Road Map to Mercy

Book Pick: The Second Greatest Story Ever Told

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The Second Greatest Story Ever Told

Now Is the Time of Mercy

By Father Michael E. Gaitley

Marian Press, 2015

240 pages, $14.95

To order: marian.org or (800) 462-7426

 

 

If you’re wondering what more you can learn about Divine Mercy, Father Michael Gaitley’s latest book gives new insights in the most surprising ways — and in such wonderful detail, with stirring narrative.

 

 

Father Gaitley takes readers on an amazing read that links Sts. Margaret Mary, Alphonsus Liguori, Thérèse of Lisieux, Maximillian Kolbe, Faustina and John Paul II together.

From the revelations and teachings of these saints — starting with the Sacred Heart’s merciful revelations to Margaret Mary up through the realization of Mary’s merciful love that reflected God’s own mercy, as Kolbe realized — the priest shows the need for a synthesis of Divine Mercy and Marian consecration brought by John Paul II.

For instance, many know there is a Fatima connection to St. John Paul II. But Father Gaitley brings to light little-realized “key connections,” as he writes, “and that’s the part, I bet, that will knock your socks off” — including a focus on the Immaculate Heart of Mary and Sacred Heart of Jesus, as well as the secrets of Fatima.

Overall, Father Gaitley makes obvious the unmistakable, unbreakable connection between Divine Mercy and Marian consecration and heralds this connection as heaven’s ultimate answer to straightening the world’s twisted situation. Once the Polish pope arrived, he became the juncture to bring about this Second Greatest Story Ever Told, as this book clearly illuminates. Father Gaitley shows how the saintly pope united the glorious themes in his 1982 homily at Fatima: “In that homily, John Paul made explicit the connection between Marian consecration and Divine Mercy. He said the whole meaning of the consecration is to allow Mary to bring us to the pierced side of Jesus, the ‘Fountain of Mercy.’ In other words, her whole role is really to help us graduate from ‘God’s school of trust’ to help us come to understand, believe in and accept God’s love and mercy for us.”

“Mary is the one who brings us to Divine Mercy,” after all. There’s no getting around it once the insights come rolling through, via Father Gaitley, on how and why God loves us, why we fail to trust and respond and how the healing can and will occur, as well as why Mary is essential to Divine Mercy. Emphasis is also on how God can bring a greater good out of all the evil in the world by the power of his mercy. Throughout, including a final chapter on the Lord’s Final Coming, hope abounds.

Also throughout, Father Gaitley blends his own personal insights and experiences with those of a number of others, as witnessed by nearly 20 pages of well-documented end notes.

As he reminds us, “The second greatest story ever told can also be your story. That’s because the story, in the end, isn’t so much about a Polish pope. … In other words, God didn’t just give us the second greatest story so we could sit back and enjoy it. He wants us to be part of it.”

This book is the perfect start — a “must” — to prepare for the upcoming holy Year of Mercy, which begins on, providentially, the major Marian Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on Dec. 8.

Joseph Pronechen is the

Register’s staff writer.