who have written about the life of Our Lady, said that if God had not kept her alive, she would have died of grief.

But that is not where the battle ended because, on Holy Saturday, no one believed He would rise from the dead. The authorities thought the body might be stolen, but they didn’t believe He would rise from the dead. The Apostles certainly did not believe. And even when He did rise, they doubted, they were skeptical.

And so, Our Lady alone believed. And all of Holy Saturday she was tormented by Satan. He was trying to seduce her into believing that Christ would not rise, that God would not keep His word, that everything that happened was but again to be played. But no, she stood manfully and she won the victory, believing firmly that her son, who is God, would rise. And rise from the dead He did, rising on that Easter Sunday. To whom else would He first appear, if not to her? Yet scripture doesn’t tell us He appeared to her, but we can be absolutely certain that He did, and she would be, of course, being the first to rejoice in the resurrection of her son, for she had been faithful up until this moment, and indeed for the rest of her life, for which reason the Church calls her Virgin Most Faithful.