May 15, 2005

 

Inperson

 

Divine Mercy, from Pope to Pope

 

Father George Kosicki was a teen-ager when he first heard about Divine Mercy.

Now 77, the Basilian priest is best known for his writing and television appearances discussing St. Faus­tina and the world’s need for God’s mercy. He’s revising his book, John Paul II: The Great Mercy Pope.

Father Kosicki spoke to Register correspondent Patrick Novecosky prior to the 85th anniversary of Pope John Paul’s birthday May 18.

Tell me about your upbringing.

I was born in Detroit of Pol­ish parents. My mother and dad were sent to the United States by the czarist govern­ment in 1916, just prior to the Bolshe­vik revolution. My father found a job in Detroit, and that’s where I grew up.

My mother was the spiritual one. The order of my father’s life was Poland, God, family. At my ordina­tion he inverted it. He sent me a card after receiving holy Communion for the first time after 40 years. He became as pious as my mother — a daily communicant.

When did you discern a call to the priesthood?

It was during a Holy Thursday exposition at St. Theresa Parish. I was in grade school. There was kind of a longing. My mother told me that after Communion one day the Lord said, “I’m asking another sacrifice of you.” My brother was already in the seminary.

Why the Basilians?

Because of a saxophone. I fin­ished grade school and mother had noticed that there was a sum­mer band at Catholic Central High School. She encouraged me to join. I made first seat. Then, Father Basil Regan said, “You’re coming here to Catholic Central, aren’t you?” I said, “No, you’ve got 250 on the waiting list. I’m not even registered.” He said, “Come on Monday with your mother and I’ll talk to the princi­pal.”

When I went to the principal again in 12th grade to get my appli­cation signed for Michigan State to study biology and biochemistry, he took my application and reached down into his desk and pulled out another application and said, “Fill this in.” It was an application to the Basilian novitiate. That’s how it worked in those days.

When did you first learn about St. Faustina and Divine Mercy?

It was in the early 1940s — within five years of her death. My mother heard from the Marians of the Immaculate Conception in Stockbridge, Mass. They asked if she’d draw a Divine Mercy image. She wasn’t a portrait artist, but she did it anyway. The Marians printed it on a card. My mother gave me that image at the novitiate in 1946. It’s been hanging in my room since then.

How did you begin working in Divine Mercy ministry?

I was involved in giving priest retreats, which were primarily focused on being baptized in the Holy Spirit and the call to holiness. After 16 years, we closed it down because we couldn’t get the staff to maintain it. I spent my vacation at a Camoldese hermitage near Steubenville, Ohio. That was when my whole life then began changing toward Divine Mercy. My spiri­tual director said, “God is call­ing you to Divine Mercy. Find an apostolate and go with it.” Marian Father Seraphim Michalenko, who was the vice-postulator for Sister Faustina’s cause, called me back to Stockbridge to work with him to get ready for her beatification.

Many people attach labels to John Paul II: the Mary Pope, the Pilgrim Pope, the Traveling Pope. Why the Mercy Pope?

Because of his own words. In 1981, near the beginning of his pontificate, he said, “It could be said that precisely this situ­ation assigned that message [of Divine Mercy] to me as my task before God” [Shrine of Merciful Love, Collevalenza, Italy. Nov. 22, 1981].

In 1997, at Poland’s Divine Mercy Shrine, he gave his per­sonal testimony after more than a half century of involvement with Divine Mercy. He said, “I will sing of the mercies of the Lord for­ever.” That’s a significant phrase of prayer. He used the phrase something like three times at St. Faustina’s canonization.

At the Shrine in 1997 he also said, “There is nothing that man needs more than Divine Mercy. ... It is a message that is clear and understandable for everyone.”

He went on to quote his own encyclical on mercy: “In no time, and in no historical period — espe­cially a moment as critical as our own — can the Church forget the prayer that is a cry for mercy amid the many forms of evil that weigh upon humanity.”

He continued: “On the thresh­old of the new millennium, I come to entrust to Him, once more, my Petrine ministry. Jesus, I trust in you.” There’s a hook in that line: “once more.” He has done it three times.

Then he said, “This was my personal experience, which I took with me to the See of Peter and which, in a sense, forms the image of this pontificate.” He didn’t say that about anything else. He also said, “I pray unceasingly that God will have mercy on us and the whole world.” He was mercy in word, action and prayer.

In the new introduction to your book, you call Pope John Paul’s death, “the world’s great­est moment of evangelization.” Why?

Because there are so many more people able to hear the proclamation of this man’s life through the news. The media had to acknowledge his holi­ness, and holiness is what evan­gelizes. His infirmity was even more powerful than his actions and words up to that time — the way he taught us how to live and how to die.

The Holy Father died on the eve of Mercy Sunday. Coinci­dence?

The final thing he did was arranging his funeral under the will of God because he really wanted to focus on Divine Mercy. Realize what happened is that his personal secretary, Bishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, offered that Mass on Divine Mercy as a vigil. The moment he died was the great Amen. There’s no coincidence.

What is the Holy Father’s greatest legacy to the Church?

Divine Mercy. He made that very explicit. At the canonization, he said, “Sister Faustina’s canon­ization has a particular eloquence. By this act, I intend today to pass this message on to the next millen­nium. I pass it on to all people.” He’s left a long legacy of 50 years of involvement in Divine Mercy, from his visiting Sister Faustina’s tomb when he was a young laborer at the Solvay chemical plant to the final Divine Mercy vigil Mass at his deathbed — even his final “Regina Coeli” message read on Divine Mercy Sunday, the morn­ing after his death.

Patrick Novecosky writes

from Ann Arbor, Michigan