Blogger’s Note: This is the latest in a collection of daily posts outlining my journey to the Sacred Heart over the past year or more. See an overview and links to past posts here.

In yesterday’s post on spiritual fatherhood, I mentioned the loss of one of my Poland daughters following ski accident last January. Bethany, I learned, had a deep devotion to St. Faustina. That knowledge, coupled with discussions in my new men’s group about the number of families in our community in need of God’s love and healing, rekindled my own previous interest in Divine Mercy.

Then in February, while I was at a conference at St. John’s University, I received a text from a friend to pray for her brother,  a relatively young husband and father who had gone missing that morning.

Over our break I went in search of the chapel and when I found the tabernacle, I knelt in prayer. The first and only prayer that came to mind was the Divine Mercy Chaplet, so I prayed it, hard, asking for St. Faustina’s intercession and for Jesus’ protection and mercy for him and his family.

My family and I continued to pray throughout that day and night, even after the news came that they had found him too late. We prayed the rosary and other prayers, but always Divine Mercy was at the forefront.

I thought perhaps it was because this new loss was on the heels of Bethany’s passing, but then we learned that the final prayer of my friend’s brother was the Divine Mercy inscription: “Jesus, I trust in you.”

Our world is desperate for love. I believe with all my heart that St. Faustina is at work in our parish, trying to show us God’s limitless love in the face of such brokenness and sorrow. I believe she was and is interceding for the brother of my friend. I believe she is praying for all of you—and for me, too, that my heart may be more like His: an infinite reservoir of merciful love poured out for parched souls.

God willing, it’s working. Jesus, I trust in you.

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Addendum: When my new men’s group finished the Bible study on St. Paul from FORMED.org, we unanimously picked The Second Greatest Story Ever Told, Fr. Gaitley’s video series on Divine Mercy, as our next study.

And when Brendan returned home from his semester in Europe, he had two gifts for his father: an icon of St. Faustina and a small Divine Mercy plaque with the inscription in the original Polish: Jezu Ufam Tobie (YEH-zoo OO-fam TOHB-yeh), Jesus I Trust in You.