It's ironic, is it not, that so many "mainstream" Catholics have a great resistance to or skepticism about anything mystical while at the same time adhering to saints or devotions that are based on mysticism, even extreme examples of it,  and certainly to popes who have sanctioned and promoted seers?

It's interesting. A major example arrives this week with the Divine Mercy revelations -- which came to Saint Faustina Kowalska from apparitions of Jesus.

The week is doubly special because the Holy Father will use a papal bull on the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday to declare a jubilee year dedicated to mercy, timing (the vigil) based upon the revelations.

If you approached many Catholics with the idea that someone was seeing Jesus -- and not only seeing Him, and speaking with Him, but had prophecies about His Second Coming -- you'd be met by blank stares and classified as an outlier, if not deluded, "fringe," and certainly "apocalyptic" (a pejorative, in these modern times, though not here).

Yet, that's what Saint Faustina claimed. And more. The saint said that one day there would be a massive miracle in the sky.

All light in the heavens, said Faustina, will be extinguished "over the whole earth." Then, there will be the sign of a Cross in the sky, with luminosity coming from the openings in the Cross where His Hands and Feet were nailed. "This will take place," said Saint Faustina (apocalyptically), "before the last day."

We have to be cautious, when it comes to apparitions, while also open. But this is a person, Saint Faustina, who was canonized by a Pope who himself is now canonized, a saint whose revelations have formed a new feast day in the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

We have often noted the alleged (and not Church sanctioned, or even Church studied) prophecy from 1990 from an anonymous source claiming that when Christ comes, it will not be "as a man of flesh, but like My mother, who already nurses Me and holds Me in her arms, as a light and power.

"I will manifest Myself in a series of supernatural events similar to the apparitions but much more powerful. In other words, My second coming will be different than My first, and like My first, it will be spectacular to many but also unknown initially to many, or disbelieved. Yet truly I tell you, the arrogance of the world will have been broken, and so many more than normal will believe. I will come in towering light."

When you reflect on those words, as we often have through the years (especially in the book, Tower of Light, which puts together prophecies with current events), it always seems to bear additional nuanced meaning.

Not only does it connect in a fashion to the type of "spectacular" and towering event Faustina foresaw, but we think also of Scripture, where we read of Jesus appearing in a series of apparitions. As a priest pointed out Easter Sunday, our faith has evidence; it has witnesses; in one case, five hundred saw Him (after His Resurrection).

This is the Faith.

And what would be "more powerful" -- hundreds or even thousands of seers, instead of one or two or three (or six)? Will an apparition like that happen some day in the future? Will we hear of it? Will our grandchildren, or will it be their children?

It would rock the Catholic world -- or at least the believing Catholic world. We are speaking to repeat not about the visions of a single mystic, but of an appearance witnessed by a number of people, perhaps even many. Perhaps it would be that select people will be witnesses, and thousands will come to watch seers have their apparitions of Jesus. Or perhaps there would be a subtle light, so ethereal, so lambent, that it will be seen but barely so -- yet incredible; as if in the corner of one's eyes. Distinct but otherworldly, and unseen by those who refuse to open themselves or who doubt what is in their own peripheral vision.

In pleading His Mercy, in praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, in cleansing the deepest recesses of the heart, in exercising an active faith, we ready ourselves for our own resurrections (spiritually) into the eternal. With His Mercy, we purify; we let Light shine through the holes in the Cross; we shed darkness.

Purity is the goal set for mercy as are simplicity and love -- shedding what is wrong -- for we leave this life on earth with the mercy and also the baggage we carry.

[resources: Tower of Light and Michael Brown retreat, Boston area, April 25  and also Spirit Daily pilgrimage: Fatima, Avila, Lourdes: October]

[see also: Practicing spiritual acts of mercy]

Mary Undoer of Knots plus The Holy Cloak novena, $7.25

Michael Brown's books on Kindle or Nook

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