Sister John Mary Sullivan hopes families will find healing
By Agnieszka Krawczynski
The B.C. Catholic
The local church is celebrating Divine Mercy Sunday in a big way again this year.
The major feast, which St. John Paul II inaugurated in 2000, is falling during the Jubilee Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis.
“This year is really a year of hope,” said Sister John Mary Sullivan. The Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist will speak about mercy at the archdiocese’s major Divine Mercy Sunday event on Divine Mercy Sunday, April 3.
Hundreds are expected to participate in the celebration, called “The Hurts We Carry,” at St. Matthew’s Parish.
“One of the best definitions I’ve heard of mercy is: ‘love as it takes form in the encounter of misery,'” said Sister Sullivan.
“I think what our Holy Father has called us into is to really look at those miseries that are out there within our families, within ourselves, within society, and how we, in a very real, practical way, enter into those, encounter those, and transform those.”
Sister Sullivan hopes to share ways people can encounter God’s mercy and find inner and interpersonal healing. She said the event will welcome families including children, teens, adults, and grandparents.
“There’s that radical call this year in a very particular way to enter into the suffering, the ills, the weaknesses of others,” said Sister Sullivan. “I believe it starts in the family.”
Divine Mercy Sunday is a big day for many Catholics in the Archdiocese in Vancouver. Two years ago, 9,000 people flooded Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum on that day, the first Sunday after Easter Sunday, to celebrate the canonizations of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII.
This year’s free event at St. Matthew’s will begin at 1 p.m. and close with Mass. More information is available at www.rcav.org/year-of-mercy.Z
