On Good Friday afternoon as I drove to visit a dying friend, I listened to Father Raymond de Souza on the Catholic Channel preach on the Seven Last Words that Jesus spoke from the cross. Father de Souza’s words were powerful and truly led me into a deeper meditation on the passion and death of Jesus.
He recounted a story that I had never heard before. It’s the story of Rudolf Hoess. Hoess was raised a Catholic but as a young man he left the Church and pledged his allegiance to Nazism. He became the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, that living hell of darkness and death where millions of Jews and Christians were put to death by the Nazi regime. Hoess was responsible for the death of literally millions of people.
After the Nazi regime fell, Hoess was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. He spent his final days in a prison in Wadowice, the same city in Poland where Pope St. John Paul II was born and raised. While in that prison, he requested to see a priest. Some days later, a Jesuit priest visited him. During that visit, in which the priest spent several hours with him, Hoess made a formal declaration of the Catholic Faith as well as his final sacramental confession. He died in God’s grace.
Isn’t God’s mercy scandalous? To think, this man was responsible for the death of millions of people. He oversaw one of the darkest places that ever existed on the face of the earth. And yet he repented. Can we doubt the sincerity of his repentance? Maybe. But that must be left to God. What we cannot doubt is that God can and will forgive any sin if we are truly sorry, if we truly desire his mercy.
This Sunday is Divine Mercy Sunday, the origins of which began with a humble nun who lived in, of all places, Poland, the location of Auschwitz. When our Lord Jesus appeared to Sister Faustina Kowalska in 1931, he came to her proclaiming a message of infinite mercy. The Lord spoke these words to her: “Were a soul like a decaying corpse so that from a human standpoint, there would be no [hope of] restoration and everything would already be lost, it is not so with God. The miracle of Divine Mercy restores that soul in full.”
This is the message of divine mercy. No sin is unforgivable. No sin is greater than God’s mercy. Even the commandant of Auschwitz can be forgiven. This is the scandal of God’s mercy. This is the infinite depth of God’s love. This is God’s unquenchable desire that all people be saved and live with him in eternal happiness.
Father Michael Najim is Spiritual Director of Our Lady of Providence Seminary, Providence, as well as Catholic Chaplain at LaSalle Academy, Providence.
