Pronouns in the Divine Mercy chaplet.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the mercy-related problem of, so to speak, "meeting people where they are."  About one dilemma of the good news:  some demands of Christian life are scary, off-putting, downright repugnant at times.  Certainly from outside, but I've felt that way from the inside from time to time too.  So how do we attract and welcome people, exercise the hospitality and mercy we are commanded to do, avoid hurting people or driving them away, and yet, be honest and not lie about the difficulties?  We know we must reject lies and reject everything that separates human beings from God; we must not do so by rejecting human beings, or provoking them.   "The truth hurts" is the world's saying, not ours. 

It is an old problem, tackled by saints and yet not solved; a problem that reinvents itself in every place and time.  So even though it's the saints' problem it's our problem too.  We can all try to approach it and yet be doing new work.  

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It's been a long time since I made it to any Saturday-morning mass, let alone a first Saturday, so I was glad this past weekend to be entirely free.  I carried some special intentions for old friends having hard times, and one of the children's rosaries hooked away from its thumbtack on the schoolroom bulletin board, to the parish thirty blocks south where daily mass happens on Saturday.  

I got there near the end of the rosary but before the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.  And found myself, as I recited along with the parishioners, thinking about the first-person pronouns in the CDM.  I copied them down in my notebook after the chaplet, while I waited for mass to start.  Let me show you what I mean:

Eternal Father, 

I offer You the body and blood, soul and divinity of Your dearly beloved son, our Lord, Jesus Christ,

in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

 

So what I was asking myself is:  Who is "I?"  Who is "us" and is it the same "us" to whom belong "our" sins?  

Who is "the whole world?"  Is that the same "us" or is it actually a "them?"  Or is "us" a part of "the whole world?"

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One of the beauties of communal prayers, like this one, with agreed-upon texts, is that they can and do have slightly different meanings inside the heads of all the individual people who say them.  But I want to be clear about what they mean inside my own head.  I want them to be real words, not just my mouth moving in agreed-upon patterns.  So I think about those words and sometimes form theories about them.  Even the pronouns.

(If you like this sort of thing, here's a guest-post I did for Jen Fulwiler some years ago.  Good times.)

 So let's get started, and why not start with the first person.  I'm not exactly taking these phrases in order as they appear in the poem, by the way, but more in the order in which they came to my mind.

1.  "I" offer

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the "I" refers to the person speaking the prayer.  For now let's just note that it's an "I" not a "we," although later we'll speak of "us" and not "we."  The agent of the offering-sentence is an individual, not a collective, despite the fact that the Chaplet is very often a communal prayer, and it has a very communal-prayer feel to it if you ask me.  The sense of community comes out the most when it is recited -- even alone -- at 3 p.m., the "hour of mercy," the time when the Church especially invites us to recite it.  So at that hour one knows that one is among many with the same, or similar, intention.  And yet we do not say, "we offer you."  I offer you.   This offering is a personal offering.  I offer the part that I possess in myself, however much or little that may be.  It is not, so to speak, pooled, at least not at the moment that I offer it.

2.  ...[to] "You"

Is "You" God?  Yes, but more precisely, "You" is another "first person" -- in this case the first person of the Trinity, the Father, and precisely, distinct from the Son and from the Holy Spirit.   This is made obvious by the first two words of the prayer.  The Father is the one whose will Jesus does on earth, and the one to whom he makes offering of himself on the cross.  So when "I offer" the offering mentioned in the prayer, "I" make that offering to the same Person.  

3.  ...in atonement for "our" sins and those of the whole world"

This sentence makes it clear that "I" am making an offering not just for myself, but for others.  In fact I am making the offering on behalf of everybody ("the whole world.")  

But here is a curious puzzle.  As long as this offering is meant to make atonement for everybody, why do we not just say "...in atonement for the sins of the whole world?"  Why is there an "us" and a "them" of sorts here, or if not that, at least an "us" and a wider "us?"  

I see two possibilities.  Either we are meant to make a sort of mental distinction between "us/our" and "the whole world," or we are meant to make a distinction  between the "our sins" and "those [sins] of the whole world."    The prayer makes it clear that everybody's sins demand atonement, "ours" as well as "the whole world's," but why the distinction?  Who is "us?"

Before embarking on this contemplation, my mental picture of the "us" had been framed by my habit of reciting the CDM mainly in community, like I was doing on Saturday with other parishioners before Mass.  I had been picturing the "us" as "all the people here in this room with me, all of us here together reciting in this place."  "The whole world" then, must have meant to me "everybody outside this room."  And it may be an acceptable interpretation of the phrase; I don't know.  

 But it breaks down for me a bit when I remember that the chaplet is not only to be said in community, but also alone.  So I'm inclined to think that "our" is more expansive than "the people in this room."   Fortunately there is another clue...

 

4.  "our" Lord, Jesus Christ 

Here at least, "our" is apparently those of us of whom it may be said, Jesus Christ is Lord.  The phrase "our Lord" is an appositive; it mentions a second time and renames "Your dearly beloved Son;" it is, strictly speaking, unnecessary.  One of its purposes is apparently to stress that Jesus is "our" Lord.  So going out on a limb here and assuming that the two "our"s have the same antecedent:  the "we" is the set of all faithful Christians, all those who recognize Jesus and sincerely call him Lord and try however imperfectly to follow His commands.   I tend to think that here we can interpret the set relatively broadly and not restrict it to Christians who are visibly members of the Catholic Church; I think there's room for discussion there.

So what does that get us?  Well, I think it means that "the whole world" refers to all the other people who don't call Jesus Lord for one reason or another, and possibly some people who do call Jesus Lord but insincerely or with an entirely wrong idea about who Jesus is or what Lord means.  Roughly, Christians and non-Christians, or followers of Christ and others, or the Church and people outside the Church (with perhaps some acknowledgment that there may be folks who are really in the Church but only God knows it).  This does jibe pretty well, incidentally, with Scripture tending to contrast "the world" with Christ.

And the salient point here is that "I" am making this offering in atonement for the sins of Christians, and, apparently equally, for the sins of everybody else.

 

5.  Have mercy on "us" and on the whole world

I don't need to belabor the point again, so I'll just note that the distinction between "us" and "the whole world" is significant enough to make it twice.  I think this underscores that it's a real distinction.  "I" ask for mercy for "us" and for all the other people too.

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All this being said, let's come back to "I" in the context of exactly what it is that "I" am offering.

 

6.  the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity

It's meditating on the meaning of this that got me thinking about this at all.  How can "I" offer this, which is basically "Himself," what Jesus offered on the cross?  I know how Jesus could do it; it was His to give.   I know (sort of) how a priest at Mass does it:  He is alter Christus and makes the offering in persona Christi.  What is it for someone like me to offer these back to the Father?

The way I figure it is that "I" can offer the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ only because I somehow possess it -- and the way I possess it is through having received it the Eucharist.

I freely admit that I may have worked it out wrong, but the Eucharist itself only remains literally with a person for a short time after Communion.  So one possible meaning here is that each of us makes this offering by dedicating the fruits of the Eucharist that he has received to do God's work and God's will; another is to consecrate the graces the Christian has received from it back to God, which may mean, so to speak, allowing God to redistribute or enact them for His good will and not specifically the good of the person making the offering.  

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The latter possibility, I clearly came up with under the influence of the idea of Marian consecration, and perhaps it's mixed up too much, so let's explore the first option:  That "I" offer the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, by dedicating the fruits of the Eucharist that I have received outside myself somehow.

The fruits of the Eucharist are said to be seven (cf. the Catechism, ¶1391--1398; scroll down from this link to the section):

• augments our union with Christ
• separates us from sin
• preserves us from future mortal sin
• wipes away venial sins (specifically, by strengthening our charity)
• makes the Church
• commits us to the poor
• signifies our unity

There are many, many people who in their circumstances do not or cannot receive the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity.   But the whole world can receive its fruits, no matter who they are or what their circumstances.

God can increase and make full any person's knowledge of and union with Christ.

God can detach any person from whatever sins trouble them.

God can wipe away any person's venial sins.

God can preserve any person from mortal sin.

God's power and mercy can incorporate anyone God chooses into the mystical body of Christ.

God can turn any heart toward the poor.

God can, someday, unite any person at all to the rest of us in the gift and sign of the Eucharist, and grant to any person the possession, not just of its fruits, but of the Eucharist itself.

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I think that when "I" am offering to God the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, I am saying:  You, Father, may take these fruits back from me, and spread them around to everyone; or at least, I say to you, God, that the fruits you have given me through the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, help me to use these fruits for the good of everyone else.  To realize these fruits for the people who (though they cannot yet receive the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity) may yet receive its fruits, by my words and actions.

By the works, you may say, of mercy.

The offering makes atonement, and enacts mercy, at the same time.  Atonement requires a sacrifice, and the sacrifice that the Chaplet enacts is a commitment to turn the great gift of the Eucharist outward, not keep its fruits just for myself, but actively work toward their wider distribution.

 

 

Comments

[Melanie B]

as I was reading parts 1 and 2 I was thinking what a profoundly Eucharistic prayer the Divine Mercy devotion is and how the referent to "us" and "our" is also possibly those who recognize Jesus' sacrifice and His Real Presence in the Eucharist. We who have special access to His Mercy precisely in and through our Eucharistic devotion.

Also, thinking about praying this prayer with children who are too young to have received the Eucharist (or those who for whatever reason cannot receive) so that they aren't offering the fruits of reception of the Eucharist but somehow the Eucharist itself.

Thinking about Eucharistic Adoration.... the Eucharist is not just the object of our adoration, but the Person to whom we offer our prayers and petitions, the sacrifice which we offer in atonement for sins, the means of our reconciliation, and the gift which we offer the world so that they too might be reconciled. And the person who offers the sacrifice on our behalf. It's the food which strengthens us for the journey as well as the destination towards which we are journeying.

[Joseph]

Thank you for your thoughts on CDM. Been trying to follow Jesus since my baptism in 1933. Had high school education but did poorly with English grammar. Your comment on the Eucharist was excellent. Blessed Joseph is my patron saint from my Confirmation.